The Questions
I often find that people around me don’t understand the libertarian position. They view libertarians, and to some extent, conservatives, as people who are greedy and selfish, and who want to keep all of their money for themselves. Generally my argument has been, "why shouldn’t I want to keep all my money for myself?" To which anyone with a cause – welfare, warfare, or whatever – replies, "because then who would pay for my cause?"
Who, indeed? This is an important question to consider, because in doing so we learn how the State gets away with doing things that the majority of people don’t want it to do.
It seems to me that nobody wants to pay taxes. I certainly don’t. Most people pay taxes because they think they have to. Two things in life are inevitable, say people: death and taxes. The grouping is certainly appropriate, given all the death paid for by taxes. "If you don’t pay your taxes," my father used to tell me, "you’ll be in trouble with Uncle Sam." Whether it’s Uncle Sam or the Grim Reaper, there’s a factor of fear in the payment of taxes. Who thinks that people would pay as much in tax if tax were strictly voluntary? Anyone?
But why don’t people want to pay taxes? Shouldn’t they? After all, those who advocate a reduction or elimination of taxes are called greedy and selfish. But we don’t only want to not have to pay taxes – we also want other people to not have to pay taxes. So aren’t people who don’t want to pay taxes themselves, but don’t care if others do, even more greedy and selfish? Isn’t the opposite of greed and selfishness virtue, and shouldn’t people want to be virtuous?
Goods and services cost money to produce. If people want goods or services, they generally realize that they have to be willing to pay for them in order to get them. Taxes are simply a way of paying for the goods and services provided by the government. If people really wanted the goods and services provided by the government, they’d be willing to pay for them, right?
So the question is, again, who pays for the causes I mentioned above? Are people greedy and selfish, or are they virtuous? Are they willing to pay for what the government gives them, or not? Are the activists, the progressives, the warhawks, the environmentalists, are any of these people ready to put their money where their mouth is?
Voluntary Purchase
I own a television set. Without going too deeply into the economics of it, we’ll say that it cost me an amount of money that I had earned by working a certain number of hours. The decision I made, when I bought the television set, was whether the television set was the best use of that money I had, or whether I wouldn’t rather have something else. I considered my opportunity costs – I could have bought a bunch of CDs, or a new cellular phone, or a peripheral device for my computer. I considered how much work I had put in to get that money, and all the other things I could have done with those hours other than earning money for a television set. Finally I decided that the TV set was a good idea, that it would be useful to me in the future, and that I wanted it more than the amount of money it cost.
Most American households contain television sets. In fact, there are 295 million people in America and 219 million television sets. Television sets are not forced on people – those who purchase them do so willingly, and voluntarily. They make choices similar to my choice. They decide that the benefits of having a television set outweigh the cost. They don’t complain loudly that two things in life are inevitable: death and television sets. There is no nationwide organization devoted to the collection of fees for television sets. There is no nationwide organization devoted to the distribution of television sets to the poor. In fact, 97% of the households classified as "poor" by the US Census owned at least one color television set. More than half of the households classified as poor have two or more color television sets.
Aside from the ubiquity of television sets, my point is that there is a demand for television sets, that this demand is met by a supply of them, and that the market price is not prohibitive, even to 97% of poor people. There was no nationwide movement to fill every house with a television set – it just happened, because people wanted, with no urging from any political party, to watch television.
People also buy other things that they want. Cars, houses, computers, digital watches, cellular phones, even comfortable shoes – all are purchased voluntarily by Americans because Americans believe that their benefits outweigh their costs.
An Offer You Can’t Refuse
I am not in favor of the war in Iraq. I am not in favor of Social Security. I am not in favor of public education, public transportation, monopolized utilities, farm subsidies for corn growers, welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, foreign aid, the war on Terror, the war on Drugs, the war on Poverty, or any of the vast majority of things the State has decided to provide for me. However, the State still provides me with these things, and still charges me for them.
Let’s consider the war in Iraq. At no time have I received an estimate of how much money the war in Iraq will actually cost me. I can’t equate the war in Iraq with any price. I can’t say, "I worked this many hours to pay for the war in Iraq," nor can I say "I could have bought this much other stuff with the amount of money I spent financing the war in Iraq." Instead, the money is simply paid for out of my taxes (that is, of course, an oversimplification, since the war in Iraq is being funded by debt, which you and I and everyone else will pay for eventually) without any kind of itemization. Because of the deferment of payment to future tax periods, and the uncertainty of state-controlled money supply and interest rates, there simply isn’t any way for me to know, conclusively, how much the war actually costs me in terms of anything I can understand. I am not an economist. That is true for most Americans. Unlike the case of the television set, the war in Iraq is impossible for the average person to know the cost of. On what, then, do we base our decision whether or not to purchase it?
Well, fortunately for us, the confused, adrift public, we don’t have to make that decision. The decision is made for us – we will purchase the war in Iraq. The taxes are levied and we pay them. In fact, there’s a national organization devoted to the collection of fees for the war in Iraq – it’s called the IRS. Even though millions of people took to the streets in protest of the war, even though sixty million people later voted against the President who executed the war, we are still going to be forced to pay for this war. It is an offer we can’t refuse.
