Please discuss .....

Will Wilkinson at the Fly Bottle blog puts two questions up for discussion:

1) Libertarians and many conservatives often talk about lower taxes as a matter of liberty. But a higher tax isn’t more coercive than a lower one. You’re either being coerced or you’re not. A guy who mugs five people with thin wallets is no less guilty of coercion than a guy who mugs five people with thick wallets. The harm from coercion might be greater if more is taken, but there is no more or less coercion. But if you don’t think that the size of the opportunity set is a matter of liberty, then you should not think of lower taxes as a gain in liberty, but just as a reduction in harm. Yet libertarians and conservatives don’t tend to talk this way. Why not?

2) The average citizen of Singapore has fewer politically recognized rights but is freer than the average citizen of India.

Discuss.