Category Archives: Political Aggression

The central organizing principal of government. By definition, governments claim the right to achieve their goals with violence.

The Involuntary Citizenship Amendment

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Veresapiens LogoMany of us believe that for ethical and practical reasons societies would be better off without a centralized ruling government.

The major unresolved challenge has been how could we get from here to there without chaos?

Not having an answer to that question, I’ve been writing about Concurrent Voluntaryism,  building up voluntaryist social structures in parallel with the existing State complex.

But what if, with a few simple words, you could simultaneously…

  • eliminate the one feature of Government that is the source of its coercive power
  • maintain and enhance the Government’s incentive to provide services to those who still desire them
  • allow immediate freedom from centralized Government for everyone who desires that option

That would get us a long way from here to there without creating chaos.

Therefore, I hereby propose the following Constitutional Amendment, which would accomplish all of those goals:

“Whereas all Men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Section 1. Involuntary Citizenship shall no longer exist within the United States or in any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. The Benefits and Protections of Citizenship shall apply only to those who voluntarily agree to and accept the Responsibilities of Citizenship.

Section 3. The Jurisdiction of the United States, and of the individual States, shall hereafter extend only to the property of voluntary Citizens and to any property acquired by Government through voluntary exchange.

Section 4. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

Appropriately, the wording of Section 1 of the proposed Amendment echoes the wording of the 13th Amendment, which ended Involuntary Servitude in the United States.

Below is a brief discussion of how this Involuntary Citizenship Amendment fulfills the goals listed above.

“eliminate the one feature of Government that is the source of its coercive power”

Many of the services provided by Government are important and would need to be provided, one way or another, in any modern society. The two major problems with having them provided by the State are that they are monopolies and that they are funded by theft, both features maintained by violence and threats. Eliminating its territorial monopoly eliminates the Government’s ability to enforce all of its other monopolies, except among those voluntary citizens who willingly pay for them. This is essentially the definition of ‘panarchy‘.

“maintain and enhance the Government’s incentive to provide services to those who still desire them”

Without a territorial monopoly on theft the Government will have to provide services that people willingly pay for. And they will face competition from independent service providers and from competing governments. If the current Government’s services didn’t continue, and even improve, they would risk losing all subscribers and going out of business entirely.

“allow immediate freedom from centralized Government for everyone who desires that option”

With citizenship becoming voluntary, anyone could walk away at any time. Renouncing citizenship might entail having to forfeit some future entitlement benefit or having to pay some sort of early termination fee. One might fear that such terms could be drastic and punitive, but again, because they would be competing for current and future members (citizens), there is a built-in incentive to discourage the Government from setting up terms that are overly punitive.

No way to get from here to there without total chaos?

I am not suggesting that we could successfully pass this Constitutional amendment. But I do think it eliminates the argument that a voluntary society is impossible simply because there is no way to transition from here to there without creating immediate chaos.

What do you think?

Concurrent Voluntaryism

Competition for Liberty

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Veresapiens LogoLast summer’s calls by libertarian activist Adam Kokesh for armed marches on Washington and on the fifty State Capitals elicited multiple responses from Shawn Gregory on his WeebulTree Blog.

I was particularly struck by the closing words of one post. He essentially wrote the best description yet of what Concurrent Voluntaryism is all about:

In other words, what the liberty movement needs right now are practical solutions that the average person can immediately use and understand. We are living at a time when the technology is available for us to create a complete set of alternatives to what the State provides people now. It’s up to us to build it, and to invite our neighbors and friends to join us in using it. That’s something that we must do regardless of how the State eventually falls, so we might as well use it as our primary means for challenging the State. In this way, the State will eventually seem like a useless dinosaur, and no one will have to fire a shot to destroy it. It will simply fade away into history. That doesn’t mean that the State won’t put up a fight, but unlike a shooting match for which the State is well prepared, the free market is far too nimble for the State to outrun the death by a thousand cuts that it is on the brink of facing.

Get on the front lines and create or support a market alternative to the State today.

Practicing Political Pacifism

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Veresapiens LogoTo vote or not to vote, that is the question that brought Will Shanahan to a conclusion very similar to our ongoing discussion here about ‘Concurrent Voluntaryism’:

This just leaves one question to answer; how should one go about changing the current state of affairs if not through voting? The answer is through voluntary interactions among those whom are needed to change the world in the way that you see fit. Don’t attempt to change the world through voting or through the use of government. After all, government is force and brute force is the lazy way to solve any problem. Regardless of the immorality involved, an idea that requires forced cooperation of the people involved is probably not that great of an idea. What would you prefer? A world you changed dramatically through the instruments of coercion or a world you changed minutely through voluntary interactions?

