Liberty Movement HQ

Taxes and Collective Action

Recently, while reading the Logic of Collective Action by Mancur Olson, a thought came to mind, why do people believe that taxes are necessary? If there was no law forcing one to pay, how many would willingly send money to the government? It would be far more likely that people would turn to private corporations to receive services and would put their dollars into the hands of these more efficient producers.

For thousands of years, governments have sought out ways to extort money from the people they lord over. These methods of extortion are broadcast to the public as good things. But, when it comes down to it, one can see that if they look behind the curtain, many of these so-called good things are nothing more than a sly move to commit grand larceny against the citizenry. many of the services are poorly carried out, or are not even done!

For instance, consider that  a portion of your paycheck is withheld each week to pay numerous types of taxes. While one might suggest that this is a service that allows people to not have to set aside a portion of their income each week to pay the taxes at the end of the year, this is nothing but a way for the government to assure that they collect the money. If people had truly planned on paying the government, they would do so without needing the money to be withheld.

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