Voluntary Taxation or No Social Contract

Last week, I put together an article about the concept of voluntary taxation.  I received a lot of good feedback for my take on a very old topic and a lot of people really understood the logic of the proposal and said that it made a lot of sense.

However, as expected, there were a few people who were apprehensive about this idea and claimed that it would not work.  Although when people said that it wouldn’t work, they weren’t saying that it was a bad idea or that it wasn’t a valid concept, but they were merely stating that it would not work in the United States of America or with the other types of governments that we see in the world today.

This misunderstanding was so common that I felt it was valuable to revisit this topic and make some important points that were not emphasized enough in my last article.  First of all, the skeptics are 100% correct in saying that this would not work with the kind of government we have today.

In my last article I said “if taxes were voluntary, people would not pay if they did not like what the government was doing with their money, thus either effectively collapsing a dictatorship or forcing the government to change their behavior, and put public funding into programs that were actually beneficial for society”.

Now, the United States along with just about every single government on the face of the earth is a dictatorship; therefore of course they would collapse under a system of voluntary taxation, that’s exactly the point!

This concept is designed for a free society, it is not intended to be used by a monopolized gang that claims ownership over people, which is all that today’s governments are.  Beings that a free society has not existed in recent memory, saying that this concept won’t work with our government is kind of like saying that your computer won’t play music because it doesn’t have an 8-track deck.

If we want to achieve peace and freedom, then we must start talking about ideas that will bring us peace and freedom.  We cannot limit ourselves by applying every idea to our current way of life, as this will result in failed attempts to save a dying system that has no hope of bringing humanity any value.

If you are still uncomfortable with this idea, and prefer that our civilizations problems be solved with violence instead of peaceful and voluntary interactions, then that is absolutely fine.  You are completely free to accept the status quo.  However, if you are claiming that most people wouldn’t pay your government taxes if they weren’t forced to, then you are admitting that most people don’t approve of their government.  If the majority of the people within a society disapprove of the fact that their lives are being managed, then you live in a dictatorship.  

Therefore, if you live under a system of coercive taxation then guess what? You live in a dictatorship.  There is no social contract, no consent of the governed, you live in a society where people are forced to do things and problems are solved by violence.

So if you don’t like the idea of voluntary taxation, that’s fine; but we must logically determine that if taxation is forced then there is no consent of the governed.  In other words, we will not live in a free society until taxation is voluntary.  If you feel that forced associations and dictatorships are superior to voluntary taxation and peaceful associations then that’s fine too, but please, let’s be honest about it.

Don’t paint a dismal picture of human nature and say that this won’t work because your neighbors are such freeloaders that they will take advantage of you, or that you are such a freeloader that you will take advantage of your neighbors.  Tell the truth, say that you believe a system of forced associations makes you feel more comfortable and safe because that’s what you see in the world today, and we can continue the discussion from there.

This is an extremely complicated topic which will take a lot more discussion and a lot more sifting through.  This concept, along with non-aggression principles and a universal code of ethics are so important to the cause of freedom that I will be constantly returning to all of these ideas for further development and discussion.