Tariffs Are Indeed A Rights Violation

Dear B: Tariffs, like taxes, are a rights violation since money is seized in both cases by governments, against the will of those who pay them. I don’t see either tariffs or taxes, as at all akin to posting a bond, assuring good behavior.

From: B
Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2018 12:08 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Tariffs

Dr Block
I read with interest your column on tariffs today.

Your assertion that tariffs are a “rights violation” was interesting. In what way are tariffs a “right violation”?

Imagine if we did have anarcho capitalism which I think you believe is the optimal system.

How would you indemnify against loss via fraud or simply failure to perform if a foreign entity (however defined under that system) would violate contracts?

I believe most likely there would be a surcharge to cover legal expenses for whichever competing arbitration or legal system would settle the issue.

In fact, tax honesty scholars have researched the issue and the 1040 form actually goes back to old Anglo Saxon laws called the Statutes of the Staple whereby foreign merchants voluntarily (in the sense that they voluntarily wanted to do business in England) signed indemnity forms with the local authorities whereby they pledged properties that could be seized in the event they absconded with money under fraudulent circumstances.

(in 1803 Addington’s Tax in England actually included the same schedules we find on modern 1040 returns but the tax had been expanded into what the English began to call the “Public Office Duty”)

Since we live in a nation state system, the tariff system, perhaps imperfectly, performs this surcharge function.

This says nothing about the debate over protectionism, that is a separate issue. The legal system under the nation state system is certainly imperfect and prone to corruption when not subject to competition and economic, rather than political, calculation.

However, the principle under the “law of nations” is that crossing nation state borders is a privilege, not a right, for either labor, capitol, or goods. This roughly compares to a market system of indemnity in that the US Judicial System and other government agencies are required to be kept by tariff and other indirect taxes in order to settle disputes.

Trump in his crude way says “you can’t have a country without borders” and alas, he is correct. That does not mean that his way of preserving those borders is a sound one.

Since anarcho capitalism is a long ways away, I would think that libertarians would pay more attention to classical liberal tax theory and history. I find it fascinating, myself.

B

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6:54 pm on July 28, 2018