Continuing on the topic from the last article I will present a summary of what Craig Biddle put forward as an alternative to our current State funding regime. Below I will present to you his view of how this funding would work.
In addressing this question, it is important to emphasize that the elimination of taxation is not the first but the last step on the road to a fully divine law-respecting society. The first steps are to educate people about the moral propriety of God's Abiding Law Code. While doing this we need to cut government spending on illegitimate programs, and to begin the process of limiting government to the General Equity of God's Moral Law. But, here as everywhere, the moral is the practical, and we who advocate a Christ-respecting society would do well to understand—and to be able to articulate—how the government in such a society would be funded.
A government is an institution with a monopoly on the use of physical force in a given geographic area. The government can legally use force, and no one else can—unless the government permits it. A government makes laws, enforces its laws, and punishes those who break its laws. This is true of all governments, proper and improper.
A proper government is one that protects rights by banning physical force from social relationships, and by using force only in enforcing God's Abiding Moral Law. A proper government outlaws murder, rape, assault, fraud, extortion, and the rest of the Second Table of The Ten Commandments. It prosecutes those it has reason to believe have committed crimes; punishes those found guilty of committing crimes; protects citizens from foreign aggressors; and settles rights-oriented disputes among citizens.
Why do we need such an institution? Why can’t we do without government? The answer, in brief, is that we cannot live and prosper if we constantly have to worry about being assaulted by criminals, being attacked by foreign aggressors, or coming to blows or worse with fellow citizens. Let’s elaborate briefly on each point.
1. Some people don’t respect rights and will use force to get what they want.
Consider Ted Bundy, Bernie Madoff, Bill Ayers, the Mafia, the Ku Klux Klan, and company. If we want to live peaceful, productive, happy lives, warring with such goons is no way to do it. By delegating to a government the task of using retaliatory force against those who initiate force, we can go about living and loving our lives as we morally should. In the absence of a government, we would be constantly consumed with the problem of protecting ourselves from predators and nihilists, gangs of which would roam the cities and countryside seeking to rape, pillage, and plunder; and we would have to form militias or gangs ourselves in order to protect our lives, our property, our loved ones.
A divine law and rights-protecting government solves this problem by providing rights-protecting laws, police, courts, and prisons.
2. Rights disputes can and do arise among rational, honest, rights-respecting people.
Good people can and sometimes do disagree over business dealings , marriage covenants, property lines, rights-of-way, water supplies, and other matters pertaining to their rights—and sometimes they are unable to settle such disputes on their own. In the absence of a government with objectively defined laws and impartial courts, such disputes could and sometimes would turn violent.
A rights-protecting government solves this problem by providing an objective means of adjudication.
In sum, a government dedicated to the protection of rights and defense of the Moral Law enables us to live in relative safety from criminals and foreign aggressors, and to peacefully settle disputes concerning rights.
What would be the scope of such a government? And what would it consist of?
A divine-law/rights-protecting government would comprise only the police, the courts, the military, and any corollary or auxiliary branches or departments necessary to their proper function—such as a legislature to establish rights-protecting laws, a budget department to determine how much money the government needs and to issue financial reports, and a treasury to receive and allocate funds. There would be no “entitlement” programs (e.g., Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), no Department of Education, no government-run schools, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Occupational Safety and Health Administration, no Food and Drug Administration, no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, no Antitrust Division, no Internal Revenue Service, or the like. Accordingly, the scope of a rights-protecting government would be a small fraction of that of the government today.
Bearing in mind all of the foregoing, we can begin to answer the question: How would a properly limited government be funded?
Ample evidence indicates that individuals would voluntarily support a divine law- rights-protecting government simply on the grounds that they value their lives, liberties, property, and pursuit of happiness. To see the evidence, first consider some goods and services for which people are willing to pay.
People voluntarily purchase homeowners insurance, renters insurance, auto insurance, flood insurance, health insurance, life insurance, even pet insurance. People also purchase security systems and smoke detectors, hire bodyguards, pay for themselves and their children to take self-defense classes, purchase firearms, and so on. Similarly, businessmen and corporations purchase liability insurance, directors and officers insurance, key employee insurance, and the like. They also purchase extremely sophisticated security systems; hire security guards; employ legal counsels, law firms, and arbitrators; and pay for countless other precautions to enable them to remain in business, retain their property, and make more money.
