Further Thoughts on Consent

This blog on CHAZ drew one entirely friendly while critical response that got me thinking further about consent. I argued that some portion of taxes was voluntary and consensual and that therefore city property was not all stolen property, but belonged to taxpayers. The writer disagreed about the voluntary aspect. For him, none of the taxes he paid in Seattle was voluntary:

“…I lived in Seattle for 25 years from 1975 to 2000 (the life of the infamous Kingdome.) I spent those 25 years in the northern neighborhoods of the city north of Lake Union. I learned soon enough that Seattle was run by a bunch of cronies downtown. The Nordstroms and the Gates’, the Fisher’s and the Bullitts, ran that little soggy town on Puget Sound.

“I NEVER voluntarily paid the taxes those bastards in downtown Seattle forced on us folks out in the neighborhoods. Those downtown pricks took our tax money and built expensive stadiums and rebuilt Pike Place Market all for their own gain, while our streets and schools went to hell, not to mention forced busing.

“I’m glad I left Seattle in 2000. Sure, now I live in crazy Sonoma County, California also paying taxes I don’t voluntarily agree with, but the weather is so much better.”

I’m going to express somewhat differently, and hopefully adding to the understanding, how I think on this matter.

First off, I understand what he’s saying. I’m paying tribute where I am to downstate, and I’m paying tribute to Buffalo via the county. No government ever uses tax money the way that each person prefers. It’s simply impossible. Forced pooling of money followed by officials distributing it can never satisfy every person. This means that no one is fully happy with their taxes. But for reasons cited below, neither do they regard them as 100% theft. The implication of 100% theft is that government is doing absolutely nothing of any value to the body politic. That means that the body may dissolve and return to the state of nature. This happens, but it’s not frequent and/or doesn’t last long. People put up new governments rapidly when the old ones fail. This in itself suggests that taxes are not 100% theft.

Do the sentiments of the writer imply that every town snow plow, every city road, every public building, every village piece of road machinery, etc is fully stolen property, financed by stolen taxes?

Thomas Hobbes says “No”, because for him there is no logical explanation for government other than it’s there because the public under its powers wants it there. The reason is to escape the state of nature in which it’s a war of all against all. Hobbes knows that everyone complains about government and everyone thinks they can do better. He states this clearly, but because we are at each other’s throats without this government, we endure it, he says. We consent to it. Locke isn’t much different. He just limits the government. He emphasizes consent of the governed, as a body or people, not every single one of us.

Unlike Hobbes and even Locke, some libertarians claim all taxes are theft, but that means that government has somehow imposed itself on people without their consent. However, you can readily find many libertarians who encourage people to withdraw their consent, so evidently many libertarians believe that some part of taxes is voluntary. Even Rothbard accepts this idea of consent, while at the same time in contradiction accepting the idea that taxes are theft. You can’t hold both ideas.

If taxes are all coerced, then why should this occur over the entire planet? Why should it happen that over thousands of years governments form that basically rob the body of people? And why do these victims accept this treatment? Libertarians have no explanation other than it’s all via conquest and chicanery. Hobbes and Locke explain taxes as a sovereign right, part of the construction of government’s arising from consent.

The libertarian theory of constant and widespread subjugation of peoples by their governments without their consent is not all that plausible. Why should everyone put up with this all the time? Hobbes’s theory is simple, elegant, logical and reasonable; except that its mechanism of agreeing to get out of the state of nature is hypothetical. It’s not historically observed. What’s observed is the existence of the sovereign, and Hobbes presents an hypothesis of how there can be a sensible reason why the sovereign arises, that reason being the awful conditions in the state of nature that he envisages. And that awful state reasonably exists or would exist because without laws and their being enforced and with a scarcity of goods and without the delineation of private property, mankind will fight over everything. Locke’s state of nature is not so hostile. In it people come to have private property and rights prior to any government.

If one accepts the idea of consent among the body of people, even if not all and even if not 100% support, then the body of people is consenting to taxation and they can’t be stolen or not 100% stolen. Libertarian theory that claims taxes are pure theft is inconsistent with the idea of consent being present that so many libertarians acknowledge.

My view is to go partway. There is no pure theory that explains all of political government and its relations with citizens. Consent is partial. Forming states by conquest is partially true. Taxes as theft are partially the case. Political theories all fail to explain the mixed situation we live in, but each has elements of truth that help us understand our situation.

My theory is that we are partly free and partly unfree. For most of us, it’s too much hassle (too high a cost or price to pay) to fight city hall or to organize our neighbors to fight city hall. Try it, and you’ll find out that they will give you only lukewarm support. When it comes to money and time and labor, they’ll shirk. So those who think taxes are theft are stuck, and that’s the reality. Only if we move can we maybe find a better jurisdiction.

It’s too costly to withdraw consent, whatever that entails. You’re not about to stop paying your tax bill. And you can’t get your neighbors aboard a tax revolt. You can’t even get someone elected who’ll limit the government. Everyone is in situation from which escape is difficult.

The wide acceptance of this predicament means that most people do not regard the taxes as 100% theft. If they did, they’d have a perfect right to dissolve the government and go into the state of nature. They don’t do it typically. There are several reasons. One reason is that they tolerate taxes, and to most people they’re not 100% theft. They get something in return. Otherwise, as suggested above, they’d have zero incentive to refrain from immediately dissolving their government. And it would not be costly to them or their neighbors to do this because they’d mostly all agree that taxes are pure theft. A second reason is that they know they’d face uncertainty over what the next government or anarchy would be like. Their wealth might be destroyed and they’d face new and unknown perils. Better the devil you know than the one you do not. A third reason, which reinforces the uncertainty, is that people’s judgments about laws and politics are all over the map. This is a major reason why the state of nature is brutal and why people will coalesce behind a sovereign. Each man in that state judges what’s necessary for the preservation of his life. Suppose man A fences off an apple tree, but man B judges differently, that the apple tree belongs to him or to man C. If B can judge of A’s means of survival, then A can judge of B’s. Consequently, because judgments vary, the state of nature is a state of war. People accept government in order to preserve a peace and avoid a state of war.

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9:39 am on June 16, 2020