Concurrent Voluntaryism

Concurrent Voluntaryism Hits The Blogosphere

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Veresapiens LogoEven though Voluntaryism theory starts with the sovereignty of the individual, from there it builds into social philosophy. Voluntaryists tend to be independent, but not anti-social. So, the (current) small number of voluntaryists may lead them to feel somewhat isolated. A major goal of the Veresapiens blog is to help create a greater sense of community.

The Veresapiens concept of Concurrent Voluntaryism, voluntary society in parallel with the existing State, is spreading via social media like twitter. And, some of my favorite freedom writers have blogged about it. One of the earliest blogs to mention Concurrent Voluntaryism was WeebulTree Blog. In his post, “Adam Kokesh’s Armed March On DC: A Bold Step For Liberty Or A Misguided Mission?”, Shawn used a long quote from a Veresapiens blog in his concluding paragraphs…

To put it bluntly, we need to stop wasting time trying to engage the State in some kind of liberty death match. James Howe put it this way:

But what hope is there for ever achieving a voluntary society if it can’t operate in the presence of bad things or bad people?

Under the best of conditions, there will still be criminal gangs, demagogic and violent dictator wannabes, and lots of people who just don’t have the self-discipline to be voluntaryists. Under any realistic conditions, a voluntaryist society will be composed of only those who voluntarily participate, and a voluntaryist community will be faced with many external challenges.

We have those conditions today.

Now, the Government will violently interfere with voluntary interactions within our society. And, the Government will require, at gunpoint, that people in our voluntary society do things that they do not want to do. But why should that stop us from conducting ourselves, in all other ways, in a completely voluntary manner?

If those of us who have the desire and will to form a voluntary society begin to build up the basic structures and mechanisms of a voluntary, free-market society today, we will be, at the same time, creating a better world for ourselves and demonstrating to the non-believing masses that our ‘utopian’ ideas actually do have real-world value.

As Gary North likes to say, you can’t beat something with nothing. It is true that we can’t sit around and theorize about what a voluntary society might look like forever. At some point, we need to put it in practice. To that end, the greatest need right now in the liberty movement is for people to start building alternatives to the State. To some degree, this has already started with services like Bitcoin, Silk Road, and even a private police company, but we need lots more of it. We need liberty-minded entrepreneurs, inventors, developers, investors, consumers in a wide variety of areas, and we need to build up these products and services to the point where they are robust enough to withstand attacks from the State. If we are able to do that, then defeating the State won’t be a matter of trying to convince people intellectually. The benefits of voluntaryism will be evident, and the State will become more and more irrelevant.

One Of These Is Not Like The Others. Or Is It?

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Quick thought experiment…Veresapiens Logo
If one of these is not like the others, why is that?

1. Members of the local Church voted to collect money from every resident of the area the Church served in order to pay for Church programs. After a few of the local residents who refused to pay were harshly punished, most residents then paid the Church ‘voluntarily’.

Are the Church’s actions ethical?

2. Members of the local Charity voted to collect money from every resident of the area the Charity served in order to pay for Charity programs. After a few of the local residents who refused to pay were harshly punished, most residents then paid the Charity ‘voluntarily’.

Are the Charity’s actions ethical?

3. Members of the local Government voted to collect money from every resident of the area the Government served in order to pay for Government programs. After a few of the local residents who refused to pay were harshly punished, most residents then paid the Government ‘voluntarily’.Govt Ethics

Are the Government’s actions ethical?

Gun Control – A Truly Human Approach

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Veresapiens LogoDo the Gun Grabbers want everyone to be defenseless?

Do the Gun Lovers care more about their Rights than they do about innocent victims of gun massacres?

That may be how the Gun Control issue is being framed by Politicians and the Mainstream Media, but seriously, do those sound like real motives of real everyday people?

Now Government has certain motivations – and we could speculate as to what those might be – but let’s set those motives aside for a moment so that we’re not left right in the middle of the fog of politics. Let’s take a Truly Human approach to this issue, instead.

