Practical Applications for Voluntary Taxation

Last week I started a series on the concept of voluntary taxation (PT2) and how it could greatly benefit our society.  So far there has been a lot of interest, and I have gotten quite a few requests to explain the logistics of how this theory would work in practice.  For the sake of conversation I’m going to use my imagination and come up with some ideas to describe how this could function.  

However, its important to remember that there are millions of different possibilities, as this is an idea for a free society, and in a free society the culture would differ between areas to accommodate the unique needs that people from different geographical regions will naturally have.

In a free society with voluntary taxation, there could be various different community groups that would get together to discuss what issues were important to the society overall.  These meetings could be open to everyone and may or may not be mediated.  They may act as brainstorming sessions where everyone was able to present their suggestions on what sorts of programs would be beneficial to society.  Any suggestions would be tested against the non-aggression principle to ensure that this money was not used for nefarious purposes. Modern communication technology and Internet capabilities would help to organize these meetings, and they could take place at the individuals convenience.  This could work sort of the same way a message board does, although I’m sure it would be far more complicated, but still you get the idea.

There could most likely be some basic programs that were essential to life that would always be receiving donations, and be available to everyone in the community, even those who did not donate for whatever reason.  Since these areas were so vital to life, they would naturally always get the funding they needed because people pay without hesitation when they are actually getting something of value.  For example, water treatment plants, fire fighters, or community gardens would probably be something that most would support through donations if their forced tax dollars were freed up.

Beyond these basic necessities, a myriad of secondary programs and services from transportation or internet, to space exploration and the like would also be accepting voluntary donations from the community.  Remember also that this would be so cheap in comparison to the prices that we see today on public projects, as a result of the lack of overhead and enforcement costs which inflate all bureaucratic budgets.  

If you’re not convinced that people would voluntary donate knowing that others may not, go back and take a look at my first article on voluntary taxation, or my thoughts on how our perception of human nature is a self-fulfilling prophecy.    

In response to my previous articles I got a few questions about what would happen if a program was halted halfway through because people decided to stop funding it.  This problem can be easily solved, but it is important to mention that this is something that happens quite often in our current system, even with the guaranteed stream of revenue that coercive taxation offers.  So even if this problem did present itself under a system of voluntary taxation, we certainly wouldn’t be going backward. All programs would have to stand on the merits of services rendered.

It is unbelievably common for Western governments to start popular programs during election years to gain public support, then later pull the plug so the funds can be used for wars or bailouts.  This kind of manipulative behavior takes place all the time.  However, when there is a project that has enough support, it will usually receive sufficient donations from individuals, businesses and charity organizations to keep the program operating. 

We saw this in the US just this past year, when the government pulled the plug on funding for the SETI space program in the midst of a half dozen wars and major austerity measures.  This was a program that many people still wanted despite the government’s decision to cut funding.  In fact, they wanted it around so badly that over 2,400 different donations were received in a single week, easily surpassing their goal of $200,000.

Now if we think about this same problem presenting itself in the free society that we are discussing, we can easily assume that it can be solved in a similar fashion.  Except this time around, there will be far less overhead and people will have far more to give to the cause, thus ensuring a greater success rate than we see today with social projects.  If people stopped contributing to a certain program, that program would put out word to its supporters, much like SETI did, to raise the extra funds needed to carry on the project.

This is the wonderful thing about how our species self-organizes and uses their intelligence and resources to solve problems that they are presented with.  The kind of governments that we have today, that collect money by making threats of violence, and then use that money for their own purposes, are a sort of hideous middleman that inflates the costs of solving social problems — which usually can’t be solved by bloated government force.  

Another very basic example that is often brought up is “what about roads?”  Many people have this simplistic idea that the government builds the roads.  However, this statement is not entirely accurate.  What the government really does is collects money from private citizens under the threat of violence, then uses that money to employ those very same citizens to build infrastructure that they could have built themselves for less if they just kept their money and got together with their neighbors.  In other words, if they just cut out the middle man.

While we are on the subject of roads, there was a perfect example of this very situation that occurred a few years back on Hawaii’s Kauai Island, when private citizens performed $4 million road repair job For Free in 8 Days.  When a need arises in a community, people naturally come together and take care of what needs to be done; they don’t need someone with a gun in their face telling them how to do it.  

This is a very interesting and complicated topic that I will definitely be revisiting often in the future.  For our species to have any chance on this earth, we must start thinking about more peaceful ways of going about things, and stop justifying the use of violence in all circumstances — even soft-core violence like legislation, taxation and indoctrination.