Stefan Molyneux: But - they're going to take my money for my whole life, right?
Umm, yeah. Not sure where you are going with that. Are you saying it's a matter of degree? You only took government funds for a "short time" so that makes it okay? If you only raped a woman for 5 minutes, that would make it okay, or at least much better than the guy who abused her for 10 hours? I did just read your strike the root column which was handy considering my question here, huh? If I were an egomaniac, I'd think you quickly wrote that up just for little old me. 
Anyway, you say in that article that participation is not sanction. Yet I thought that was part of the argument against voting. Participation is either sanction in all things related to government or it isn't, right?
If everyone continues using government services in areas where there are alternatives, then won't things only get worse and worse? I guess I come to this from my experience with education. If all the so-called libertarians only did one thing and took their kids out of government schools, even if perhaps just K-6, and then worked to help get others out, those kids would get a much better (and more libertarian) education plus the system might eventually just crash from misuse. But that would never happen if people who understand libertarian ideas continue to let the government educate their kids. And whether or not that crash occurred, at the very least all those people would not be sanctioning the whole idea of government doing the educating of our children. Participation would indeed be sanction here don't you think?
I have to say in that article and in the podcast your comments about how you framed your reasoning for taking government funds sounds like just pure rationalization for you going ahead and getting what you wanted at the time. You frame it as the entity (government and mafia) who take the money and then talk of the money as if it's "theirs" for you to take back. But it's not one pile of something that becomes "theirs." Even though they now have it, it's still a mix of all the individuals', including yours, money that was taken. So if you grab that mafia money, sure you take it back from them, but in reality, you've taken the money from all the other individuals who have had their money taken. Am I right on this?
Why is it okay just because you happened to have a chance to grab some back? What about those others whose money was also taken but who never got such a chance? They are still forced to subsidize when you take that bag lying there. They are no better off. Unless you can divide it out and give the right amount back to each individual, you're no different than the mafia, right? It does not matter whether or not it was possible or practical to do the dividing and get it to the right people, the fact that you don't means that you are no better than the mafia who also had the bag 10 minutes ago because now you are the holder of other people's money.
If everyone continues to take advantage of these things we play right into the hands of the government because then they can look and say, "yep, it's a good idea we set this up, heck even Stef needed our help. And that's what the government's here for, to help people like Stef." Notice how I said that, you "needed the government's help." They certainly don't care about your reasoning for taking the money being that you felt you simply got some of what you paid back; they will only see that you needed help and they gave it to you. And so they will continue to take from others and give to others. Because all they want to do is help poor college students who need a little boost, who just can't do it on their own. 
Also on the comment that you have now paid so much in taxes that it's moot you took the money in the past because you paid it back and some, I don't particularly understand that argument, because the money was taken from other productive individuals in the first place. So when you have to pay your own taxes, you are certainly not paying anything back to those individuals who were stolen from so you could go to school. You're just giving more money to the government, so the next person can figure out their own rationalizations and justifications for taking government money when it benefits them to do so. And so the cycle continues. This is not sanction?
Seems to me in order to take the moral position, we'd have to work as hard as we can to never take funds where we have a clear choice or reasonable alternative (government loans for education vs driving on the roads for example). Don't get me wrong, I don't blame you, my kids did end up going to public universities, but I'm just trying to come to terms with, and understand all these moral arguments.
Please tell me where my thinking is off track.
Debbie
Homeschooling is a funny thing to do: Okay Kids, Time for Bedlam
Follow along with Debbie as she works her way through The Voluntaryist on the "Debbie and Carl" blog.