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Subscribe to RSSA video from Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center explains how chimpanzees were tested on their preference for fair outcomes when it comes to sharing goodies.
Primate researchers in Georgia have laid out what they say is the best laboratory evidence yet that chimpanzees have a human-style sense of fairness. Other researchers, however, say the study is flawed — and they're sticking to their view that fairness may be a uniquely human characteristic.
The debate focuses on a key question about human evolution: How long ago did our ancestors acquire what Abraham Lincoln called the "better angels of our nature"? These angelic traits — such as altruism, empathy and fairness — manifest themselves in behaviors that can run counter to our own self-interest.
The latest research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, argues that a sense of fair play may have arisen millions of years ago, before our ancestors split off from the evolutionary line leading to other primates. The study's principal author, Darby Proctor of Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, told NBC News that the research "opens up the door for exploring the evolutionary roots of fairness in non-human animals."
"We've concluded that chimpanzees not only get very close to the human sense of fairness, but the animals may actually have exactly the same preferences as our own species," co-author Frans de Waal, director of Emory's Living Links Center, said in a university news release.
However, the Emory group's findings run counter to what other researchers have found in their own experiments over the past few years. One of the researchers behind those earlier studies, Keith Jensen of the University of Manchester, has said "our sense of fairness is a derived trait and may be unique to the human race."
Today, Jensen said he and his colleagues had serious reservations about the latest experiment. "I was excited to see a replication of our ultimatum game studies, seven years on, but was disappointed by the results," he told NBC News in an email.
How the experiment was run
The "ultimatum game" is a key concept in all these studies: The concept refers to an arrangement in which one player makes a proposal to another player to split up a reward. For example, a parent may offer six stickers to a little girl, on the condition that she divides the treasure with her brother. A researcher may offer six banana slices to a chimp, on the condition that it divides the goodies with another chimp.
Emory University
Researchers report that chimpanzees can change their strategy for dividing goodies, based on whether or not the chimps they're sharing with have any say over the deal.
If the shares are totally determined by the little girl, or the first chimp, their offer to the partner tends to be as low as possible. That's what's known as the "dictator game." But if the other partner has the power to veto a deal, it gets more complex. Make too low of an offer, and the partner might reject the proposition out of spite — even though the result is that no one gets a reward. That's the "ultimatum game."
The Georgia researchers ran a variety of games using tokens that could be traded for either equal or unequal shares of stickers (for 20 human children, ranging in age from 2 to 7) and bananas (for six adult chimpanzees). The researchers found that the results of the game were similar for the two groups.
If the one offering the goodies was in full control of the split, that individual kept the lion's share of the goodies. The results were different if the two partners had to agree on the split, however. "Humans typically offer generous portions, such as 50 percent of the reward, to their partners, and that's exactly what we recorded in our study with chimpanzees," Proctor said.
How the debate is playing out
Some questions surround the study: The second partner in the ultimatum game always accepted the offer of a split, whether it was equal or unequal. That applied to the kids as well as the chimps. Such behavior might suggest that the recipients would be happy with whatever they got, and didn't care about the fairness of the deal.
In Jensen's eyes, the fact that none of the chimps turned down an unequal split is a "fatal flaw."
"The ultimatum game hinges on the responder," Jensen said. "If the responder didn't understand the option of refusing, I would simply say the study did not work." Similarly, the children involved in the study may have been too young to understand that they could turn down an unfair deal — something that Proctor and her colleagues admit in their study.
They did report, however, that both the chimps and the children occasionally expressed displeasure about an unequal division. For the kids, it was voiced in complaints such as "You got more than me!" For the chimps, it took the form of spitting water at their selfish partner, or hitting a barrier between their cages.
Proctor and her colleagues cite other studies to back up their claim that chimps are sensitive to unfairness — such as anecdotal, non-experimental reports of chimps negotiating over the division of meat, or leafy branches. But such reports aren't yet rigorous enough to resolve the debate.
Proctor acknowledged that more research will be required to get a firmer grasp on the better angels of a chimpanzee's nature. "We can't be sure what all was going on between the chimps," Proctor said. "That's something we'd really like to explore in the future — how much communication is necessary to convey something to another chimp."
