What does the government have to offer?

Basically, the government has nothing to offer that the free market cannot handle. I suspect that people will want government to deal with arterial and communal systems (roads, sewer and water pipe lines, air quality concerns, national parks and perhaps a communal banking system) but this is by no means certain. It is therefore incumbent on any licit government to compete in each of its functions with free market alternatives. It must not declare a legal monopoly and outlaw competition.

This includes the armed forces. A private armed force cannot be outlawed, and … by the present constitution or the United States … the people, in fact, are allowed to form a militia with the express purpose of competing with an adversarial government. We have the right to defend ourselves against the depredations of the state.

Anything that the free market does, could be done by government as a source of income to fund itself. Of course, the present style of government would fail miserably at everything and bankrupt itself. A proper government would take up any task the people expect of it … then … bare its throat to the free market in open competition. If there is anything it can do more competently than the free market … that is what it will be left with … and … the people will pay for it willingly by the previously given tax method (collective consensus).

Your penalty for not paying the income tax would be the same as what happens when you don’t pay for goods or services in the free market … you don’t get the goods and services. So, if you want to sue in court, you can’t do that if you don’t pay the consensus income tax. Firemen (if it’s a government service) won’t save your house. Essentially, any service they end up giving, you would not get … unless you pay the income tax.

And … if you don’t agree to pay the consensus tax, you would not be able to vote. By the act of voting, you agree to abide by the rules of the state you subscribe to. However … one important point …

Under no circumstances should those who do not vote or pay tax be forbidden to use the commons.

They may travel freely and engage in trade and support their lives under the law of the land which derives fundamentally from the nature of man. And those rights supercede any laws of the state.

Inheritance

This is a foundational problem because, if unrestricted, inheritance undermines the bottom-up hierarchical control system. In the bottom up approach, individuals, by their own efforts, must earn the respect and confidence of their immediate electors and be vetted by them.

Great inherited wealth is similar in effect to royalty which confers political influence by birth circumstance thus denying initial political equality.

If someone inherits the family farm or a corner grocery store there is no problem. Inheriting more money than 100 men can earn in a lifetime is a problem. Saying that they will lose their money in a free market if they are unworthy of it, is false by observation. They hire competent men to tend the fortune then spend their time wreaking havoc on civilization through the unearned power they wield.

I acknowledge this problem but have no non-arbitrary solution for it. One could make an inheritance cutoff point of, say, twenty times the average man’s lifetime earnings and let it go at that. This would appear to be a management problem rather than one that affords an obvious solution.

Corporate Ownership

If a man starts up a business and succeeds, clearly, it is his company alone. If he has few employees, it is still his company and not theirs. But when the company is well established and is comprised of thousands of blue and white collar workers, is it still his exclusive property?

I think not.

At some arbitrary point, the employees must begin to take directorship of the company from its owner because the quantity of work they do to maintain it is greater than the work now done by the initial owner. There must be a transference of control to the workers over the lifespans of the owner and his inheritors such that a century later, that large company is under the total directorship of its employees. They must eventually operate the company to their own financial benefit and cut away the initial owner’s distant relatives who would now still claim ownership.

It brings to mind a conundrum that I observed decades ago. Over time … why don’t the labor unions, with their dues, just buy the company and become management? Why doesn’t the UAW, by now, simply own Ford Motor Company, General Motors, etc.? If they haven’t had time enough after nearly one hundred years … do they at least own a major share of the stock of these companies? If not … why not?

This is another foundational problem that, like inheritance, gives undue political power to persons who may or may not have been vetted by the free market or by the political ‘distillation’ process given on Page 1.

Again, any solution here is arbitrary. I acknowledge it, but have no ready, clear solution.

Charitable Endowments

When an extremely wealthy person bequeaths his fortune or part of it to the Rockefeller Foundation or some such organization, it is often a front for political actions inimical to rational civilization. That is, some of these “foundations” are set to evil purposes and merely pose as the good. They are attempts to put wealth to hidden political purpose because that purpose would not be sanctioned by the consensus of informed opinion if it were transparent.

The command and control structure must educate the people to the true identity of such entities. Then they can be effectively rooted out or put on a rational heading.

This is yet another area of judgement for which I have no specific solution.

 

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