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Title: Tariffs Author: J. Neil Schulman Date: May 14, 2019 Language: en Topics: tariffs Source: https://jneilschulman.agorist.com//2019/05/tariffs/
It’s self-evident to anarchists that taxation is theft.
I’m an anarchist so I accept this statement as self-evident.
This does require more explanation to the non-anarchist.
Libertarian anarchists such as myself see no special status for the
State – “government,” in more common language – that gives human beings
acting within or on behalf of government any greater rights or rightful
powers than any private individual. If it’s wrong for me to use a gun —
or join with others into a gang armed with guns – to take someone else’s
property or money, then the rituals of elections do nothing to create a
moral basis for doing so. Therefore any tax is merely theft with
propaganda to disempower the victim.
But there are relatively few anarchists. Most people subscribe to the
view that government has rightful powers to take private property or the
result of an individual’s labor and put those takings into a “public”
till where a monarch or chairman or president or committee or congress
may spend it according to their own decisions, often with the claim that
they are not acting in their own interests but for All the people.
History often shows this claim to be tenuous at best, and when those
with public trust are caught acting for themselves it’s called
“corruption” – on the premise that better men can be trusted with the
power to spend forcibly taken wealth.
So anarchists are simply self-selected to be outside discussion of tax
policy.
I’m not just an ideologue, though. I’m a novelist. Filmmaker. Essayist.
Journalist. Self-appointed philosopher.
So screw the anarchists who want me never to compare one kind of
taxation with another. I recognize no other anarchist as having the
right to tell me what I shouldn’t write about.
The most egregious kinds of taxes are those which require complex
bookkeeping and revelation to the government how you spend your money.
The least egregious kinds of taxes most resemble the basic thief: after
the property is stolen you don’t have to fill out any forms and explain
what you were intending to do with the stolen funds.
Government is least oppressive when it recognizes its thieving nature
and doesn’t rape its victims, too.
To the best I can see, that’s what the Framers – those old white men who
conspired to impose a Constitutional Republic on the men who’d just
fought a war to get free of another tyranny – had in mind. A government
of thieves, but fewer rapists. Constitutional conservatives and Limited
Government Libertarians seem to be of that sort.
The constitution as originally constructed had as sources of government
revenue tariffs on imported goods. There were no income taxes on either
individuals or businesses. There were no sales taxes or value-added
taxes. There were no estate or death taxes.
Then again, government wasn’t expected to provide public schools, or
health care, or old-age pensions, or support for mothers who had
children but no husbands.
These socialist ideas were already common at the time. Marx and Engels
were distant latecomers to socialist thinking.
As an anarchist I have this to say about tariffs: they’re not as bad as
today’s income taxes. My non-anarchist friend Brad Linaweaver notes,
“Tariffs are a tax that sometimes goes away. The progressive income tax
never goes away.”
The comparative intrusiveness of one tax versus another is not my point.
This is my point: tariffs are a tool of foreign policy. The foreign
policies – I must note for my anarchist friends – of States.
[]
It’s another anarchist premise that all governments are bad. Further,
that the government nearest you is the worst.
I’m accused by anarchists of being a sell-out because I do not accept
that premise. I think that some foreign governments are far worse than
the one I live under.
Restricting myself to 2019 (history just muddles it) I think far worse
than the government here in the United States are the People’s Republic
of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of
Cuba, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. These are the worst of
one-party-rule aggressive communist States. Lots of other governments
suck. But these are among the worst of the worst.
Libertarians at institutes such as Reason, CATO, and Mises – almost all
libertarian pundits who have podcasts or get invited onto TV – favor
Free Trade. Being a libertarian I, also, favor free trade.
Here’s where I part with the rest of the libertarian punditariat: I do
not consider either trade pacts or trade wars between States to have a
blessed thing to do with free trade.
Okay, I guess I do need to bring in history.
Let’s go back to the United States before Fort Sumter.
I would have favored any sort of trade barrier that stopped slave-labor
plantations from exporting their slave-picked cotton. Because the
Constitution forbade such tariffs between States it was not legally
possible domestically. Nonetheless I would have encouraged foreign
governments to pass exorbitant tariffs on importation of American
slave-picked cotton.
One can make a strong case that the communist States I listed above –
China, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela – are as much slave states as
the antebellum American South.
So – as a libertarian – I do not consider tariffs against importing
their slave-made goods – or sales of American goods to the profiteering
slavemasters — to be against the principles of free trade I support.
To be specific, I’m talking about officially approved trade. If trade
can be accomplished by blindsiding these evil statists and trading
directly with secret traders– black-market, countereconomic, Agorist
trade – I’m fine with that. Nevertheless one of hallmarks of
totalitarian regimes is ubiquitous surveillance, corruption, and
blackmail. An Agorist would need to be very sure that one wasn’t trading
with a government stooge.
Yes, tariffs are paid for in higher prices by the consumers who buy
anything using tariffed components. Tariffs are taxes. Taxation is
theft. But it’s also true that marketplaces adapt to tariffs.
If new tariffs reduce sales of Maine lobsters being sold to Chinese
plutocrats, prepare to line up at Red Lobster and Outback for lobster
specials. If California almonds are not being loaded in freighters to
China, I expect the price of the almond butter I buy at WalMart to drop.
Can’t sell soybeans to China? What, nowhere else on this planet wants
American-grown soybeans? And with Internet trading can’t the orders be
redirected to new buyers almost instantly?
The economic arguments that treat tariffs as static trade barriers are
merely talking points. The market for any good is dynamic and any
bilateral Trade War opens up opportunities for other buyers and sellers.
Yes, Tariffs are Taxes, which as we know are Theft.
However, if a tariff even marginally deprives the worst totalitarian
statists on this planet from their evil schemes – and impels slaves to
revolt against their masters – I can’t find it in my heart to support
keeping up trade with the worst of Our Enemy the State.