From Force to Persuasion

A couple of years ago I was chatting with a neighbor about the rolling reassessment that had recently swept though our part of town. We both felt our assessments had risen disproportionately in comparison with similar homes in our area. After a few minutes of grumbling the man shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “Taxes are the price you pay for civilized society,” he said.

With all due respect to my neighbor and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who originally stated this idea, I strongly disagree. It seems to me taxes are the price we pay for uncivilized society.

This is true on two levels and on the surface is easy to see. Since many tax dollars are spent on law enforcement, courts and national defense we can see a direct correlation between uncivilized behavior and the use of tax money.

But at a deeper level, anti-social behavior is the justification of state-involvement in just about every aspect of modern life. When people fail to treat themselves, their family members, their neighbors or communities with kindness and respect the state has the opening it needs to respond with force. If we are to consider ourselves a civilized society we need to rely on persuasion rather than force in order to achieve the social goals we aspire to.

Force, in the form of new laws and programs, is all too often the first resort amongst modern lawmakers. Increasingly they create legislation “for our own good” that compels certain personal behaviors in which they really should not be involved. Dietary and seatbelt laws are good examples of this controlling behavior. In these cases any damage is inflicted mainly on the person engaging in the undesirable behavior yet the government has stepped in to protect him from himself.

Unfortunately, this attitude has permeated society to the point where whenever we consider one behavior to be superior to another we automatically turn to the government to compel our fellow citizens to adopt this preferred conduct. The expression, “there ought to be a law” is far too often said in more than a little seriousness.

Consider a discussion I was recently involved in. The topic was recycling and one of the people in the group declared “I think it should be mandatory.”

Let’s slow down and think about what that means. Does she really want to give the government power to go through garbage in search of violations? Does she really want to make a criminal out of the harried mother who throws out a baby food jar rather than preparing it for the recycling bin, or the senior citizen who quite reasonably fears cutting himself on the sharp and jagged edge of the cat food can lid? Of course she does not mean all this but ultimately this is what law does – it makes certain behaviors illegal and therefore subject to the force embodied in government.

It is a mistake to believe that because something is legal it is morally good or because something is illegal it is morally bad. Some laws are morally reprehensible, such as many of the laws existent in Nazi Germany, Communist Russia or even the United States during some eras. Most laws are morally neutral and represent the triumph of one group over another in gaining control of fellow citizens.

Liberty consists of voluntary interactions between individuals and this is perhaps best represented by commerce. The unwarranted vilification of the free market system notwithstanding, for the most part we are not forced to participate in commercial transactions but participate willingly. A sad exception to this is the recently enacted health care legislation, which will compel persons who do not wish to purchase health insurance to buy government-approved policies. This intrusion into the free market by a player as large and powerful as the federal government is sure to wreak havoc on the market as well as set a dangerous precedent in control of a large sector of the economy.

Lawmakers demonstrate a low opinion of us every time they pass a law to protect us from ourselves. Unfortunately, far too many of us have earned their scorn. It is probably not coincidental that government has taken upon itself the role of moral arbiter at same time social institutions such as churches are losing influence among us. If we are to be a free society we as individuals need to seek out and support the institutions that persuade and inspire people to regulate their own behavior and help them aspire to higher standards of human thought and action.

Regulating human behavior through coercive laws addresses outward symptoms rather than root causes and weakens our ability to self-regulate. Persuasion rather than compulsion teaches us to take responsibility for our own behavior and ultimately strengthens society.

Tour Report

The We Can’t Afford It Tour is approaching it’s last two stops. So far it has been a great success and very well received by the public. Montpelier has an attendance of nine people and Burlington had twenty-two. Both crowds were active and engaged. With the Burlington stop, we shot through the 100 attendees goal I set for the tour with a few to spare.

In Montpelier, Andy Potter of WCAX came to the meeting to report on the proceedings. He gave us a fair hearing and report. In Burlington, our meeting was to have ended exactly at 2 pm so that a meeting of Veterans for Peace could hold their regularly scheduled meeting in the same space. Interestingly enough, several members of the latter organization arrived early and sat in for the tail end of the presentation. After our meeting ended, a couple of members of the other organization approached me and complimented our efforts and message of citizen activism.
As usual, both of the meetings resulted in people hanging around for at least an hour talking amongst themselves. Some for socializing, some for information/discussion, and some for organizing future efforts. Very few left those meeting not energized to do more and with the feeling that they were no longer alone in their beliefs.