More about the better angels of animal nature:
- How monkeys handle moral outrage
- Sense of fairness goes back to monkeys
- What chimps can teach us
- Dogs can think 'no fair' too
In addition to Proctor and de Waal, the authors of "Chimpanzees Play the Ultimatum Game" include Rebecca Williamson and Sarah Brosnan.
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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Even in humans, primates will generally pick boogers from both nostrils instead of just one.
Yeah, but humans won't bite off another persons fingers or nose. And I highly doubt that when a chimpanzee does that, they aren't thinking: "Okay, two off of the left hand and two off of the right." LOL
You are correct! You didn't come from your cousin did you? But you and your cousin both came from your grandma right? Well chimpanzees and humans are DISTANT cousins and our "GRANDMA" is likely one of the fossils found in northeastern Africa. Please spread this to an ignorant Bible-Thumper near you.
Oops. I saw the picture and thought it was the politics section.
Hey scientist. How about if I but my foot up your A$$ and you can tell me what the science is on that. Just a bad day.
@scientist I'am sorry. You may be sqid jizz but I'am not. But if you can show me your sqid jizz,I'am willing to hear you.
Slow news day. Can someone make this political?
OK Roadkill Ban Biden
Blake, we've evolved from biting fingers and noses. We have guns and bombs now.
How about this Roadkill?
Is it possible for a "Right-winger" to learn anything from primates about compassion? Or have they missed out due to the "flagpole" shape of their family tree?
When it comes to fair play we all know that chimps are far superior to Democrats.
Mary Jones-1616541 banned, too many personal attacks and a history.
Whining that you're "disappointed" with the results of a study that didn't validate your beliefs crosses the line between science and scientism. It's been shown that dogs have a sense of fairness (a dog that will ordinarily follow a command for a crummy reward will start refusing if he sees another dog getting a lavish reward for the same behavior). I don't see it as a big surprise that chimps, our nearest relatives, should have a sense of fairness. If Jensen wants to believe that the chimps receiving unequal splits (banana splits, heheh) would never have refused any split because they "didn't understand" they could - well, then, why on earth would the chimps distributing the splits not have started consistently offering the crummiest possible split and keeping all but one banana for themselves? Their failure to do so then could only mean that they thought they should willingly share more than they had to -- that is, that they should be fair. A better attitude than we see from many more-fortunate humans.
Jane I would disagree. There was another study done with primates where the group would benefit from the efforts of an individual. The individual primate had no problem with others benefitting .... until any form of duress by the group was involved. It did not matter what form that duress took: threats, begging, trying to bribe .... the one doing the work would go without itself before yeilding. Very much exactly the behaviour of the human primate. Those human individuals with wealth contribute unimaginable amounts of money to charities, scholarships, medical and scientific research. A great deal more than they will under the duress of confiscation by a tyrannic greedy government. They also accomplish more for more people with with much less waste with the resources they willingly donate than a government could ever do.
Now did I say anything about government? It's great when people share on an individual level. I do happen to think, though, that a government is the best way to manage certain types of sharing of resources, e.g., the building of roads (without which it is difficult to become wealthy through commerce).
it is *fascinating* how some of those making comments have take this as a queue to attempt to distort these findings into a political context.. then attempt to defend their world view using that "evidence".
this is why we're all doomed..
I also seem to recall some primate experiments involving fairness or morals. I don't remember details, but they behaved similarly to humans. Also, I'll never forget the research done with Koko the gorilla. She was given a tail-less kitten, which she named All Ball. She used napkins as diapers for the kitten. She said that the kitten's sharp claws tickled. She adored that kitten and grieved just as any human would when the kitten was hit by a car. She was an incredible animal who taught us much about ape intelligence and emotions.
Of course they behave similarly to humans. We are extremely closely related. We have more intellectual capacity, but the underlying emotional base is going to be pretty much the same.
Jane ... A very good example of the function of a Federal government, to provide for the common good and a legitimate useof taxation. However I was referring more to your insinuation of selflishness of those more successful in society than to government. More is accomplished without duress and oppression. You missed the point of results of the study.