First let’s consider a pro-gun-control Mom. Is her primary goal likely to be to leave as many people as possible defenseless? No. Her goals are much more likely to be things like:

  • preventing more massacres
  • preventing crazies from killing
  • preventing easy gun access from leading to crimes of opportunity
  • preventing gun accidents

Consider an anti-gun-control Mom. Is she really all about Constitutional Rights? She’s likely more interested in:

  • defending children and others from massacres and attacks by crazies
  • enabling people to deter and defend against armed criminal attacks
  • enabling women and others to defend themselves against physically more powerful attackers
  • not being dependent on police response for protection from attacks

The two lists aren’t that dissimilar, and both are composed of reasonable goals.

So with similar end Goals we really have a dispute over the best Means to get there.

What options do we have for deciding between very Different Means of reaching Common Goals?

Emotions are the key to the Political Approach. As we have seen many times, by instigating and fanning emotional conflict, any issue can be hijacked for Political Purposes. So the first step is to avoid being drawn into the political false-conflict trap.

Setting emotion aside, it would seem then that the issue could best be resolved based on Practical considerations. But logical arguments can be constructed to support any proposal, and statistics, it is said, can be made to say anything if you torture them long enough.

And even if one side could show that its proposed means would lead to indisputably superior results, does that settle the issue? Remember, the saying that the ends don’t justify the means means means must be moral.

So that brings us around to the moral approach, and that’s where the Veresapiens moral philosophy has proven to be so useful. It provides the simplest way to see past the Political and Practical arguments of any issue and clearly distinguish Right from Wrong.

In fact, the approach is so simple it’s not even based on a whole list of morals like The Ten Commandments. It’s more like The One Commandment. And yet it clearly lights the way because it is directly related to the most basic thing that makes us Truly Human.

If you think about it, only Humans can choose to Trade for things they want, rather than Take. Only Humans can choose to live by the moral rule Thou Shalt Not Steal.

To be Truly Human, then, we must refrain from stealing what others own. So what does it really mean to ‘own’ something?

By definition, you can do whatever you want with something you own. You can use it, give it away, or even destroy it. That’s totally up to you. If you need Permission to do something with it, You Don’t Own It… at least not fully.

So, if someone Takes some or all of your Control over your possession, against your will, they are Stealing from you.

That means that if someone Takes any Control over your Life, they are Taking some Ownership of your Life. Taking ownership without permission is Stealing.

Veresapiens, then, would not make laws to Control Others’ Lives. That would be Stealing. That would be Taking Lives.

Also, if it is wrong for someone to steal your stuff, then it cannot be wrong for you to resist someone stealing your stuff. So, morally, you can Defend your life and all the other things you own.

So, as Veresapiens, we would not take what others own. And since we wouldn’t make laws limiting what others can do with what they own, we certainly wouldn’t make laws diminishing their ability to defend what they own (their life and possessions).

The gun-control Mom does want to make laws limiting what you can own, which at the same time would limit your ability to defend yourself and your possessions. The resulting laws may even authorize people with guns to come and take from you the guns you already own. Gun-control Mom’s goals are valid, but her Means are Immoral and unHuman.

Anti-gun-control Mom doesn’t want to steal your guns or impose controls on your ownership of your life or possessions. Her goals are valid and she has not advocated any immoral means.

Can the Veresapiens philosophy go beyond the question of the morality of means and ultimately propose the Ideal Solution to the problem?

The Veresapiens approach doesn’t require any one particular solution, or even that there be a single solution. Only that there is No Theft of liberty or possessions. Any and all means used to pursue our ends simply must be moral.

Once you accept that attempting to prevent a problem with laws Controlling People’s Behavior is Immoral, you will also begin to see that such laws typically make the original problem worse, and often cause additional problems.

The drug laws are an obvious example. Drug laws haven’t eliminated drug use. They’ve only managed to make drug use more dangerous, violent, and destructive.

Laws against possessing guns wouldn’t work any better than the laws against possessing drugs have worked.

So one effective means to solve many social problems may be to Eliminate already-existing Laws. For instance, instead of maintaining laws that declare schools ‘gun-free zones’, wouldn’t it make more sense to ensure that your child goes to school in a ‘well-defended zone’?

The Veresapiens philosophy not only guides you to more moral, and Truly Human, solutions, but also helps lead you to more effective solutions, as well.

You Can Be A Veresapiens Now

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Which of these statements is true?Veresapiens Logo

Republicans are Outraged at Democrats!

Democrats are Outraged at Republicans!

Yes, both, of course.

Republicans accuse Democrats of using the Power of Government to Steal from working people to give Free Stuff to Lazy People.

Democrats accuse Republicans of using the Power of Government to Steal from poor and working class people through Preferential Treatment for Big Business.

