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The Paradise Perspective: Commentary from a Free and Compassionate Alternate Reality Fund Government Like We Fund Apple by Glen Allport Exclusive to STR May 19, 2008 Among
the most common objections to a non-coercive, civil
society is the funding question: "Where would money for X or Y come
from, without taxes?" The obvious answer is that the money would come
from the same place it comes from now: the people. There is no magic
"funding fairy" to supply government with money; all
government money comes from the people, one way or another. Some of this
money comes from user fees, but most of it is obtained in ways that are
serious crimes – except when the government does them. The
first of those crime-like ways
is coercive taxation, including the income tax, sales taxes, and many
other taxes, all of which come down to: "Give us your money, or else.
We'll use the money as we
decide, and you have to pay even if you are appalled at what we do with
the cash." The second
major funding method for the Massive
wealth has been siphoned from
the American people – mostly from the poor and the middle class – to
the power elite and their favored corporations, banks, supporters, and
friends using the income taxation and counterfeiting methods of government
funding since 1913. This coercively-obtained ocean of money has funded not
only those few things that most people think "government should be doing" (roads, for example) but many things that
neither government nor any other group should be allowed to do, such as torture and aggressive war. Only
coercive methods of funding could pry the cash for such things from the
hands of American citizens. People
are hurt even when government involves itself with honorable things that need
doing, such as education
and child protective services, because
the inherent dynamics of coercive funding – and (in many cases) coercive
"services" – ensure inefficiency, corruption, and often much
worse. Coercive government funding even pays for systematic assault
against the citizens themselves – for example, the various
"wars" against your freedom, such as the War on Drugs, the
earlier Prohibition of alcohol, the FDA's long-standing and intensifying
campaign against supplements
and healthy
foods (see also here),
and chilling assaults
on honest free speech. -
- - - - Questions:
How likely is customer satisfaction in any
situation where customers are forced
to pay, even if they don't like the quality of the product, and even
if they don't want the product at all? If Microsoft, Apple Computer, or
your local drug store operated that way (and could get away with it), do
you suppose you would be more satisfied or less
satisfied with their products than you are now?
Honest,
civilized organizations do not obtain their money from customers at
gunpoint. They offer goods or services to those willing to pay. Competition
with other providers plus the customer's freedom to not buy what he/she doesn't want are critical elements for ensuring
customer satisfaction. For the most part, coercive government eliminates both
of those elements, and the results are predictable. Every
real and honest action governments perform can and should
be funded non-coercively, in the same way that Dell and Google and every
other honest organization funds their
business (or charity or whatnot). This would instantly put an end to
government evil and to most of the corruption now rampant in governments
world-wide. Only when the customer can say "no" with impunity do
things work properly. You've
been propagandized your entire life to believe that honest practices
(including non-coercive funding and honest money, i.e., gold) simply won't
work for those special, magical things that only government can do. Time
to wake up, take the red
pill, and see things as they are. Coercion is evil, and pretending
this evil is necessary will keep you enslaved. Government services would
greatly improve if they were competitively and freely offered on the
market – the real and needed
services, including charity, roads, and national defense. Unreal
"services" – including corporate welfare, needless and
aggressive no-win wars, military bases in 130 foreign nations, and
systematic assaults on the people themselves – would disappear. Imagine
the people of this nation having more than a trillion extra dollars every
year to spend on what the people themselves actually want. Only a
move to non-coercive funding for most things the government now does (and
why not for ALL things?) will make that happen. There
is a great deal of material on the topic and the history of voluntary
provision of goods and services, including those services that have since
been taken over by government. Consider, for one example, The
Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society. Love
and freedom are the necessary foundations for any healthy society.
Government coercion (or any coercion) – including coercive funding of
government programs and services – harms both love and freedom, and the
more coercion, the more harm. Coercive funding is useful only to obtain
money for doing things the people do not
want done, including things that actively cause harm. Here, as always,
freedom is the better, safer, healthier choice. *
"Bread is sold in Chicago in large quantities at certain prices per
loaf, 95 per cent of the bread made by the bakers, outside of the
restaurant business, consisting of loaves sold for 5 cents or multiples
thereof, and 85 per cent of such bread being sold for 5 cents a loaf. The
5-cent loaf weighs about 14 ounces when baked . . ." ~
From U.S.
Supreme Court, SCHMIDINGER v. CITY OF CHICAGO, 226 Glen Allport is the author of The Paradise Paradigm: On Creating A World of Compassion, Freedom, and Prosperity and maintains paradise-paradigm.net. This is one in a series of columns on the human condition.
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