I have always believed that if you are forced to pay taxes then you must be given the right to vote. I thought it was incredulous that at 16 I was required to pay taxes yet unable to vote or influence where my money would go.
I was mad that at 16 I could legally work but couldn't legally enter into contracts. This prevented me from having a bank account in my own name. I was old enough to work, but not old enough to own the money I earned. (At least not in non-cash form.) I also couldn't spend my own earned money on any products requiring a contract be signed. So old enough to work, but not old enough to spend or save the proceeds.
I think your argument could go even deeper than that. If you are compelled to do anything by the State, I think you should argue quite effectively that the State should be compelled to take you and your concerns into account. Anything else creeps toward autocracy, at least against a particular group.
This provides you are of sufficiently sophisticated mental function to know what concerns you and why. When such sophistication develops is an incredibly hard question; thus far, we have punted, and have decided to use physical ages. This may be the least oppressive way to handle this dilemma, but the cynic in me wonders if we do this only because it is only optimal in a very short-term and fuzzy cost/benefit analysis.
Your assertion hinges on the assumption that the government exists autonomously, apart from the people it represents. If my landlord claimed to represent me and my interests with the money I gave him, I would expect to have a say in how he spent it. This is the charter of any non-totalitarian government, and specifically that of all of the modern democracies.
You are confusing ownership with being a customer. Customers pay rent/taxes. Owners exercise control. The charter of modern democracies promise equal ownership based on birth or residency, not on whether or not you pay rent. Or rather, the preamble states the goal of equal ownership. The fine print in the thousands of pages of legal code give actual ownership to an oligarchy of the civil service, congressional committees, and organized factions. You may like to get an ownership share based on paying rent, but you have no legal or moral claim to it, just as you have no legal or moral claim on controlling your landlords' spending.
BTW, you are also confusing totalitarian with authoritarian. Authoritarians deals with the management structure of a government, totalitarian with the scope of its activities. The US government in 1800 was non-authoritarian, non-totalitarian. Stalin was authoritarian and totalitarian. USG in 2009 is non-authoritarian, totalitarian. Louis the XIV was authoritarian, non-totalitarian.
I've yet to run into a landlord who could force me to join the army, throw me in jail, take money from me, etc. The only thing that landlords can do is evict me for failing to pay an agreed upon amount of money, and I even get to refuse to deal with specific landlords if I don't like the deal.
The US IRS claims a right on your income for ten years after you renounce citizenship, which given the hoops you have to jump through to renounce US citizenship is a bit rich.
I have vague recollections of a Tea Party thrown to discuss that one...
I agree with the principle of Scott's article (let's have a discussion and see if anything better shows up). Greater discussion may lead to better solutions like using taxation as the measure rather than a civics test.