A better study would be to see "Chimps debating the moronic nature of humans", for THAT is surely evidenced on this blog. Some friggin idiots study a LOWER ORDER of primate and THEN tries to tell us that chimps may have a "human sense of fairness". Only a dip-sh_t would even consider ANY animal on the same scale of intelligence and psycho-emotional functioning as a human. THAT is why WE are in charge of the planet; something that some scientists, PETA and others cannot comprehend. Only people that have never spent any time in the wild believe such bull crap and are unable to understand what the term ANIMAL means. Some of you need to spend some time around Chimps in Tanzania or Zimbabwe to see how "human like" they are. Like many humans, they do not differentiate between white and dark meat.
JP - Neither do cats.
Dennis - Not everything has to be about Tea Party vs. Democrats. I really wasn't thinking of federal politics, but about the fact that there are people who have lots of money who give little or nothing to charity, who are proud of walking past a hungry homeless person without glancing down, who nickel-and-dime the people around them and wouldn't dream of springing for dinner once in a while. Both monkeys and mice, by the way, have been observed to sit and starve rather than obtain food by pushing a button that causes a fellow to be tortured. Meanwhile, there's a human doing the torturing for the sake of a line on his CV.
Despite the carefulness of their experiments, it still boil down to a "trained" response v. a spontaneous response. The problem becomes apparent as the game teaches the fairness v. do they intrinsically possess fairness. Fairness is also shown in different ways from the human standpoint but (according to the article) the "experiment" has a very narrow scope/response
I think what this study REALLY shows is that the behavior of small human children is very similar to that of chimpanzees. Nothing more. And it really shows nothing concerning the sense of fairness to others - only to oneself.
so much bs.....I don't need any studies to prove to me that animals are far more intelligent that we dare acknowledge. Because if we did, we'd have to somehow reconcile that to just how cruel we are to other creatures.
That is an excellent point Rob.
We are nowhere as cruel to other animals as we are to other humans....
The chimps probably know more about being fair than humans do.
Yup, and you can easily recognize the truth of that fact just by reading all the comments posted by us humans in response to the "junk science" studies being reported by the above News article.
And the aforementioned study(ies) are easily recognized as being "junk science" via the wording in this quoted statement, to wit:
HA, does anyone other than those researchers themselves ...... know what a "derived" trait is?
One can legitimately claim that a “personality trait” is either genetically inherited or is nurtured by one’s environment …… but surely not derived by magical means.
It's technical lingo - "derived" meaning evolved recently, in contrast to the "primitive" trait shared by the ancestor of a group and by all living group members that haven't evolved some other version of the trait. Having thumbs is a derived trait relative to ancestral quadrupeds, but one that we share with a lot of other primates (though ours are better).
Now Jane, I have been studying and reading science based literature for the past 50+ years and have never seen the word "derived" being used in the context that you are asserting that it is being used.
DUH, if it evolved "recently" .... then there should be no problem defining the gene(s) responsible for it.
But me thinks that the finding of any actual proof that it "evolved recently" .... will be as elusive to find as is the "gay" gene(s) that many scientists and others persist in the claiming of its existence.
cheers
(banana splits, heheh)
Who could forget Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky? My kid sister's favorite band.
Four banana, three banana, two bananas, one
All bananas playing in the bright warm sun,
Flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork,
Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and, Snork
Meanwhile congress continues to fiddle rather than do anything that remotely resembles fair.....
That's ok, Obama doesn't seem to have a problem with unconstitutionally steping over Congress anyway.
FlatIron, if you think he has done something unconstitutional then bring it up with the Supreme Court. Nobody has shown anything yet.
Define fair. The theft of resources gained by working to give to those who will not produce? Gaurenteed outcome regardless of ability and effort? Just what is fair and to who is it supposed to be to?
A fair distribution of the tax burden is what we argue out in a democratic society. But most people do not think it is fair when the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and the middle class gets squeezed.
The middle class and the poor need to pay their fair share too.