At one point in the Burlington Meeting, I was challenged by an audience member that what I was talking about was “Civic 101” and that I wasn’t offering an answer to the incredible problems pointed out in Tom Licata’s presentation. My reply was three-fold: 1) a majority of the public (including those in liberty movement) need to be reminded that citizenship is not just voting and paying taxes; 2) that the situation we are in is due to people leaving the problem of governance to other “professionals”; and 3) there is no silver bullet, one candidate, or one law that will cure all of the evils we face. It requires the constant vigilance and hard work of all citizens to turn the tide.

With Rutland (April 13th) and Saint Johnsbury (April 24th) to go, Tom and I hope to end the tour strongly. But even as we see the light at the end of the tunnel, a potential new stop or two could be in the making in either Colchester or Essex. So stay tuned.

A humble proposal by J Kennedy

I was asked by a member, J. Kennedy, to post an article discussing his idea. I am happy to oblige.

Congress and the Federal Reserve have approved trillions to bail out privileged financiers and manufacturers for reasons ranging from incompetence to fraud, and doing so, they have disregarded overwhelming public disapproval.

Dr. Paul's bill in congress to audit the Federal Reserve (HR 1207) and Senator Sanders' companion bill in the Senate (S 604) address a big part of the problem, Federal Reserve secrecy and its consequent licence. Auditing the Federal Reserve would likely reveal accounting and investment practices to shame the Mafia, but the audit campaign remains aloof from plain folks. Without pressure from the little guy, the market value of the audit bills cannot compete with the buying power of big finance on the congressional trading floor.

Occasionally, however, majorities share the frustrations of rebels, and now is one of those momentous times. The majority is angered over presumptuous looting by their overseers, hence, receptive to revolutionary ideas. Radical solutions like abolishing the Federal Reserve Bank and the Internal Revenue Service hold more promise than usual, but the average Joe trembles at the prospect of confronting sacred idols of public adoration and submission. To challenge these venerable relics in the past was to banish apostates to political deserts and social caverns. The boldest tax heretics have wound up in the hoosegow.

Lone taxpayers need not, however, step into the path of an onrushing IRS Freightliner. It is not recommended for patriots to stop paying income taxes a la Irwin Schiff on the less than thin chance that the courts would enforce the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. Few of them would relish sharing a prison cell with the quixotic old tax warrior.
For any chance of success, a new strategy must be delicate, uncomplicated, and popular. Ordinary workers will not respond to confusing intellectual appeals. Rather, they answer pleas of the heart and belly. On that front, suspending income taxes briefly, say for one year, would attack the foundation which permits a misguided government to burden average Americans improperly, to wit, obedient taxpayer submission. If that could be done in a way that would not invite immediate IRS audits, it would reward taxpayers to cease their docility. For their hearts it creates an opportunity to get even for having to bankroll the bungling and shady dealing of politically connected tycoons.

Strangely, income tax suspension is quite possible in congress at this auspicious moment, because bluntly, it can buy many more votes than bailouts and subsidies can buy back home in congressional elections. Is there any question that the average taxpayer would favor keeping thousands in his or her own earnings? Safety in numbers and anonymity would protect each voter from greedy IRS clutches. Showing exploited subjects how to chastise their overlords and peacefully reward themselves in the bargain can generate mass support. The largest interest group of all is the one that pays for all the rest. As such, it is strange they have not effectively hawked their votes in the congressional marketplace. It might be an amusing change of pace for the goats to nudge their masters as they stoop to fill the hog trough.

As for whence the funding for such a tax vacation, need taxpayers be any more concerned than any of the tax consumers? It is not the fault of tax mules that tax hogs fell for the bogus sales pitch by the brokers of forced labor on the campaign trail. Nor is it puzzling that the brokers and their enforcers always reserve the biggest cut for themselves. What matters is that the public end the official presumption of tax submission to finance any government scheme no matter how unsound, impractical, or dishonest.

A one year halt to withholding would at once line the pockets of average citizens, stimulate the economy, and turn the tables on the powerful. Consumption of goods and services would increase widely, immediately, and relentlessly; which in turn would boost production and employment. More deposits in neighborhood banks would increase credit as well throughout the economy all the way up to the big banks, but from the bottom up, not the top down. The banks would get their bailouts, but only after the people got theirs.

