In my last post on the subject (it’s
the friggin’ previous one , just down the page, so I’m not gonna paste a link
for that one!) I proposed the shocking concept of instituting a “fixed amount”,
“flat rate” tax to be paid by everybody, regardless of income or economic
situation, and advanced that I would defend its morality in a later
installment. The moment has come, and before continuing with the Manifesto
itself I would like to justify such proposal and reconcile it with my
contention that it would lead to a fairer society, more conductive to human
flourishing. How can you call “fairer” a society where a millionaire discharges
his duty with the product of fifty hours of his work or less (somebody who earns 1 million bucks
per year, assuming he works 1,800 hours, receives 555,56 $ per hour worked, so
would obtain the 28,656 $ I set as yearly amount of taxes by working the
aforementioned 50 hours… 51 hours and forty minutes, to be more precise;
somebody making ten million bucks a year would get the amount required to be
done with his taxes in a tenth of the time, so a bit more than five hours would
do the trick for him) while a housemaid has to work for three months and a half
to obtain the same effect!!!!
Well, let’s call it the “everybody
pays the same, everybody gets the same” rule, which doesn’t sound so unfair to
begin with. Of course, that “paying the same” may require very different
amounts of exertion, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Before entering in the
murky waters of how bad it may be that to achieve the same outcomes people,
being different, require different levels of sacrifice (and if fairness
requires us to reward the outcome OR the effort put to produce it), let’s first
grapple with some additional accusations that can be thrown to such scheme:
·
As
it is most markedly NOT redistributive, it perpetuates inequality. Guilty as
charged, it surely does. So does not cutting the legs of taller people (height
correlates strongly with higher incomes), not forcing those with deeper voices
to wear vocoders to distort it (they are perceived as more authoritative
without them) or not perpetually administering mind altering drugs to dumb down
people with higher IQ (which is the –mostly genetically acquired, so basically
unearned, and persistent through life- factor that most strongly correlates
with higher incomes), and as far as I know nobody ardently advocates such
measures to alleviate the glaring difference in outcome they produce… life is
unfair, deal with it
·
The
same goal of allowing everybody to receive a UBI could be reached without
making those that make less than 50 $/hour work in demeaning public jobs (they
would be demeaning because everybody who earned more than 50 $/hour would find
it more convenient to pay the money, so putting in the time would be associated
with “not having made it”), by just charging a bit more to the top earners
(say, a fixed percentage instead of a fixed amount, of the order of the very
same 25% that needed to be collected, only in that version only the “real”
earners would be paying it). I happen to think that work ennobles those doing
it, and that a life in which you get something in exchange for something else has
more dignity than one in which you end up depending on something in exchange
for nothing at all. Even if it is more inefficient and the state has to exert
some ingenuity to find jobs accessible to any level of skill or education than
if it bought all its needs in the open market, I think it builds a healthier
society if everybody (again, except the children, the elderly, the infirm and
the temporarily sick) has to contribute something, has some skin in the game,
and can legitimately feel they have “earned” what they get back (the famous
UBI). Also, it would rob the selfish taxpayers of the argument you hear so much
from the right (it used to be only from the far right, but it’s becoming more
and more common) that every cent the state spends it “steals” it from somebody,
and that such stealing is more grievous as it is used to subsidize the lives of
the “undeserving”
With that last point I think I’ve
already cleared the objection towards the different effort demanded from
differently capable citizens. That’s unfortunate indeed, but it’s better than
the alternative, which would imply recognizing that the time of those unable to
pay is so little worthy that it is not even requested. So although I feel (and
to a certain extent sympathize) with the accusation of unfairness I think in
this case it is better to push for a certain unfairness (regarding effort, not
outcomes, as the same outcomes are demanded from everybody, which also means
that everybody is guaranteed the opportunity to contribute to the same extent
and provided to everybody) than show the ultimate patronizing contempt, which
is considering the less skilled workers so useless that it is preferred to just
pay them for nothing.
Having then
(hopefully!) cleared that objection, let’s proceed with the Manifesto.
The zero footprint rule
So far we have expounded how a
society that ensures the maximum freedom while guaranteeing a minimum of
dignity to each of its inhabitants, freeing them from both the unnecessary
constraints and the paralyzing uncertainties that have shackled humanity in
previous eras. But there is still one element to be considered regarding how to
regulate production to avoid unjust accumulations of riches, which has always
and everywhere been much enabled by the existence of externalities.