Jock ..... ok lets look at "fair distribution of tax burden". Current situation is such that the highest 1% tax bracket accounts for over 37% of all tax revenue, The highest 25% tax brackets account for over 87% of all tax revenue. That leaves 75% of the tax base paying less than 12% of all tax revenue, 45% of that group account for 0% tax revenue. How is that "fair distribution of tax burden"? You have 75% of the tax base letting 25% pay the bills, which group do you think is benefitting from that confiscated wealth? 2/3s of the deficit is the direct result of mandatory federal spending social welfare programs, the conclusions of a economic think tank put together by washington concluded that the deficit could be eliminated by 2018 and all tax rates could be reduced to a high of 15% and down from there by simply eliminating all tax deductions and tax credits (assuming no new welfare programs are enacted).... never happen for the simple reason that the lower 75% tax brackets are the ones who would be effected. I dont blame the non-contributing tax base its not their fault .... they are largely what used to be a massive productive middle-class tax base displaced by clintons "new economy", only a small number belong to the ever present members of society who refuse to work and contribute.
If you look at "the fair distribution of tax burden" what you are really saying is you resent anyone their success ...... class envy and class warfare tactics of the left.
i don't doubt they have a sense of fairness since my dogs all do. just try to give any of them 1 less treat than the other 2 got and you'll see. you'll have a dog that follows you around for the rest of the day waiting for the one you didn't give em.
Give one dog a piece of steak and the other a piece of kibble and just watch how indignant a dog can get. They know about fairness.
So chimps are more like people than we thought ... they complain when they don't get a fair share when splitting someone else's stuff, and the one with the stuff share's as little as possible.
Interesting.
Now THAT sounds like a political discription of an unnamed socialist political party agenda.
Begs the question if there are Conservative (keep everything they can) and Liberal (share everything they can) chimpanzees. Just wonderin...
I am guessing they have evolved beyond such political pettiness......
You are bit confused . Conservative is share what you can without harming your own family to those in true need, liberals is steal what any others have if it is more than you have or something you want.Chimpanzees are normal primates, political conservatives.
Careful Dennis, your rhetoric is showing.
Chimps also will bite the gonads off individuals who aren't part of their ingroup. I wouldn't have made this comparison if I were you, Dennis.
Jane ... that is the survival trait of every species .... protect resources for the survival of the group(or offspring). Any member of a species lacking that trait will be displaced and doomed to be soon extinct.
Ro .....
rhet·o·ric (rtr-k)
n.
1.
a. The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively.
Thank you for the compliment.
Every species tries to maintain access to resources, but most species do not do it through organized, planned war and genocide. This is nothing to brag about.
The Republican party of today has deported their "better Angels". Abraham Lincoln would become a Democrat.
I disagree. It is not a "better angel" attribute to steal from citizen to buy votes from another. Nor is it an American trait to penalize the citizen who produces to buy influence from a multitude who will not. Charity is a cultural trait of the Republic, confiscation for the purpose of "redistribution of wealth" is directly opposite of what the nation was founded on. Abraham Lincoln would not belong to todays Republican Party so much as be vehemently against everything the Democratic Party stands for. He would remain a political conservative.
Some would reasonably dispute whether a person with a billion-dollar income who "produces" only hedge funds or credit-default swaps really contributes more to society than the number of janitors, secretaries, and waitresses that put together make a billion dollars. Anyway, this is a story about members of another species. Does every single thing on earth have to be about Republicans vs. Democrats?
Well said Jane.... These "job-creators" or "producers" pushing paper around Wall Street sure don't seem to be doing much for me. But the construction guys, policeman and teachers do and have done SO much for me and society.
ThinkingScientist
Who are you going to work for if medium to large business owners disappear ? Those guys "pushing paper" loan out money and invest money that enables entrepreneurs to get started, and for them to grow. They hire people !
Rocky, they hire people when they think it will help them make more money, but the money comes first. Someone who is accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars is obviously NOT using it to hire people.
Jane you were the one to raise the political issue, I was just pointing the flaws in your post.
Jane and non-thinking scieenctist ....Okay back to basics. The first thing taught in an economics class is the function of a company. The function of a company is to make money for the investor. Who is the investor? The investor is your pension plan, your IRA, your 401K plan and yes individual investors. The individual doing that paper psushing and fund trading invested years of education, money and training to maximize the value of your retirement program and stock holdings, provides resources to be used in starting new business, upgrade efficiency in existing facilities, resources to provide new housing and loans. In return for the billions of dollars they make available to you the stock holder they are compensated in relation to the success they bring you. Those who are successful doing that are few and in demand so paid very well.
