Links of Interest to Tax Resisters and Others

Some links that have bobbed up in my browser in recent days:

• How does what was once seen as morally insignificant come to be seen as monstrous, and how does what was once seen as morally repulsive come to be just one of those things? Cass R. Sunstein has a theory. The spectrum of what behavior we observe becomes the “normal” against which we contrast outliers. As we become exposed to more aberrant behavior, that behavior shifts into the normal; as more conduct shifts into an unacceptable category, other things nearby to that category can get sucked into the objectionable void. This has implications for “outrage culture” and how we share on social media.
• The gilets jaunes movement in France has turned out to be more of a threat to the established order than anyone anticipated. It started as a protest against fuel tax increases, but when its increasingly threatening demonstrations finally forced the government to delay, then drop those increases, rather than stopping, they continued, more emboldened than before. I don’t have much to add to what is now being decently covered in the English-language press, but here are a few links I found interesting:
  • A sample English-language news article from last month as things were heating up, but when the government was still insisting the taxes would go through as planned.
  • A photo of some gilets jaunes bricking up the entrance to a regional government building.
  • Wikipedia articles about similar protests that took place in Sicily in 2012 and in the United Kingdom in 2000, 2005, and 2007.
  • Amnesty International issued a statement against police brutality towards gilets jaunes demonstrators, including “rubber bullets, sting-ball grenades and tear gas against largely peaceful protesters who did not threaten public order and… numerous instances of excessive use of force by police.”
• One of the ways to reduce voluntary tax compliance in a subject population is to increase resentment by pointing out how much the ruling class is cheating on their taxes. So the increasingly well-documented tax cheating of Donald Trump and his family ought not to go unmentioned.
• Of course there are those liberals who see the tax cheating of the ruling class as a good reason to feel sorry for the poor underfunded IRS instead.
• Consciousness of the cruelty and tyranny of the House of Saud is finally starting to enter the conversation in the United States. Who is paying for the barbaric war on Yemen? U.S. taxpayers are.
• In Luján, Argentina, a local tax on farmers went up 1200%. So an assembly of farmers voted to stop paying. The National Network of Independent Producers backed the tax strike. They are asking for a reduction in the rate and a guarantee that the proceeds will be used for rural road improvements.
• 335 Spanish war tax resisters documented their resistance for Antimilitarist Alternative / Conscientious Objectors’ Movement this year. Collectively they refused and redirected €35,882.34 (a little over €100 each, on average). The report lists dozens of organizations that received the redirected funds.

Having come to a decision on how to distribute political power in a society, are the uses of that power thereby legitimized? Aristotle takes on this question next.

Imagine that you have, like a good modern believer in popular sovereignty, distributed absolute political power as widely as possible, so that everyone (or maybe all adult citizens) have an equal voice. Then the poorest 51%, noting that the richest 49% own everything, vote to take it from them and redistribute it downwards. Chaos ensues, the economy tanks, the government loses control of the state, invaders loom at the gates, dark clouds blot out the sun, and so forth. But was it unjust?

Or perhaps, anticipating such a disaster, you have taken to heart the advice of the modern neoreactionaries and put your hope in a hereditary monarch with unquestioned authority over all matters political. But she too suffers a sudden bout of power-madness and assumes the assets of the state into the royal coffers. It was a shame to see the public treasury gambled away at Monte Carlo, but was it unjust?

Justice means more than obedience to constitutional forms, Aristotle asserts. What destroys the health of the society is not just. Very well.

“Rule by law” — that legendary “government of laws, not men” — Aristotle says, is no cure for this disease, as the law is just a way of assigning authority to people, who ultimately do the real work.

He also notes a possible problem with the formula he has been developing (that those with political office should be the virtuous ones, or those with a tendency to improve the virtue of their societies). The way states assign political office is among other things a way that societies honor individuals (even in my society, people are more likely to feel that Donald Trump has been honored by the office of the presidency, rather than that the office has been yet further tarnished by his election). If you go further and say that you will be selecting people for office based on their virtue, then those who are not picked will not only be disenfranchised, but also dishonored. (This will probably lead to discontent and undermine the stability of the state.)