Is it possible that Half the Country is Evil and the other half of the country is – Evil?

But Republicans don’t think they’re Evil. They believe they are Good.

Democrats? Same thing.

Maybe Politics creates this Confusion over basic issues like Good and Evil. With politics, what each side sees as Good looks like Evil to the other.

Maybe this is Done On Purpose.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a simple way to See Past the Politics of any issue and clearly Distinguish Right and Wrong?

If you could Discover a simple way to tell right from wrong that would also Light the Path to Freedom, wouldn’t that be worthwhile?

In fact, the answer is so simple it’s not even based on a list like The Ten Commandments. It’s more like The One Commandment.

And yet it clearly lights the way because it is directly related to the most Basic Thing That Makes Us Human.

We know that Man is not the only Animal that makes tools, or communicates, or lives in social groups, or builds homes.

What is it, then, that is Uniquely Human?

All living things need space to live in and things to consume. Non-Human living things simply Take what they need.

What truly differentiates Human from Animal is that a Human is able make the conscious decision to Refrain From Taking. A Human is capable of consciously Choosing Voluntary interaction, in Cooperation with others, to satisfy needs.

Humans choose to Trade, Not Take.

Humans choose to live by the rule “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.

Though all are capable, not every Man makes that choice. But, to actually make and live by that choice, is what it takes for Man to be Truly Wise, Truly Human. (The name Veresapiens comes from the Latin for ‘truly wise’.)

Thou Shalt Not Steal – simple, yet so important that it is considered The One Commandment of Veresapiens.

Humans have always considered Thou Shalt Not Steal so significant that it is a basic tenet of Every Major Religion.

What causes the morality of Thou Shalt Not Steal to be so universally recognized, right along with Thou Shalt Not Kill?

Is it possible that they are essentially two ways of saying the Same Thing?

Yes.

Your earthly lifetime is not infinite. You have one body and a Limited amount of Time to spend in it.

You may choose to Spend some of your brief Time creating something. In other words, you may Trade some of your precious Time for something else of value to you.

If a Thief Takes what you created, is he taking Your Life?

Yes.

It took your time to create your new possession. You Spent Time. That time is gone.

You Gave Up (some of) Your Life for that possession, so the Thief Took (some of) Your Life when he stole it.

And that is why Thou Shalt Not Steal is held Sacred, right along with Thou Shalt Not Kill, in all the major world religions.

Thou Shalt Not Steal is clearly an important commandment, but is it comprehensive enough to be The One Commandment?

Yes.

Let’s explore the meaning of Thou Shalt Not Steal a little further, and see how it manages to cover behavior from petty Theft to Slavery and Murder.

To define what it means ‘To Steal’, let’s first define what it means ‘To Own’.

At the most basic level, Ownership is not a financial term. To Own is to Control.

If you Own something, You can Make All of the Decisions about it, yourself. You can do whatever you wish with something you own. You can use it, give it away, destroy it, whatever. It’s totally up to you.

If you Need Permission to do something with it, You Don’t Own it… at least not fully.

Here’s an illustration of what I mean by Partial Ownership:

Suppose you ‘own’ a house. And suppose you bought the house with a home loan. And, finally, suppose that you rent out the house to tenants.

Financially, you own the house. You are the homeowner. However, your ownership rights have been voluntarily limited, as detailed in your mortgage loan agreement with the bank and your lease agreement with the renters.

For example, you own the house, but you cannot use the house as your home. You have agreed to give all of the normal residential usage rights (control) to your renters for the duration of their lease.

Also, you own the house, but you cannot tear it down and turn your property into a wildlife sanctuary. You have agreed to give up some rights (control), relative to the physical building, to the bank for the duration of the mortgage loan.

The important point here is that Control is Not All-Or-Nothing. And therefore, Ownership is Not All-Or-Nothing. Some portion of your ownership can be given or traded away.

And some Portion of Your Ownership can be Taken away. (And we have thereby arrived at the broader Meaning of ‘Stealing’.)

If someone Takes Away some or all of your Control over your possession, against your will, they are Stealing from you.

Even if, rather than physically taking, they simply Prevent you from exercising Your Full Control over your possession through threats or force, they are still Stealing from you. Because, even if they are not physically taking your possession, they are Taking away your Ownership (control).

Now, here’s a Critical Question.

Do you believe your life belongs to you? If you really Own Your Life, you must fully Control Your Life.