Janitors, waitresses, sectrataries etc, provide a needed and vital fucntion and work hard..... unfortunately they also require little personal investment in monetary, educational or time to perform. They also can easily be replaced with little effort or loss of acceptable result so therefore are of less monetary value to compensate. Thats not a bad thing thats just reality. Would it be fair to compensate someone who has made a more dedicated investment in time, education and effort who produces exceptional results less just because someone who has not done the foundation work and is more replaceable is paid at market value? Is it fair to penalize an individual for being good at what they do in order to compensate an individual who is mediocre or even incompetent in a not in demand job given to them in the name of "fairness"?
denis there is a slight flaw in that model... it will eventually have the same problem that Communism had ... those in charge...IE....those of the rich will invariably put their kids in those positions to make more money ... IE in charge ...... whether they are really qualified or not and that is why we have the problems we do we have trained greed to the Nth degree into our best and brightest very few become anything other lawyers or hedge fund managers ... eventually we really need scientists and teachers and therapists .... to supply a new frontier for our democracy ... teach our children so they can compete with other countries ... and help our children become good citizens not fake "lets get a photo op to look good then screw every one over" citizens .... if this country we should ALL cherish more than money we can make in it ...is to survive..
Lorax .... There is NO form of government possible where there is not going to be those able to start from a more advantaged position, never has been and never will be. Just as there is always going to be members of society that will refuse to contribute regardless of opportunities available to them. For those with ability and are motivated there are multitude of opportunity to advance in what was once our Representative Republic (the founders of the Republic despised direct democracy). For those with ability and motivation there is free education, regardless of there start if they want to excel there are scholarships to more education. For those who are inventive and motivated special loans to start businesses. You are absolutely right scientist and engineers are what is needed and since the late 60s those fields have not been given priority by the anti-science trend in favor of liberal arts and social trends. Large percentage of successful citizens that now belong to the successful started with no advantages and made their own through ability and ambition and are now penalized for it. The answer is not to promote mediocrity or hand someone positions just to be "fair" when they lack the ability, its to make it possible to use whatever ability they possess to its limit ..... and that will put them in the position of being one of those small number so looked down upon. Do you realise there has not been a president since Ronald Reagan who ever held a job in their life? President Lincoln had 18 months of formal schooling? President Truman did not go to one of the "elite" schools. THAT is the U.S. the founders had in mind. The current resident in the whitehouse has never held a job in his life and has never accomplished anything constructive, something is very wrong with that and needs to change.
Dogs have a sense of fair play. Reptiles do not.
Horses have a sense of fair play. Insects do not.
Wow, I think I'm a scientist. Ooops, sorry, we can't say we came from dogs, but reptiles we can - right?
Your fellow oooze mate. Lute
What's sad is that this story is news.
Primate research on empathy showing a sense of fairness has been on documentaries now for ten years, all the freaking time.
after having spent my life around animals, I can say without a doubt that many species of animals have a sense of "fairness", whether they honor it or not.
"good" and "evil" can be further broken down into self preservation vs preservation of the species. Animals will often sacrifice themselves to protect others in their pack / herd. Yet the idea that an animal would sacrifice themselves to save another, even a human, and thus have a higher moral code than many humans, wouldn't sit well with some. It is odd how many people define themselves by trying to belittle the next one down.
Another reference I find relevant is a quote from Robert E Howard, who wrote the Conan books. "Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing. "
There is no adaptive drive to do anything for the good of the species. For a kinship group yes, but not for the whole species.
I'd like to thank the author of this article - I finally understand my older sister.
what makes researchers believe that fairness is an inherently human trait? Just because it appears in some humans does not make a human trait.
It probably is. Empathy is essential in a social species and seems to be ingrained in us (except for sociopaths), and it is the basis of all religions.
I don't know...ask a democrat!
If your chimp scratches, bites, hits, or in any other way harms a defenseless human I will shoot it down dead just like I would a dog. Fair enough.
Ooh, big tough pussy con.
Do all humans have a sense of fair play ?
chimps also have another trait like humans -- ferocity
there is video evidence of a group of chimps silently making their way to a lone chimp and attacking that chimp for no apparent reason
some of the chimps hold the lone chimp down while another chimp rips and bites him to pieces...
sounds like us humans all right ...
get your hands off me, you damned dirty apes!