Some people are opposed to television. They don’t have to buy television sets. Some people are opposed to the war in Iraq. They still have to buy it. People are also forced to buy other things they don’t want. People in some states have to buy things that benefit people in other states. People in America have to buy things that benefit people elsewhere in the world.
If The Cause Is Just
Nobody really thinks that war is good – at best it’s a necessary evil, or a cloud with a silver lining. Nobody really thinks that television is a necessity – it’s just a luxury, a modern convenience. So what about things that are good, in an absolute, moral sense? What about a cause that is just?
Food is a necessity. Everyone needs food. In America, 2 percent of poor people say that they "often" do not have enough to eat. 13 percent experience hunger at least once a year. Obviously, this is a problem. But if feeding these people is such a good cause, why don’t people do it? Why do they spend their money on TV sets rather than donating it to charity?
Most people would agree that education is important. Yet few of these people are volunteering their time or money toward the cause. Why is that? Why do teachers make so little money if their services are so important?
Everyone agrees that lack of education and lack of food are problems. And yet most people do nothing about these problems because they look to the State to solve them. Rather than donating money or time to soup kitchens, they loudly demand that the government spend more money on the problem. Rather than taking the education of children into their own hands, they loudly demand that the government spend more money on the problem. People believe that since they are already paying taxes, those taxes should go toward the correction of social problems. People believe that by paying their taxes, they are doing their share.
Yet consider what happens to the money collected by the government. It is spent frivolously and to no good effect. The education system gets worse. Instead of feeding the poor, we buy tanks and guns and bombs and take them to foreign nations to kill people with them. People have no control over the use their tax money is put to. They spend money, and the problem gets worse.
If a cause – like feeding the hungry – is just, then isn’t it worth addressing in as effective a way as possible? If something is worth doing, is it not worth doing well? If the provision of education, a social safety net, and various other just causes are truly things that people want, does it not make sense to allow them to purchase these things the way they purchase a television – on a free market? On the other hand, if these things are undesirable, is it right to force them on people and force them to pay for them, like the war in Iraq?
But must we rely on the charitable impulses of the masses? Given that government did not invent charity, this might not be such a bad idea. Right now we rely on the charitable impulses of a few politicians in Washington. If you were in need, who would you rather have to rely on – your neighbors, or politicians hundreds of miles away who you have never met?
The Answers
When people want a good or a service they will purchase it gladly. People buy food and medical care just as surely as they buy television sets. They want something, so they buy it. They put their money where their mouth is. This leads to wiser decision-making processes. People have a concrete way to assess the benefits and costs of a given good or service. This is called a "price." The "price" of an object is a dollar amount that allows you to compare the costs of things. "Price" can only be arrived at by a market scenario. A State scenario, as I have shown, obfuscates the "price," making it impossible for people to know what it is.
Without knowledge of the price of the war in Iraq, many people supported it who would have balked at paying for it. These people were not putting their money where their mouth is. Because of the taxation system as a means of paying for goods and services, other people paid for the war in Iraq who didn’t even support it.
People supported the war without paying for it, and others paid for it without supporting it. If people really wanted the war in Iraq – like they really want television sets – they would gladly have paid for it without government urging or State organization.
On the same token, if people really want to feed the hungry, they will pay to do it, just like they pay for television sets. They will put their money where their mouth is. The trouble with collecting taxes to pay for these things is that people have no power to guarantee that those taxes will actually pay for causes they believe in. The State, in levying taxes, takes money away from where people’s mouths are – away from the voice that should be controlling the direction of the money. People who want to feed the hungry end up paying for the war in Iraq.
The reason that people don’t want to pay taxes is that they don’t want to pay for things that they consider to be unjust – whether that is the waging of war or simply the enrichment of politicians and unscrupulous corporations that feed off of government subsidies. The selfishness of the libertarian comes not from disdain for our fellow man, but of a belief that we ourselves are better equipped to address the problems facing humanity than the State. We’re better at spending our own money. We’re willing to put our money where our mouth is.
A free market system causes people to back up their beliefs and desires up with action. It encourages cautious decisions and empowers individuals. A person who truly believes in feeding the hungry has the power to spend as much or as little of his or her money on that cause as he or she wishes, without having any of the funds diverted to other programs or agendas. To defend against the argument that this individual may not have enough resources to achieve their ends, I will simply point to the fact that in 1950 a television was prohibitively expensive to most people, and now even the majority of poor people have two. The system of voluntary purchase has led to the consistent increases in quality of life that have brought us to the point where even our poor people can afford these luxuries.
Conclusion
Now that I have butchered the phrase "put your money where your mouth is" over and over again and used it to make a mockery of all reasonable grammatical rules, I hope that you will remember it. Beware of people who advocate an action that they themselves are not willing to pay for. Beware of other people whenever they are proposing to spend your money. Understand that the reason the government cannot spend your money well is that it is yours, not theirs, and therefore they cannot possibly place the same value on it that you do. Be you selfish or selfless, the most reliable way to pursue your goals is to put your money where your mouth is.
February 10, 2005
