Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Supreme Court Jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes once stated "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society." It is a quote often repeated by statists towards libertarians in order to “prove” that libertarians are against having a civilized society. Plus there is the hope that any libertarian who would disagree with that statement would be cowed by the impressive credentials of the originator of the quote. The problem with the quote is that Justice Holmes was technically correct, but was lying by omission.

The full expression should be "Taxes are the price we pay for government, and government is the price we pay for a civilized society." It is very important to include the middle term. Including the middle term shows both what taxes actually pay for and where taxes actually go to. Including the middle term also portrays the government as a burden, a price that must be paid, instead of a blessing.

Breaking the syllogism down into its component parts makes it much easier to argue. "Taxes are the price we pay for government" defuses any argument that a statist might make about how libertarians, by opposing taxes, therefore oppose civilization. It expresses clearly that taxes are nothing more than the paycheck of the government, and that there is no direct link between taxes and civilized society

"Government is the price we pay for civilized society" is very arguable. Minarchists may agree; anarchists certainly don’t. It also makes a stronger case that the government can be the agent of disorder. If taxes are paid so that the government will provide stability and security, and the government not only fails to do so but causes the opposite, the expanded expression including the middle term shows that taxes should be withheld from the misbehaving government.

The shortened version popularized by Justice Holmes, while partially true, is dishonest in the extreme by what it leaves out. When shortened it is a pro-government argument, but when expanded it can be used by libertarians.

Freedom is Slavery

The United States is, of course, a free country.

There is evidence that the law serves the government instead of serving the people, that those who irritate authority will be punished without regards to law, and that when police misconduct becomes so blatant that it cannot be ignored the offenders will not be punished. But the United States is still a free country.

We have freedom of movement in this country. True, the screening standards by the TSA are secret so those who travel cannot make an informed decision before entering the airport about whether or not they wish to submit to the intensive physical search. The intensive search, compared often to molestation or rape, is the alternative for those who do not wish to submit to a nude screening. Those who, upon finding out what the search entails decide to not be searched, instead of merely being denied entry to their flight, are threatened with a fine of approximately $10,000 and sometimes arrested. When someone is giving the choice of submitting to sexual advances or being hurt for failing to do so, it is considered sexual assault. But the United States is still a free country.

Of course, there are choices other than flying. One can avoid the TSA by taking the bus, or one can drive. Soon all methods of transportation will be under TSA control and all citizens will need TSA permission to go anywhere. But the United States is still a free country.

Originally the Interstate Commerce Clause was interpreted to only apply to actual interstate commerce. In the 1930s the Supreme Court found an interpretation whereby any activity that impacts interstate commerce can be regulated under that clause. Any item grown for personal consumption is something that would otherwise be purchased, and if purchased might possibly be purchased from someone out of state. That is one of the alleged constitutional supports for the drug war. Now, with the healthcare reform passed by President Obama, even even inactivity is considered activity with regards to the commerce clause. The government has the power to dictate both what we purchase AND what we do not purchase. But the United States is still a free country.

Since the United States is a capitalist country, people are still free to engage in many business opportunities in spite of the restrictions of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Of course there are many licensing requirements that prevent people from entering many fields that would allow people to rise out of poverty. There are still more fields than can ever be covered by piecemeal regulations, so sweeping legislation has been enacted to cover all fields and limit or prevent the ability of the people to conduct business. But the United States is still a free country.

The Third Amendment to the Constitution was written to secure people from being compelled to act as agents of the government. When it was written there were few ways in which that could happen, the most common was forcing people to quarter troops. Today there are many more ways in which a person can be forced to act on behalf of the government. There is no proof that Joseph Nacchio of Qwest was indicted for refusing to be a government spy. Anyone who thinks so is a conspiracy theorist. And there is no proof that the women who accused Julian Assange had political motivations. It is true that due to the proliferation of laws, anyone can be accused at any time for unknown and obscure crimes, and that the government could use that power to punish those whose actions are otherwise untouchable. But the United States is still a free country.

When those issues are brought up, people insist that they are all necessary to maintain freedom in the United States, because otherwise there would be anarchy. Someone, somewhere, will describe each of those intrusions as a necessary price to pay for freedom. People are required to submit because of the social contract which is the price people pay for living in society. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote "None are more enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." With all these freedoms, because the United States is still a free country, it certainly is true that Freedom is Slavery.

Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen

In the anthology "The Stars At War, Volume 1, Imperial Stars", assembled in 1986 by Jerry Pournelle, he included an original essay “Tribesman, Barbarian, and Citizen”. It can be read here and it includes some very useful concepts.

The essay's value as a piece of anthropology is as useful as the Social Contract written about by Hobbes and Locke, but just as with the Social Contract it is not in anthropology that it has uses. Like the Social Contract, it is a "useful myth" in which Mr. Pournelle describes three levels of social development that a people go through.