Anyone who Prevents you from exercising full Control over your own life is Taking Your Life.

At a minimum, they are Stealing your Freedom. In the extreme, this can rise to the level of Slavery or Murder.

OK, now that we have fleshed out the broader meaning of To Steal, we can begin to explore how Thou Shalt Not Steal can be applied to political questions.

If the Primary Guiding Principle shaping society was Thou Shalt Not Steal, what kind of government, legal, and social systems would such a Veresapiens society have?

The answer to that question goes back to our earlier discussion of Ownership. If you ‘own’ something, it means that you have total Control over it. If someone Takes away some or all of your Control, then, because they are Taking away your Ownership, they are Stealing from you.

That means that if someone Takes any Control Over Your Life, they are Taking Ownership of Your Life. Taking ownership without permission is Stealing.

Veresapiens, then, would Not Make Rules, or laws, to Control Others’ behavior. That would be Stealing.

Individual Veresapiens would make Rules as to the acceptable use of Their Own Property and the acceptable behavior of visitors to their property. And Veresapiens may rightfully choose to Defend Their Property from unacceptable aggression by others. Such ‘individual property rules’ do not take away any others’ full ownership of their own lives and property.

If a society based on Thou Shalt Not Steal would Make No Laws to Control, Mandate, or Prohibit anyone’s actions, then it would have No Need For a Government. In fact, any imposed form of government, including Democracy, would be Incompatible with a Thou Shalt Not Steal-based society.

Thus, for a whole society to live by Thou Shalt Not Steal as a guiding principle, a totally Voluntaryist social structure is required – one with No Government at all.

You may already live much of your life in a Truly Human, Thou Shalt Not Steal, Veresapiens mode. Think about the ‘Anarchy’ that already exists between You and your Friends and close Neighbors. Do you refrain from stealing from them because of the laws of the government? Do you make up rules that all of them must follow or be punished? Do all of your disagreements get resolved by courts and judges?

If not, you’re already creating your own personal Truly Human Society!

Many truly wise philosophers and authors have written about how an entire Society Without a Government might function, so rather than re-create that content here, let me just recommend a good, easy-to-read introduction, available as a free download at this link:

The Market for Liberty

Of course the most common criticism leveled against this kind of ‘Society Without a Government’ thought experiment is that it assumes the existence of a society somehow magically free of an existing central government.

I have to agree that this is an unlikely scenario for the foreseeable future. And When Governments do Fall, whether by revolution or by conquest, they are, unfortunately, Replaced By new Governments. There is never a shortage of ‘wannabe rulers’ just waiting for their big opportunity.

But, if you think about it, even if there was, magically, a land with No Government, and people had Total Freedom to organize new social structures, they would most likely not end up being one single homogeneous society. Different groups of People would try out Different Approaches, many of which might take hold and thrive. There would also, no doubt, be violent organized gangs of criminals.

Those who wanted to organize around the concept of Thou Shalt Not Steal could do so, but they would still have to Coexist among people with different ideas, values, and social structures, just as your own personal Truly Human Society does today. They would also have to deal with individuals and organized groups intent on stealing their property or their freedom, just as your own personal Truly Human Society does today.

So, we have the same kind of Opportunity Now to organize a Truly Human Society as we would have in the mythical ungoverned land.

Now, at this point, you may still be wondering how the Veresapiens Philosophy Answers current Political Questions in the real world.

So let’s see how our philosophy scales up. As an example, let’s consider this politically hot question:

“What should the Government do about the Problem of Illegal Aliens?”

First let’s Question the Question.

Why are ‘illegal aliens’ a ‘problem’ to be solved?

A common answer would be: “They don’t pay taxes, and yet are served by government programs (paid for by American citizens).”

That answer hints at a new way to look at almost all ‘political’ questions. The answer to why illegal aliens are a problem is centered around Government Programs (taxes and services).

In other words, we need to solve this problem (illegal aliens) because of the impact it has on Government ‘Solutions’ to Previous ‘Problems’ (the collection of taxes and the provision of services).

What happens if we consider the problem of illegal aliens, Setting Government Aside?

OK, setting government aside, what is an illegal alien? Borders are Imaginary Lines drawn by governments to declare their Control over people and places. So, without government borders, there are no aliens, legal, illegal or otherwise. You Just have People. No problem there.

What about taxes and services? Setting government aside, people in Communities would work to Create Products to sell or trade, Provide Services to sell or trade, and would Provide goods or services as Charity for people in need. Taking from some people to give to other people is a government thing.

