Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the governments of the world have an obligation to be responsible with the money they take from us at gunpoint. The justification for taxation is that it funds public goods that we need but are otherwise difficult to fund. That’s a different argument from they own us, therefore everything we own and create is automatically theirs. If the first argument is true, then those who take our money have a responsibility to spend it wisely and not waste our hard earned money. If the second is true, then it matters not how they spend it… because it was theirs all along. Nevertheless, the governments of the world are legitimized by the first argument but seem to believe the second. States can be moralist on the outside but legalist on the inside. They claim legitimacy but act illegitimately.
People will claim taxes are voluntary but I would point out that if you don’t pay your taxes, eventually armed men will show up at your door. When an armed man uses the government’s monopoly on violence, that is coercion through intimidation. It isn’t voluntary. The rationalization is that if someone stopped paying taxes then everyone would stop, and the government would go bankrupt. Then all the important goods government provides would go away. Roads would crumble, courts would close, and dams would collapse if not for government. These and many other public goods are funded by government. That’s why they come to your door and kick it down if necessary. It must be done to protect the funding for those public goods.
The use of violence to fund public goods carries with it obligations. One is that the money taken is not wasted. This is because every penny of waste comes directly out of the funds for those public goods. If public goods are so important they justify violence against the citizenry, then they are too important to defund for waste. That should seem obvious. Moreover, to make up next year for the funds diverted from public goods to waste requires that additional funds must be extracted from the people. Each round increasing the waste and decreasing the money available for public goods. This is clearly a moral failing. Wasting money that one is obliged to use efficiently is an ethical failure that’s disqualifying. In a system that is indifferent to its citizens, though, it’s not.
In a system that presupposes we are slaves to the state the amount of waste is irrelevant. The money is the State’s the moment it’s created. If they allow us to keep some, it’s not because that money is ours but because those who run the state decided to allow us to have some. In this scenario, all money that is not taxed is welfare. So the state can justly use violence all it wants to recover its property. This is the logic behind systems that hold the state as supreme and the citizen as slave of the state. Shang Yang the legalist followed this line of reasoning. It’s not a fringe idea, it’s been mainstream since Qin conquered the Warring States and established China. Then Qin was overthrown and legalism was replaced with bastardized Moralism. It was Confucian on the outside and legalist on the inside.
The consensus since the Enlightenment is that the people have sovereignty. This is how modern states claim legitimacy. States that believe this are legitimate. They will go to great lengths to prevent waste. States that believe we are their property, however, will do the opposite. Such states will ruthlessly extract from the taxpayer and “compassionately” waste it. Profligate spending leading to unsustainable deficits shows that a state is at least indifferent to our plight. Such a state is illegitimate by Enlightenment standards. States deserve reciprocal attribution. Attribute to the state as it attributes to us. States deserve the same loyalty they give citizens. Moreover, we must be on the lookout for states that are moralist on the outside but legalist on the inside.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
