Doug: That saying about death and taxes is both evil and stupid; it’s a soul-destroying and mind-destroying perversion of reality. It’s evil, because it makes people reflexively accept the worst things in the world as permanent and inevitable. As for death, technology is actively advancing to vanquish it. Who knows how far medicine, biotech, and nanotech can delay the onset of death? And taxes are, at best, an artifact of a primitive feudal world; they’re actually no longer necessary in an advanced, free-market civilization.
People also once thought the world was flat, that bathing was unhealthy, and that there was such a thing as the divine right of kings. Many things “everyone knows” just aren’t so, and this is one of those. A government – for those “practical” people who think they need one – that stuck to the basic core functions of police and courts to defend people against force and fraud and a military to defend against invasion, would cost a tiny, tiny fraction of what today’s government costs, and that could be funded in any number of ways that essentially boil down to charging for services.
As it is now, the average US taxpayer probably works half of the year just to pay direct and indirect taxes. That doesn’t even count the cost of businesses destroyed by regulation and lives lost to slow approval of new treatments by regulators, or a million other ways governments burden, obstruct, and harass people.
L: I just looked, and Tax Freedom Day this year is April 17.
Doug: That means that all the work the average guy does until April 17 goes to pay for the government that failed to protect him on September 11, 2001, failed to protect him from the crash of 2008, and continues failing him every day. We pay for an organization bent on doing not just the wrong things, but the exact opposite of the right things in economics, foreign policy, and everything else we’ve talked about in all our conversations. It’s rather perverse that Emancipation Day – the day the first slaves in the US were freed in the District of Columbia in 1862 – is April 16. But what is a slave? He’s someone who is deprived by force of the fruits of his labor. Sound familiar? I disapprove of slavery, in any form – including its current form.
However, Tax Freedom Day is an incomplete way of looking at things. What’s the cost to business forced to install equipment to meet government regulations? That’s not paid as a tax, but it’s a serious burden. There’s something called Cost of Government Day that’s a somewhat more inclusive estimate of the burden the state imposes on the average guy…
L: I just looked for that too and don’t see that a date for 2012 has been announced yet; but Cost of Government Day for 2011 was August 12. According to that estimate, the average US taxpayer slaved away for about two-thirds of the year to pay for the state and got to keep only a third of the fruit of his labor for his own benefit and improvement.
Doug: That may be a more accurate way of looking at the burden of government the average guy has to bear, but it still doesn’t even begin to address what economists call “opportunity cost.” Basically, I don’t just look at what the state we have costs us in cash, but in terms of the innovation and growth we don’t have because of government policies, laws, and regulations. This covers everything from new medicines to all sorts of new technologies to different forms of social and business organizations to the cleaner intellectual atmosphere I think we’d have without government propaganda machines cluttering it up.
I don’t believe in utopia, but I do believe our world could be far freer, healthier, and happier than it is today – without any divine intervention, magic, or changes in the laws of physics. Just a different path, every bit as possible as the one we’ve taken to where we are today.
L: As in the alternative reality L. Neil Smith wrote about in his book The Probability Broach?
Doug: At least as far as the humans in that story go, yes, it’s a good illustration of how much more advanced the world might be, based on a different turn of events.
Back in this world, I think that without any major differences in technological development and without assuming that people would spontaneously become angels, the average standard of living worldwide would be much higher if… Well, there are lots of turning points, some of which we’ve discussed. Just in the 20th century, things would be very different if America had stayed out of WWI, or had not ratified the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, or had not elected FDR.
L: Okay, but those things did happen, and we live in the world we have today – the one you call a prison planet. How should people try to do what’s right in such a world without ending up in jail?
Doug: First, it’s important to think about what’s actually possible, because people will not even try to reach for what they are sure is impossible. The world needs idealists to challenge us all to aim higher… including idealists willing to go to jail for what they believe in, like Thoreau. But even he said that while he encouraged all people to disobey unjust laws, he wouldn’t ask those who support families to get themselves locked up and leave their families destitute.
So my take is as we started out saying: It is both ethically and practically imperative to starve the beast. The less cooperation of any sort we give the state – but especially the less money we give it – the less mischief it can get into. We’re unlikely to get politicians to vote for getting the state off our backs, out of our pocketbooks, out of our bedrooms, and out of other people’s countries as a matter of principle, but we could see the state get out of places it doesn’t belong simply for lack of funds. And if everybody treated minions of the state with the contempt they deserve, most of them would quit and be forced to find productive work. As Gandhi showed us, civil disobedience can not only be an ethical choice, but a very powerful force for change.
L: Any specific advice?
Doug: Get a good accountant, take every deduction you can, and look for ways to legally reduce your tax burden. For example, our readers should know that charitable contributions in the US get deducted after the alternative minimum tax wipes out your other deductions. That means that a substantial fraction of every dollar you give a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit does not go to the federal government.
Now, as you know, I don’t believe in charity, at least not in the institutional sense, but wasting money on charities is far, far better than giving it to the government to use bombing innocents and creating enemies for generations to come. And if that charity happens to be something like the Institute for Justice, the Fully Informed Jury Association, or any of the other libertarian think tanks dedicated to reducing the size and scope of government, you get to help fight the beast and starve it at the same time.
L: I do my economics and entrepreneurship camps in Eastern Europe under the auspices of the International Society for Individual Liberty – of which I should disclose that I am a director. I have to admit that it pleases me greatly to see funds that would have gone into making bombs to drop on foreigners and hiring more goons in uniform to oppress people at home redirected to something I consider constructive.
But what about the international diversification question: can that help reduce your tax burden back home?