They would have been better off giving the money they spent on this stupid crap to people in need.
We have enough money to help people and also do science.
Why is that? Its not the governments job to give to anyone, it is to provide for the common good .... science provides for the common good with knowledge. Throwing money at people just wastes a limited resource with no constructive outcome and is NOT the function of a government.
jock .. no there is not enough money for both anymore. The U.S. currently owes 911% of its GDP, every man woman and child owes just under $200,000 in national deficit, the government borrows $7 billion every 37 hours. Its long past the time to start worrying about continueing to waste resources or concentrate on constructive spending
Joe,
While I empathize with your concern for those less fortunate, education is important also. Through science and other fields, we make discoveries that lead to a progression of medicine and other areas that greatly enhance our quality of life overall. What may appear superficially abstract today is often a component of the foundational discoveries that lead to a greater achievement in the future. Simply put, the public was likely not thrilled with a study of molds while they were dying from disease, but somewhere down the road many were grateful for the ultimate product of penicillin.
Once we discover the fairness attribute in our parallel brute species, perhaps we can isolate the genes and through some future miracle bring in back into the human lineage. If these related species have other attributes that humans imagine in themselves they too might enhance human survival and counter the incipient inbreeding. Finally this could be valuable because it not likely that these creatures learned that behavior from humans, not known for fairness. Humans seem curiously limited in natural social behaviors, where humans only learn social skills from their limited social interactions. Limited to a very narrow set of acquaintances, where as humans would be better served by having broader and in-depth interaction a deep social network. Human skill are such that finding the individuals best and highest skill requires exposure to other who by accident have successfully developed the same skill sets. The son of the cobbler may not be good at making shoes, but having not met a carpenter will not know what is best for him.
Modern times brings us the computer most famous for attracting those cannot type, to write what they should not and to waste all kind of time better spent painting, or sculpting.
This has already been proven, I have the news article from a few years ago, how many times do they have to torture these animals and us with these ridiculous studies. We are alive and evil is thriving quite well without all this "research".
Giving them bananas is torture?
Wow ..If this IS TRUE is means Chips ARE SMARTER than those other Lower Primates Liberal DerocRATS and Yes President OBama !!!!!!!
How true.
And they can spell better than you too!
Either the article is poor reporting or the experiment is poorly interpreted. There are a number of factors that haven't been addressed.
1. Is this a "community" of chimpanzees? Early experiments show that hording behavior depends on the general availability of food. It's been found, I think by Yerkes, that during a shortage, distribution tends to be equitable, while during a surplus there is more hording and fighting over food. (Primate Republicans?) In what kind of milieu are these chimps playing their ultimatum game?
2. Is the second chimp supposed to know that the chimp with the bananas "owns" those bananas, or does he regard the first chimp as merely the agent of the human who gave the bananas to both chimps? If the latter, then how do the experimenters convey the sense of entitlement to the second chimp? Otherwise, the second chimps are simply glad to get any share, much less a "fair"? share.
3. Fairness, like altruism, is æsthetic. The pleasure of the act or the result is the reward. A libertarian considers it "fair" that he have absolute control over his property. He considers imposed sharing -- i.e. taxation -- as theft. Do the experimenters impose their own concept of "fair"on the chimps arbitrarily? Do they call it a "game" so they can impose those rules? And do the chimps understand the concept of game?
Chimps may indeed have a sense of fairness, but they may also be wiser, in their own way, than the experimenters about how it's defined and applied.
Jack ... just one point here. It is not the libertarian who feels absolute control of their property, it is the foundation of all freedom for the citizen and of the premise of the Constitution as well as a law of nature. What differs is that even a libertarian will willingly understand and contribute to the common good as defined in the Constitution and explained by the founders of the Republic in "The Federalist Papers" by Hamilton, Madison and Jay. When taxation exceeds the amount needed to fulfill the legitimate functions of a Federal government then yes it is theft. The common good are things like foreign diplomacy and treaties, import trade, commonality of law between states, infrastructure, national defense .... Taxation for the purpose of "redistribution of wealth" is not a legitimate function, is indeed theft and would horrify the founders of the Republic.