Externalities are those costs that the use of economic resources (finite,
scarce materials with alternative uses, in the immortal definition of Lionel
Robbins) entails, but which are not borne by those using those resources, so in
the end have to be paid by somebody else (who usually has not benefitted from
its use). In the old times, use of common pastures or forests (being common,
it’s understood that no payment was required) was the only potential
externality, and a most tenuous one, as the bountiful nature would replace the
consumed goods without much effort (as long as there was no overgrazing or over
logging). But with the increased dominion of man over Nature, many activities
are performed that are rife with externalities, from the coal plant that pours
greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere without paying a penny for it to the
cellulose plant that poisons the river where it emits its waste (well, in most
of the world that poisoning is prohibited, and the plats have to treat their
waste to make it relatively innocuous, so that particular externality has been
mostly internalized). Energy production is specially blamable, as even the
supposedly renewable energies (solar, wind, hydro) have a deleterious effect at
some point in their production (from the use of arsenic, tellurium or indium to
manufacture photovoltaic panels to the iron and copper used in stupendous
amounts in wind turbines for a meager handful of kilowatts) which is rarely
fully priced, assuming somebody someday will be left with the tab (after the
current producers have cashed in). Many times, the rich and powerful that can
influence the legislative process can dump the costs on the poor and uninformed
(sometimes quite literally, as exemplified by a lot of electronic waste from
the first world that is sent to third world countries with laxer environmental
legislation), or if that fails, on future generations.
That state of affairs is morally
unacceptable, thus the only overarching regulation in any AT polity is the zero
footprint effect: any economic activity is permitted free of charge (with one
exception we will deal with in a moment) and without limitations, given it
leaves no trace of it ever happening once it is terminated. As such activities
may last well beyond their initiators lives, they should adequately provide for
a “decommissioning fund” estimated as sufficient to devolve the site where they
operated to green level, and during operations they should both ensure that no
environmental impact is caused or, when unavoidable, pay a proper price (to be
determined by an independent authority) for its mitigation. Would that make
some activities we now perform gingerly uneconomical? Very probably, and that
is enough reason in my playbook to stop doing them. Now with the exception:
private property of land, or of any of its resources, is morally unacceptable.
“Land” is a fiction for a parceled fraction of the Earth, which was here before
we evolved, and which will still be around (hopefully) after we are gone (in
what sorry state, if we keep on despoiling it as we have been doing for the last
generations, is another matter). Understood that way, land can only be
collectively owned. Each phratry would be assigned a certain amount, which
would then dispose of as they see fit, given that they can never, ever, fully
alienate it. My particular suggestion would be to lease it at market prices
(which could be construed as an additional tax, a poll tax in the rich Anglo Saxon
tradition, much as I said there should be no more taxes than the previously
described), in order to have an additional source of revenue and also to have an
objective criterion for its distribution (the more coveted spot would go to
those more able to pay, but that is better than either distributing it to
friends –thus casting doubts about the legitimacy of the process- or just letting
people fight for it).
We will deal in more detail with how
we propose to transition from our unjust, predatory, demeaning societies of
today to the Anarcho Traditionalist paradise in another moment, but let it be
known at this point that we are not (necessarily) advocating outright expropriation.
A gradual transition can take place, where all current land titles are deemed
valid for a hundred years (so all of today’s owners can still bequeath them to
their heirs), and subsequent sales are adjusted for a decreasing duration (so
twenty years from now sales are valid for a period of just eighty years, and so
on, until finally all the land has reverted to the phratria, to be administered
publicly).
So there you are, in a nutshell our
recipe for a more perfect, more humane society:
·
Small
groupings (phratria) with maximum freedom to give themselves whatever rules
they deem fit, as long as they comply with a basic list of rights and their
accompanying duties (the latter ensure that the former can be rightfully
enjoyed), and that freely join other similar groups (Philae) to be able to
jointly tackle greater projects for the collective good
·
“Right
of exit” so anybody unhappy with the rules of the group can join other ones
·
Minimal
state structure (roughly estimated to be around 3-5% of the population, between
administrators, guardians and arbiters), the choice of who serves in what
position to be hammered out by each phratry
·
“Everybody
pays the same, everybody receives the same”: Universal Basic Income and
provision of basic services by the phratry, with no exceptions, and universal
payment of a fixed amount by every able citizen (in money or in time), equally
with no exceptions
·
Maximal
freedom of enterprise, given that a) the land can be leased but not bought and
b) the zero footprint rule has to be respected. Any degradation to the common
goods that can not be avoided has to be priced and paid for
Damn, if it were not for the law of
unintended consequences (which asserts that if such a society were actually
ever attempted, only God knows what may happen and how it would eventually really look like) I would start
campaigning for it right away!
Wouldn’t you? If not, feel free to
let me know why (in the comments section, that great unknown).
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