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June 29, 2005
The Power to Destroy
Here is an excellent piece by Michael S. Rozeff on the destructive power of taxation. Rozeff describes nine incentives, every one of them perverse, that rulers have when they possess the power to tax their subjects.
One interesting subject discussed is asset forfeiture, as follows:
Consider, for example, the Crown's provision of justice in medieval England. Convicted felons were typically hanged and their goods forfeited to the Crown, although the King might pardon a felon who agreed to serve in the Royal army. This incentive structure motivated the Crown to convict felons, because for each conviction the payment was either the felon's property or use of the felon as a soldier (the incentives). The Crown faced disincentives too, not only out-of-pocket costs but also disloyalty, disaffection, loss of reputation and resentment, if it wrongly convicted innocent people of felonies.
Under this incentive structure, the Crown likely displays a marked enthusiasm for arresting and convicting felons (and perhaps non-felons). The incentive structure also induces the Crown to change the laws so as to define more crimes as felonies. If this dynamic sounds similar to the case of police and municipalities in the United States benefiting from the seizure and forfeiture of goods and the resulting expansion of crimes subject to seizure and forfeiture, that is because it is.
Rozeff concludes:
Purposeful choice in the realm of voluntary behavior among ordinary people tends to improve life. Purposeful choice among rulers tends to destroy life, because rulers act on their wants, not those of taxpayers.
John Marshall in 1819 wrote that "The power to tax involves the power to destroy". Even if we ignore the moral argument that taxes are theft and ignore the consequentialist arguments that taxes hamper the pursuit of happiness and lower economic efficiency, the power to tax has numerous harmful incentives that indeed encourage destruction in many ways.
The bottom line is this. Place no hope of betterment in changing the party or man in office, for so long as rulers possess the power to tax, they will use that mechanism of state to the detriment of its subjects. The power to tax provides the serpent of state with its victims, us. Taxes feed the monster whose growth spreads venom everywhere. Taxes with or without representation are evil, ever fostering harm and destruction. If we are wise, we will defang the beast by ending its power to tax.
That, of course, would not just defang but kill the beast, which is A-OK by me.
Posted by Mike Tennant at June 29, 2005 03:34 PM
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