Why are people and businesses willing to pay for such things? Because they value their lives, they value their homes, they value their properties, their health, their loved ones, their businesses, their employees, their profits, their happiness. Consequently, people also value the political condition on which their pursuit and protection of all such values depend—namely: a Godly and Free society.
The question, “Will people voluntarily pay to support a rights-protecting government?” is the question, “Do people value the protection of their rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness?” Given that people do voluntarily pay to augment their general security, rational people would voluntarily pay to establish and maintain their general security—if it were not already covered. If they were not being forced to pay for a government, people would pay to establish and maintain a rights-protecting government because such a government makes possible their unfettered pursuit and enjoyment of all their other values.
As to the so-called problem of free riders (i.e., those who wouldn’t financially support the government and thus would “ride for free”), this is not really a problem. To begin with, observe that there are two kinds of free riders: rational and irrational—or moral and immoral. We’ll consider them in turn.
A person who does not financially support the government is not necessarily immoral. The question is: Why does he not support the government? Is the person in question a student who is struggling to pay his way through college? If so, there is nothing wrong with him refraining from supporting the government until he graduates and starts earning enough money to contribute. Is the person in question someone whose capacities are such that even when he tries his hardest in life he can barely cover his own basic living expenses? If so, it would be morally wrong for him to send money to the government, because sending money would constitute a removal of his basic needs of living. Is the person in question starting a business that is still in the red? If so, and depending on his broader financial situation, it might be difficult for him to send money to the government at this time. And so on. People in such circumstances may “ride for free,” so to speak, but there is nothing wrong with such free riding.
As to those who could afford non-sacrificially to support a rights-protecting government but chose not to on grounds such as, “I don’t need to contribute because all you suckers will contribute, and I’ll have my rights protected for free”—bear in mind two important facts.
First, as irrational as such a free rider is for ignoring obvious causal connections and the basic principle of justice that he could have learned from The Little Red Hen, his refusal to contribute does not violate anyone’s rights. As long as no one is forced to contribute to the government (and that’s the context we’re assuming here), no one’s rights are violated by someone else’s refusal to contribute.
Second, those who choose to support a rights-protecting government are not committing a sacrifice by indirectly protecting the rights of free riders, so long as the value the contributors receive—that is, the protection of their own rights plus all the benefits that flow from a rights-respecting society—is of equal or greater value to them than the funds they contribute.
In sum, in a free society, the existence of free riders is not a problem because (1) no one is forced to support them, and (2) everyone who non-sacrificially supports a rights-protecting government is acting in his own best interest.
Under a system of voluntary financing, the government’s budget department would periodically (perhaps annually) issue reports specifying how much money the government needs to fund its proper functions. Private individuals and watchdog agencies would scrutinize these numbers in great detail and offer their own related reports and analyses, as they do today when the government issues a budget.
Upon reading the reports and analyses, individuals and businesses would scrutinize the numbers, do the math, and determine, all things considered, how much money they reasonably think they should contribute. Socially acceptable standards would likely arise, but individuals and companies would be free to abide by or ignore them. Everyone would be free to act on his own judgment, with respect to his own values and his own context. For instance, an individual who barely uses the court system might decide that his contributions should reflect this fact. A large organization that uses the court system heavily and regularly might tailor its contributions accordingly. Everyone would decide for himself whether to contribute and, if so, how much.
When an individual, business, or other organization contributed funds to the government, the government would issue a receipt—call it a Government Support Receipt (GSR).8
GSRs would not likely come into play on small transactions, say, when someone purchases a cup of coffee. But they would certainly come into play on many major organizational transactions, and they might well come into play on lesser transactions, such as employment contracts, vacation rental agreements, and the like.
The amounts of money that individuals and organizations would need to contribute in order to support a proper, rights-protecting government would be small (especially compared to what they are forced to pay in taxes today).
It is a contradiction to hold that although people value their lives, their homes, their health, their safety, their children, and so on enough to pay to augment the security and protection of these things, they nevertheless wouldn’t choose to help fund the kind of government that makes possible the general security and protection of all such values. Although some people tenaciously embrace this contradiction, the contradiction remains a contradiction.
If people were not forced to support a government, people would voluntarily contribute to support a divine-law-rights-protecting government. Evidence in support of this fact—evidence in the form of the kinds of observations and integrations presented above—abounds.
In light of the foregoing, we can see that the last step toward a fully free, divine-law-rights-respecting society is an easy one. So let us redouble our efforts on the first and more difficult steps. Let us increase our efforts to educate people, to cut government spending, and to limit government to the protection of divine-law-rights.
