That ship sailed a long time ago with the disappearance of the frontier and homesteading opportunities. Now that it's virtually impossible to completely opt-out of society, some safety net is a necessary correlate of removing that liberty.
Because it's considered to be requisite to interact with society, it's necessary to initiate force to collect funds for a safety net? I don't really follow.
it's now impossible to use foraging or subsistence farming as a last-ditch survival strategy because all land is claimed by public or private actors (not to mention regulatory and land use obstacles). With the disappearance of that formerly natural right, we are obligated to provide at least minimal support to persons we've locked into the modern system. While there might be other mire common justifications, the loss of the choice to opt out is the ultimate grounding behind the social safety net, in my view.
I had the means, not the right. As soon as someone homesteaded it, I lost the means. By definition, you cannot have a right to unclaimed property. Having a right to it is synonymous to having a claim on it.
> The Inclosure Acts (or "Enclosure Acts" in modern spelling[1]) were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country, creating legal property rights to land that was previously considered common. Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual Enclosure Acts were put into place, enclosing 6.8 million acres (2,800,000 ha; 28,000 km2).[2]
> Prior to the enclosures in England, a portion of the land was categorized as "common" or "waste". "Common" land was under some kind of collective control.[3] Called the open field system, a single plot of land was divided among groups, often a lord and employed or participating peasants.[4] This facilitated common grazing and crop rotation.[4] "Waste" was the only land not officially claimed by any group, often cultivated by landless peasants.[3]
That's specific to British subjects in the UK, and would only possibly create a legal justification for raparations paid to descendants of those who had legal right to the commons, with revenue raised from taxes levied on that land. This is not the same as any given person having a natural right to forage any given plot of land, especially when there was no established commons and subsequent enclosure. And the history of the enclosure acts in the UK certainly in no way justifies the naked authoritarianism of modern income tax laws, which relate to a tax levied on private human activity (as opposed to land), and which necessitate blatantly privacy infringing laws requiring people to report their private financial details to the government, including all of their private sources of income.
There are actually a number of national legal frameworks that would disagree with you. See "everyman's right" in Finland, Iceland, Scotland, Norway, which has law backing it up. Just because in England such a right wasn't recognized doesn't mean that everyone agrees on this.
(In Finland, by definition of "everyman's right", everyone has a right to hike and to respectfully pick berries and mushrooms on claimed and unclaimed property -- in essence, all of society has limited rights on your land.)
Those are explicit national legal rights, limited to the citizens of a particular nation, granting them rights to land under the legal jurisdiction of the national government. It's not the same as a general implicit right possessed by any given person to forage any given plot of land.
In this comment I further explain why I don't believe these national legal rights, and their subsequent abolishment, in any way justify a tax on private income:
The rights granted by Nordic countries to forage are not limited to the citizens of a particular nation -- that's why a lot of folks from Thailand fly in each year to pick cloudberries.
How is the right to forage a tax on private income? That's a non sequitur.
As far as I know, Nordic countries don't allow unrestricted entry into their country for foraging of their commons. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The OP argues that a tax on private income is justified by us no longer having a right to forage the now privatized land. I thought you were supporting the OP's position, which is why I made that argument.
