Can we justify taxation?

One of my invariably aimless political pieces.

Those of an economically right-wing bend, libertarians by definition, will often argue against taxation. They argue that the very idea of taxation is robbery. Not just robbery. But robbery under the threat of violence. As this ‘must’ be evil, government must be evil too as it is an institution that survives on the evil practice of taxation.

The classic analogy would be the following hypothetical situation. Alex, a young father, wants to send his child to school. School, in Hypothetical Land, is not free. The problem is that Alex doesn’t have enough money to afford the schooling. So he asks his two wealthy friends Ben and Charlie to chip in a bit of money to help out. Ben voluntarily offers some money but Charlie refuses to give up any of his money. Despite arguing that an education would be a good and worthy investment Charlie will not give in. Alex gets Ben involved and the two of then agree that Charlie should pay up, essentially forming a 2 to 1 majority. Still Charlie refuses. Alex and Ben ask more of their friends: Daryl; Ernest; Friedrich; Glenn. All unanimously agree that he should pay but still Charlie remains steadfast. Taking the situation in to their own hands the majority elects to extract the money from Charlie by force. This, some would argue, is equivalent to taxation in the real world. Because Charlie’s liberty has been taken away from him and his right to property has been violently revoked it can be argued that Charlie was robbed and that the ‘taxation’ was immoral.

Usually the analogy ends here. Job done. Villain unmasked. The butler did it. However, I think it’s necessary to look beyond the initial injustice. What happens next? When a person is robbed in the real world they often attempt to reclaim their property. However, we can’t just force poor Charlie to defend his property from villains and scoundrels alone. Unless your ideal political system is that of a barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland where we must kill or be killed. Assuming we want to maintain some semblance of civilisation Charlie might get some people to help him, such as his six friends Patrick, Oliver, Lenny, Isaac, Carl and Egbert. The POLICE, as they shall be abbreviated to, will allow justice to finally be served, at a price. But of course we can’t just have hundreds of random mercenary groups running about the place. So there will need to be only one central POLICE group allowed to avoid the wasteland scenario re-emerging. But they are still expensive so they will need to be payed for. I would argue that forcing each victim to pay for their own help is against the point of the entire POLICE system. Indeed, in economic terms, they form a public good in the sense that they provide a deterrence from which we can all benefit. I therefore think that we can argue that all citizens should contribute towards this institute. However, in this case it would not even be immoral to forcibly take payment for this institute because without this central system of protection a person’s right to own property is compromised. In practical terms society would become survival of the fittest as vulnerable people would lose any way of owning property. That is why, I believe, the right to own property is conditional of the existence of a central organisation for protecting these rights. A government.

Obviously my argument isn’t perfect and I’m sure there are theories of anarcho capitalism that account for everything I’ve mentioned. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never checked. However, maybe in the future I will actually do some research into the topic for a follow-up post. Isn’t that a novel idea: research. Well hopefully for now you enjoyed reading my half-formed sentiments and chains of reasoning as far as possible. I certainly find it to be a useful exercise to write things out like this. It’s certainly helped me to work out my ideas and even change a few mistaken beliefs I had previously held. But I’ve been writing for a while and I think now might be a good point to pause. That’s all folks.

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