Flibbertigibbet

What if Government Fails?

As my regular readers well know, I support no form of taxation. All government funding and support should come by way of voluntary donation and pay-per-use fees.

Challengers to my position always respond to this suggestion by saying that our government would not survive if we left it to the dilligence of the citizenry. I really think they're being overly-cynical, if for no other reason than such an arrangment would require each person to be actively involved in the defense of the rights of all. But a quick trip to Wal-mart reminds me that many of our fellow citizens are not fit enough to survive urban living. (Clarification: they aren't surviving it. Many, if not most, are quickly dying as a result of excesses made possible by modern conveniences.)

But my question to those challengers is: So what?

If my system were set into motion and then it failed, what difference would it make? The topic of discussion would be the failure of a state that its own citizens REFUSED to support.

I passed a beggar, not a homeless person, but a beggar, on my way to pick up dinner. It is a stretch for me to think of anything I see on a regular basis that compares to the disgrace of begging for money on the street. Here we have people who make their living that way. Others merely supplement their income with the proceeds of their panhandling.

So, consider the person who will not work to support himself. What do you think of them? Do you think they deserve pity? Compassion? Does your heart go out to the person who, for no reason other than true laziness, does not support himself?

I feel disgust and revulsion at those people and that’s the same thing that I feel for those people who would (and do) refuse to take an active role in defending their individual rights.

The same would be my feeling toward the citizens who had a state governed by a system of completely rational political philosophy and let it fail. They would be people who enjoyed perfect freedom and the general welfare that freedom provides, but forsook it for reasons inexplicable.

But the failure of such a state does not defile the virtues or refute the arguments that would have brought it into existence in the first place. No more than the existence of beggars illustrates the futility of those who work for a living.

"The evaluation of an action as 'practical', Dr. Ferris, depends on what it is that one wishes to practice."

Atlas Shrugged

Given that freedom is what I want to practice, I can only conclude that those who say that taxation is the only 'practical' solution to government funding wish to practice slavery. I am sure they hope they're the masters in the arrangement, but which is worse, morally speaking, the parasite or the willing host? The killer or the voluntary victim? The slaver or the slave who demands heavier shackles?

The options open to us aren't between slaver and slave, though. We can all be free. Why try to choose the lesser of evils when you can choose good?