So, setting government aside, the ‘illegal alien’ problem simply starts to fade away.

You can follow this thought pattern on just about any Political Issue. Instead of answering the political question, as asked, try considering the question itself. And then, setting aside the political roots of the question, Consider the Issue in Human Terms. This approach will lead you to Truly Human Answers.

  • What is the Political Question?
  • What are the Left vs Right conventional Political Answers?
  • How do the conventional Political Answers relate to Government Laws, Activities, or Programs.
  • What Different Answers would arise from taking a Truly Human Approach to the issue?

And since we do not, at this time, live in a society that is Free of existing Government, the next question a Veresapiens will ask is…

  • To what extent Can You Implement a Truly Human Solution in a Government Dominated Society?

This last point is important to consider, since Truly Human Solutions, implemented fully, may well be Illegal in today’s society. (Think about the impact of Ignoring Government immigration regulations).

Political Discourse, framed in terms of Government Programs, Confuses the distinctions between Right and Wrong.

As you mentally break out of that political frame, you can simply re-frame the original question in terms of basic Morality. And the most basic Human morality is Thou Shalt Not Steal.

Because Thou Shalt Not Steal, when consistently applied, requires that all Human interactions be voluntary, it provides a simple way to determine what the Truly Human approach would be in any situation.

The Veresapiens philosophy helps you distinguish Right and Wrong and helps you find Moral approaches to Social Issues.

The Veresapiens philosophy seldom mandates one particular solution. There will almost always be a range of consistently moral approaches available to a Veresapiens.

All we need to do is ensure that our chosen approach Refrains from Taking property or freedom from others.

This is something we can do Now.

And today, by our example, we help others to also become Truly Human.

Receiving Government Payments – A Voluntaryist Dilemma

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Veresapiens LogoAs a Veresapiens and voluntaryist, I consider government to be unHuman. A government is, by definition, based on theft and coercion. I want to shun government in every way possible, just as I would any other criminal organization.

But, the government keeps taking my money, and I want it back.

For example, I’ve had Social Security taxes ‘deducted’ from my paychecks for over 40 years, now.

So, here’s my dilemma…

If I think Social Security is a typically immoral government program, should I participate in it anyway when I become eligible to receive payments, especially after having been forced to make payments into the program for all those years?

Walter Block has written that since all government funds are essentially stolen loot, “…it is a positive virtue to relieve the government of its ill-gotten gains“. In fact, he writes, “…the more money you take from the coffers of the state the better libertarian you are“.

Sounds good. But here’s the rub…

The money the government has taken from me in Social Security (and other) taxes over the years is long gone. That money was spent long, long ago. The government no longer has my stolen property.

So, when I ask for the Social Security money that the government ‘owes’ me, where will that money come from? Well, the government, having no money of its own, will simply go out and steal money from my neighbors and give it to me.

How would I feel, as a Veresapiens and voluntaryist, about me using the force of government to take other people’s money?

I might try to make myself feel better by saying “The government is going to collect the tax money, anyway, and I might as well get my fair share”. But it’s still stolen money. Another person’s money.

And, as the US population ages, Social Security taxes will no longer cover Social Security payments. Beyond payroll taxes on current workers, the government will need to both borrow money, to be repaid by future taxpayers, and print money, a hidden tax on everyone.

I don’t think I’m really punishing the government when I “relieve it of its ill-gotten gains”. If anything, I’m doing it an invaluable service.

The government loves to dole out the cash. The government wants to give money to everyone. When everyone’s getting government money, no one wants to get rid of government, they just want to fight over who gets how much.

As Bastiat said in his essay Government,

“The State is the great fiction through which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.”

When you take money from the government, you serve to perpetuate government.

If you want to end government, I believe the best approach is that suggested by Boetie in The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude:

“For if tyranny really rests on mass consent, then the obvious means for its overthrow is simply by mass withdrawal of that consent.”

If more people declined, whenever possible, to receive stolen goods (tax money) from the government, it would go a long way toward delegitimizing those government programs and the government.

So, here is how I think I should approach my dilemma:

  • Do whatever I can to minimize (legally) the amount of money that the government takes from me in taxes.
  • Accept that any money that is taken from me by the government is unrecoverable without causing harm to others (theft of their money).
  • And therefore decline, whenever I can, to take any ‘entitlements’ payments (freshly stolen goods) from the government.

I think perhaps those who take the least money from the coffers of the state are good libertarians, too.