The big bank bailouts have encouraged bad investment by removing the risk and dumping the losses on taxpayers. The latter have a strong incentive to avoid high risk investments, for they are limited to using only their own earnings. That is why investing in the people by lifting taxes for a while would ensure a much more robust and steady recovery. It would also bolster bank assets indirectly in a way that would curb their appetite for gambling, because the money would come to them, not as political favors, but when they earn it in fair competition.

There would be tremendous savings in compliance and enforcement costs. Equally important, power would spread out from the center, creating less dependence on Washington and improving security by disbursing influence away from one exalted power center. That would make it difficult, if not impossible for determined terrorists obsessed with decapitation to cripple the nation in one stroke, something quite possible now.

Greater trade and credit would prevent the need for future bailouts. Voluntary alternatives to empire, war, and forced redistribution might even gain cachet, and social entrepreneurs could better afford to initiate them. Those who join a campaign to suspend the income tax should, therefore, resolve to replace forced public assistance with their own investment in voluntary development leveraged with social market ingenuity.

An organized push to defer income taxes would show the people at once how to reward themselves and harness their so-called government servants, for it would strengthen the political connection to the government of the people who finance it, not as slaves, but as masters.
A drive to postpone income taxes would also augment the move in congress to audit the Federal Reserve. It would attack the same unrestrained banking power from a popular angle with very effective incentives. Without the income tax to pay interest on the national debt, the government is bankrupt and must seek alternatives to credit expansion, like reducing the empire, ending wars, downsizing corporate welfare, and selling uncompetitive, subsidized, and protected government businesses. That would weaken its ability to promote and enrich a financial oligarchy over the very people who pay for it. It might even rekindle interest in the Liberty Amendment.

There is no longer an excuse for taxpayers to whine about bailouts, subsidies, and protections for favorites when they have a way to end them post-haste. Nor is there any need to accept a long, slow recovery designed by a bank bought government when grass roots action can rejuvenate the economy sooner on sounder ground and reestablish who rules the roost.

Just as auditing the Fed might lead to abolishing it, so also might stopping income taxes briefly lead to ending them for good. Both goals are quite possible down the road, and a vigorous push for each will strengthen the drive for the other.

A petition can get the ball rolling and educate the public. Here is an idea for one that could disturb the peace in congress for the coming elections.

1. Whereas the federal government obligates citizen taxpayers to fund at great loss in lives and dollars two aggressive foreign wars without congress declaring war as prescribed by the Constitution;

2. Whereas the federal government forces citizen taxpayers to support a huge empire with over 700 military bases in foreign lands and occupation armies in Western Europe, Japan, and Korea over half a century after hostilities have ceased;

3. Whereas the federal government coerces citizen taxpayers to bail out, subsidize, and protect unsound banks and corporations at great moral hazard and economic cost;

4. Whereas the federal government makes citizen taxpayers pay for economic stimulus programs that benefit corporate, labor, and bureaucratic elites at a net loss to the general economy;

5. Whereas the federal government compels citizen taxpayers to subsidise favored recipient, bureaucratic, professional, and corporate interests;

6. Whereas a citizen taxpayer bailout would stimulate the economy at its foundation of depositors, consumers, social entrepreneurs, investors, and job creators;
We the citizens of the United States petition congress to sponsor a bill to suspend the federal income tax for one year.

The general public interest may only come about fairly when citizens choose freely how to use their own earnings. That use would be superior to one in which the state forces wages away from workers to benefit someone else, whether it be for those providing the compulsion service, corporatists, cooperative special interests, or the initiators of wars. That abuse attempts passing backward from wrong to right. Buying taxpayer votes with the fruits of their own labor is morally better than buying other people's votes with it. We cannot build a moral world on an immoral foundation.

The needs of the individual vs. the demands of the State

Each day I am buried under by a wave of emails, hyperlinks, and articles from news sites which make a variety of claims regarding the current administration, or to be more accurate President Obama. These items filling my email and overwhelming my net-surfing activities can be divided into two camps: either its “Obama is taking us into a socialist hell” or “Obama is a sell out to the Corporations”. Even discussing the current state of the nation with friends and relatives, I find a similar split. My friends on the right think Obama is aiming for socialism. My friends on the left think Obama is a sell-out to the Kleptocracy.

