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wars fought without taxes

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cab21 Posted: Wed, Aug 8 2012 11:01 PM

since the quick google search did not really find the answer, what wars have been fought without the use of taxation as funding for one party or another? collective resources could also count to put tribes in here who would not have taxes per say, but still have a collectivist additude and use common resources to fight. what the goal of this would be to show how hard it would be for a war to be fought without taxation in a voluntary society.

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Anenome replied on Wed, Aug 8 2012 11:13 PM

The American revolutionary war, for one thing.

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 a private army was raised to stop Shays' Rebellion.

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Neodoxy replied on Thu, Aug 9 2012 12:19 AM

Anenome,

Weren't funds raised by states through taxation?

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cab21 replied on Thu, Aug 9 2012 12:41 AM

i'm looking at a few articles on the revolutionary war.

britian and france using taxes scews the funding aspects to taxation on either side. another article stats the continential congress eventualy simply resorted to confiscation.

https://mises.org/daily/2340/

Financing for the American War for Independence included loans and subsidies from the French government as well as the modest sums Congress received as a result of its requisitions upon the states. But paper money played a central role in Revolutionary War finance.

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/baack.war.revolutionary.us

Worsening Inflation and Financial Problems

As the American military situation deteriorated in the South so did the financial circumstances of the Continental Congress. Inflation continued as Congress and the states dramatically increased the rate of issuance of their currencies. At the same time the British continued to pursue their policy of counterfeiting the Continental dollar. In order to deal with inflation some states organized conventions for the purpose of establishing wage and price controls (Rockoff, 1984). With few contributions coming from the states and a currency rapidly losing its value, Congress resorted to authorizing the army to confiscate whatever it needed to continue the war effort (Baack, 2001, 2008).

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cporter replied on Thu, Aug 9 2012 1:28 AM

Most "wars" (conflicts, if you prefer) are by a government against the people it claims ownership of. Conveniently for your purposes, the rebel side is almost always privately funded so that's probably the best place to look.

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The losers usually pay, get taxed?

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Merlin replied on Thu, Aug 9 2012 2:41 AM

The Albanian militia in the Kosovo war that raged throughout the ’90 was financed mainly by donations from wealthy Albanians abroad, voluntary service and some good old drug trafficking. Thought I’m sure that some tax money was funneled to it from some secret service, one cannot say that it was a conspicuous part. 

The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms.
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