Taxation and Theft

         Libertarians like to call taxation theft. 
         They like to call it theft because they believe, on the one hand, that when a government uses their money for purposes to which they object that government is stealing.  On the other hand, they do so because they believe that taking money from someone under threat of penalty or force (as the IRS clearly does) is extortion.   
         They are wrong.
         The Libertarians’ first error is arbitrarily to separate the government of the United States from its citizens and then to pit the one against the other.  Even though in our system of self-government those who govern and those who are governed are the same, the Libertarians divide the will of the elected from the will of the electorate.  They mistakenly assume that the public policy decisions conceived and executed under the constraints of a constitutionally limited self-government, on the one hand, and the will of the citizens who established and who maintain that government, on the other hand, are different things.  This false dichotomy denies the truth of Lincoln’s claim that ours is indeed a government of, by, and for the people.  The Libertarian taxonomy in this regard is not “we,” but “us” and “them.”   
         The Libertarians misunderstand that, under our Constitution, the American people have preserved for themselves both an individual and a collective voice.  Not only do I speak as one person, we speak as one people.
         Individually, I am free to pursue self-interest under law.  That is, I am free to do what does not injure or endanger my neighbor.  In individual matters, of course, the vote is always unanimous:  I do what I choose.  In collective matters, however, the case is different:  The vote is always split.  As a result, I cannot always get what I want.  That is part of the price I pay for enjoying the countless benefits and freedoms of self-government under law.  After what the economists call a cost/benefit analysis, I (and all those who choose to continue to enjoy the tremendous advantages that accrue daily to Americans) have decided that I will occasionally endure -- and support with my own hard-earned tax dollars -- public policy decisions that do not suit me. 
         That does not mean I have been robbed.  It means that in the global marketplace of citizenship alternatives now available to me, I have made a choice:  I am an American.  It also means that I am willing to pay my way.  If I benefit from the package of goods and services we Americans have afforded ourselves by corporate self-government (even those goods and services I might prefer to forego), I must pay the price necessary to provide them.  The fact that I find some of these goods and services wrong-headed and counter-productive -- and I do -- does not entitle me to extricate myself from the taxation mechanism that funds them. We wisely have not left that option open to ourselves.  To have done so would severely cripple our policy making procedure and put us in the unthinkable position not only of polling all taxpayers on every proposal before determining whether or not sufficient tax revenues would be available to make a given project feasible, but also of polling them about whether or not such a proposal ought to be implemented at all.  We would be required as well to re-do the entire polling procedure each time we believed public opinion on that issue had changed and each time a significant modification of any previously rejected proposal was submitted.       
         To avoid this procedural madnesss, we Americans have instituted a form of government wherein those who represent us are subject to regular and periodic scrutiny at the polls and thereby to possible recall.  In this way, by means of the representatives who serve at the discretion of the majority, the will of the majority is brought to bear upon the issues that cannot be personally attended to by all people.  Though we deal with such matters by proxy, or by means of our duly elected representatives, it is still we who make such decisions.  It is not the government who decides for us; we are the government.  By means of election and appointment, we ourselves have empowered those public officials to decide issues and policy questions in our stead, at our behest and convenience.  If we are unhappy with the political product our representatives have offered, we can alter it, or we can replace them, or both.
         One of the prices we pay for the convenience of majority rule and representative self-government under law is that we occasionally must endure and finance public policy of which we do not approve and which we, on our own, would not have instituted.  That does not make us the victims of government sponsored crime.  No theft has occurred.  By choosing to remain American citizens, we have chosen to submit our own personal preferences and resources to the discretion and use of the majority as part of the price we pay for the benefits we gain from attending to issues collectively as Americans rather than individually as an American. 
         Despite the Libertarians’ dissenting rhetoric, under majority rule, self-government and the policies it enacts are examples of voluntary association and activity.  The fact that penalties attach to tax evasion does not alter the essentially voluntary character of our public actions and policies because we ourselves defined and designated tax evasion as criminal conduct worthy of punishment.  Nor does the existence of penal measures mean that the taxes we raise are really only money we extort from ourselves.  Self-extortion is a contradiction in terms and an impossibility.
         I am not here arguing that whatever the majority decides is always right and prudent.  It surely is not.  Nor am I arguing in favor of big government, something I normally find burdensome and inept.  I am arguing against the Libertarians’ characterization of taxation as thievery, which is a different matter.  The Libertarians and I agree on the folly of many tax-funded endeavors.  But "imprudent" is no synonym for "criminal," and here I have the Founding Fathers on my side.  Our nation was not founded in response to taxation, but in response to taxation without representation.  The former they found wholly unacceptable, the latter they did not. 
         I agree.

date modified:
5 July 2006