For example, the highwayman, who who provides the valuable service of 'not getting murdered' to travelers, in return for the payment they voluntarily make.

Or perhaps you would prefer the example of the extortionist, who provides insurance against the risk of "something" happening to the nice business you have?

Once they define it as stealing, then it's morally indefensible, by definition.

The question is, is it actually stealing, or is that just their overheated rhetoric? From where I sit, it's hot air.

Some of that 30% has both directly and indirectly empowered war crimes and has pushed on the accelerator of an unspeakable [and, sadly, irreversible] descent into the kind of mad fascistic experiment that always ends up driving many more. The seizure of means that you turn around and use for rent-seeking is morally indefensible in its own right, but it’s the unintended (yet obvious) consequences of that same self-serving and short-sighted impulse where the real moral trap lies.