Total freedom equals total liability equals total responsibility.
Taxes are criminal not because they are collected but because when authority and responsibility are divorced as is the case with Governments which spend but do not earn, there is no incentive at the individual level of the elected official or unelected bureaucratic mandarin to spend wisely except in the context of being re-elected or remaining employed.
Despite this fact, to pay taxes gladly, however outrageous the cost, is to signify to yourself the powerful affirmation that you are able to generate income whenever you like.
A case for minimal Government is untenable because the tyranny of the majority decides and if the majority is happy to be infantilized or worse, never achieve adult status in the first place, there is little a minority voice can do to change its mind.
The majority will always tyrannize the minority. There has never been a government of the intelligentsia. There never will be; the intelligentsia are at the end of a very long tail.
We've got the brains, they've got the numbers, brains, guns and plunder.
Populations always get the Government they deserve.
For the individual, the choice is both simple and difficult. If an individual wants the benefits of modern society, for example:
- Roads and rails, acceptably functioning however badly built and maintained.
- Economies of scale and correspondingly advantageous retail prices made possible by urban conglomeration and mass manufacturing, however mediocre.
- Access to entertainment, however banal.
Then the individual must bend to the exigencies of a society which, however flawed, provides these services. It's a given that these services will be the minimum acceptable standard.
Nonetheless, occasionally something slips through the net and the individual can experience wonder, hope, the touch of destiny. Even a broken clock tells the correct time twice a day.
The other alternative is to renounce one society in favour of another or for no society at all: the wilderness. If an individual generates no income, then they cannot be taxed. Barter, trade, build your own stereo on which to play your own music, write your own books, use the means of production now available to anyone with the will and the knowledge to do so, knowledge is the only bottleneck, all of the above can be part of a hardware open-source guerrilla's arsenal.
Huxley hinted at a middle road, a withdrawal from participation in an inadequate society without necessitating an outright exodus.
The slaves escaped the Pharaohs but we have brought our Pharaohs with us on our backs. The service mentality has crippled humanity. Serve each other out of abundance, not out of humility, humility is an eyelash away from shamefulness.
Specialization is for insects, says Heinlein, what would he think of us now? When heart surgeons are so specialized they are not competent to perform even the most insignificant surgeries on any other organ? Do they feel humility about their over-specialization?
The anti-globalists are fools of the highest order, marking time, revolution as fashion. The people who grow their own food and make their own furniture may participate in demonstrations but it can't be often, they are too engaged in building their future with their own hands to worry about the cries of angry children who didn't get their lollipops.
Revolution is history. Creation is the future.
What are you waiting for? Go forth and build something. Leave the squabbling to the babies.
Remember: they're the experts.
