Two persons have written to me about my last post. I assume there are others who share their positions, which are close. Person #1 wrote:
“The definition of taxes involves coercion—taxes are payments the state collects under the threat of violence. Giving people a choice in whether or not to pay them would require the removal of the threat of violence, making any payments to the state donations or service fees and not taxes.”
I agree that taxes are coercive. Suppose that N-1 people get together and agree to appoint person N to collect taxes from them under some rules of assessment and collection that they propound, such as the U.S. Constitution or any number of other such guiding documents. They agree to coercion. Choice does not necessarily remove the threat of violence. Coercion can be willingly used as a commitment device. It means that they cannot change their minds and back out over the period of the commitment without encountering the force. They agree to have the threat hanging over them. It’s like agreeing to have a bank extract Christmas Club money from you every week for a year, even if you decide to change your mind halfway through the program. Or like agreeing that dietitian D will prepare and serve you all your food for a year and use force to prevent you from eating anything else. People can agree to have governments coerce them. I cannot advocate that such people do not have the right to do that. I can’t advocate my or a group of us abolishing their taxes and their government if that is their preferred system. And yet this is exactly what Charles wrote in his article:
“The choice today is quite clear. It is between peace, freedom and prosperity on the one hand, taxation, tyranny and impoverishment on the other. Faced with this fundamental choice, we should see clearly that what we desperately need to do is not limit or reform the tax system, but to abolish it — and breathe the fresh, clean air of freedom.”
He advocated abolishing the tax system in all of America. He wrote: “America was at a crossroads. Today we are again at a crossroads. The paramount issue we face is a parasitic system of taxation draining the economic lifeblood of our ability to feed, care for and clothe our families.”
His error is to view America as a whole unit. It is not. Some people want out from under the U.S. government. Others do not. The “we” and the “our” are not one entity.
He didn’t advocate eliminating taxes and then letting people reconstitute in any way that they pleased and bring back taxes if they chose to. He didn’t advocate secession. He didn’t advocate multiple non-territorial governments. He advocated bringing his idea of freedom to all Americans, but his idea involves doing away with the voluntary coercion and the voluntary giving up of liberty that Karen observed is a fact of life. There are people who accept taxation with representation. His idea involves destroying a consensual way of life for many persons, but libertarians, in my view, can’t rightfully demand anything more than freeing themselves from being taxed by others without their consent.
Person #2 wrote:
“Panarchism calls for voluntary government, which makes you a tax-abolitionist by definition since taxes are involuntary. Taxation is theft, so taxation would have to be abolished for there to be a situation where people that ‘don’t want to pay them shouldn’t have to pay them.’ It would no longer be taxation, but consensual/voluntary, contractual duties. Therefore you are a tax-abolitionist when you say ‘I want something abolished in its control over me and anyone else who objects to it.’
My rebuttal is this. Taxation for all people doesn’t have to be abolished for some people to be freed from it. Throughout history, there are all sorts of instances where some people within a government’s territory are treated differently with respect to both taxes and many other regulations than some other people. There are abundant examples of this kind of panarchic arrangement. The graduated income tax is an example. Encyclopedia Britannica (1962) in an entry on Minorities writes:
“In former times rulers frequently called colonizers from abroad to settle on wasteland or to introduce new skills and trades. These settlers received special privileges and were allowed to live in closed settlements according to their own rules…In a somewhat similar way European traders settled in oriental communities and were there granted the privileges of extraterritoriality or, as called in the near east, capitulations.”
Quite frankly, the more clearly that the panarchy position is spelled out, the more I expect attempts to rebut it. Libertarians are accustomed to calling for the abolition of just about every aspect of government that they object to. But these calls go too far, because there are always those who want this or that or support government as a whole. A large part of the objection to being on the receiving end of coercion rests upon its imposition upon those who do not want it. The basis for this imposition is that governments enforce a territorial induction of all bodies within its claimed borders into its ambit of control. Libertarians have a right to object to being coerced and thus they have a right to object to their involuntary induction as citizens of some government by virtue of living on some spot of earth. To ask to be released from this territorially-based servitude is reasonable. It does not require abolishing the governments of others. It requires not that those governments end the taxation or supposed servitude of all its taxpayers but that they release those who say that they are being made to serve against their wills.
12:48 pm on December 21, 2010