Both sides have evidence to support themselves. Clearly the current policy decisions of the Obama Administration is focused on expanding the size and scope of government in our lives and communities. From health care, the economy, and the usurpation of powers usually held by states, communities, and individuals, one can clearly see the road toward serfdom that we are heading down.

However, looking at what has been the focus of his efforts, corporate bailouts, a healthcare bill that is little more than corporate welfare, on-going involvement in the war and empire building, renewing the Orwellian “Patriot Act”, and continuing Bush’s policies on torture, rendition, and unlimited detentions, it can be well said that Obama’s policies fly in the face of traditional leftist politics and are more in line with the policies of the neo-cons of late. Therefore, it appears that neither side is happy with the current state of this nation nor should they be. In other words, they are both right and wrong.

What compounds their errors is the current state of politics. Today we practice the politics of personality. We create or have had created for us personifications of what is right and wrong with our country. We attach our hopes, dreams, fears, and hatreds upon a single individual. Our discourses about politics are about the man or woman, their personal problems, personalities, and perceived goals. They became and now are simply empty vessels in which we pour our hopes and fears about the world around us. Almost literally “empty suits”, our modern leadership is more the function of what they represent to us than who they represent in reality. However, this world of appearances serves only to hide the true, underlying problem that faces us as a nation, the on-going battle between the needs of the individual and the demands of the State.

I think Obama, Bush, and the whole den of thieves in Washington (and Montpelier) are symptoms of a larger problem, Statism. Statism is the belief that government is the source of all answers and wealth. Statist hold that government is a surrogate for society, or is in fact society. They believe that whatever evil is visited upon the people of this nation can be cured by state action and only state action. In their world, people are inherently selfish, lack initiative, and are uninvolved in their community. They believe that nothing substantial or sustained can be done without the initial impulse from government and the continued use of “benign” coercion that is the state.

This very thought process is a cancer on the body politic and a greater danger than any act of any individual regardless of position or power. Whether it be Statism in the form of a Socialist Democracy or Fascist Empire, both are destructive of individual liberty, free markets and peace.

We, the citizens of this State and Nation, must break through the veneer created by the politics of personality. We must shake off the easy answers and immediate sense of gratification that the politics of “gotcha” gives us. We must re-affirm in ourselves and ultimately in our communities the appropriate relationships between citizens, community, society and government. What is that relationship?
The citizen must reassert his authority over his government and be responsible for it, not simply act the role of supplicant and be a victim of it. They must understand that they are part of a community and step up when that community needs them. They must see that society is more than governmental coercion but an interaction of free people coming together spontaneously to accomplish great and small ends. We must all see that society is something outside of government and a greater tool to address the needs of its citizens. It is greater because it is voluntary and by nature not coercive. We must allow ourselves to freely create community, to allow people of similar interests and hopes to pool there resources, explore their interests, and achieve their hopes without government intruding upon that community with regulations and restrictions. Finally, we must realistically see government as a necessary evil, an imperfect tool, which has an important but limited role to play. It’s role can be summarized as providing the framework in which society, community, and the individual work, play, and live.

As long as we continue to focus on the politics of personality, we will continue to accept the false paradigm that to correct our current course requires only the election of the “right person”. The “right person” is our knight in shining armor who will rescue us from the evils of the day. He or she will “change the atmosphere in Washington” and make a “kinder and gentler nation”. They will do the right thing because they are good people. Yet, having lived through eleven presidential elections, I have yet to see this promised land and only more of the status quo. We must reject this form of politics, cut to the true heart of the matter, and begin to debate, educate, discuss and understand the real struggle before us.
Replacing one set of statists for another will not significantly change our current circumstances. However, by creating a political atmosphere which fosters candidates that are willing to fight for the individual; by demanding an accounting from our elected officials for their actions against our liberties, our communities, our future; by not playing the game of personalities; by stripping the venire that obstructs our view and looking at the true state of things we can effect the real, necessary, and obvious change that we all know is wanted, needed, and possible. If we exert all of the energy now on display by that tsunami of electronic discourse toward the real danger before us, it will only be a question of time before real change can occur.