The first is the Tribesman:

The Tribal culture--in its never-actually-existent theoretical pure state--is a system of pure ritual and taboo. "Everything that is not forbidden is compulsory." The objectively observable system stems from an unstated philosophy--which is unstated because the Tribesman doesn't know philosophy exists, any more than a dog knows logic exists, or a fish knows that biochemistry exists. The philosophy is, essentially precisely that of the Absolute Totalitarian state . . . minus the familiar dictator. That is, in the Tribe, the individual exists for the service of the state. The individual has no value whatever, save as a replaceable plug-in unit in the immortal, ever-existent machinery-organism of the Tribe. No individual exists as an individual--neither Tribal king nor Tribal slave; each is a unit plugged in--temporarily, for all these units wear out and are discarded in a score or two of years--to the eternal Traditional System of the Tribe. The cells in a living organism wear out and are discarded; the organism is, relatively speaking, immortal. So, in the Tribe, the individual is nothing; the Tribe is eternal.

In return for a practically absolute loss of self-identity, the Tribesman is rewarded with security and peace of mind. The Tribal Traditions have The Answers to all possible real problems; nothing can happen that the Tribal Traditions, in their ancient and time-tested wisdom, have not already solved. There are no doubts; there are answers which involve "these tribesmen must die," but Death is not intolerable. Uncertainty--Doubt--these are the Terrors that live in the Unknown. And against those horrors, the ancient wisdom of the Tribal Traditions stand a strong, sure defense.

The Tribesman has an exact, clear-cut, and perfectly understandable definition of Evil. Evil is Change. Any Change whatever is Evil. The correlation is absolute--perfect one-to-one.

The next stage above Tribesman is Barbarian.

The Barbarian represents the Ultimate Horror from the viewpoint of the Tribesman; he is the Pure Individual. The Barbarian does not put his faith, his sense of security, in the ancient wisdom of the Traditions--but in the wisdom and strength of a Hero, a living demigod-man, a Leader who solves all problems.

Barbarism, in other words, is the Dictator, without the Totalitarian State. There is a Hero, who is a strong, and unusually clever leader--an individual who stands out above the men around him.

Tribalism is "a government of laws, not of men," with the minor change that "traditions" replace "laws."

Barbarism becomes a government of Men, not of traditions.

It is the first development of human culture which recognizes the value of the individual. It is not true that only civilized people respect the dignity of the individual; any Barbarian will assure you that Citizens have no dignity, that Civilization does not respect the individual. That only Barbarians understand what it means to be an individual.

The Barbarian, in essence, "has too much Ego in his Cosmos."

It's perfectly true that all men seek security--but necessarily, that means they seek what they believe is security. A superstitious Tribesman, fleeing a ghost, would happily climb a 100,000 volt power-line tower because he knows that ghosts can't climb.

The Tribesman's security is his conviction that the Tribal Traditions have sure answers to all real problems.

The Barbarian's security is in his absolute conviction that he can handle any problem--and if he can't, why, of course his Leader-Hero can, and will.

...

Barbarism is one of the great breakthroughs in cultural evolution; for the first time, it establishes that the individual has great value, that the individual must be respected.

He also describes the relationship between Barbarians and Tribesmen. Tribesmen, who view change as violating the traditions and therefore evil, see the Barbarian as evil. Barbarians, who view obeying orders with which one disagrees as spineless and sub-human, sees Tribesmen as being fit only for slavery as they are not human. A Barbarian thinks it pitiful is someone obeys an order with which he disagrees.

Advancing beyond Barbarism, the third stage so far is Civilization.

When the Barbarian encounters Civilization, therefore, he is going to be enormously confused and baffled. The Barbarians of North Europe, meeting the Citizens of the Roman Republic, were meeting men who allowed others to order them about, to tell them what to do and when to do it. Who obeyed commands they didn't, themselves, agree with. Obviously, a pack of servile slaves!

But these cowardly Roman Legionnaires, for some incomprehensible reason, did not collapse in battle. These Legionnaires, who had no self-respect, who did not fight man-to-man, but used short swords so that no one of them could say, when he returned home, "I killed Urhtoth!" but only, "I am a member of the Fourth Legion,"--these Romans strangely didn't flee before the fiercest Barbarian charges.

To the Barbarians, the Citizen shows the symptoms of all the things the Barbarian rejects as vile and degrading--the essence of cowardice. The Citizen yields his will to the demands of others. He allows himself to be limited, and allows himself to be compelled against his own desires.

To the Barbarian, the Citizen shows the same loathsome abnegation that the Tribesman does.

Which makes it all the more incomprehensible that these sniveling Citizens win battle after battle. They who have sacrificed their Manhood, have given up their right to individual dignity, somehow prove able to fight like maddened demons!

He spends little time describing the Civil system, and given that it is the current system in the western world there should theoretically be little need to describe it. What he does describe is interactions between Barbarians and Citizens and between Tribesmen and Citizens. In both cases, as with Barbarian and Tribesmen, interaction between a later stage and an earlier stage dooms the earlier stage.

The key question then becomes what happens to a Barbarian who discovers he cannot beat a Civil System from the outside? Doing so from the outside turns the Barbarian into a criminal, as can be discovered from a cursory examination of most true criminals. At one point there was a belief that criminals had insufficient self esteem, but further examination found that many real criminals had excessive self esteem.

A smarter Barbarian would find the Civil system useful, to do from the inside what cannot be done from the outside, to use the system for looting by proxy. The first advantage of this is that it saves the Barbarian from the consequences of criminal activity. The second advantage is that Citizens are conditioned to have a basic respect for order, and thus are much less likely to defend themselves from crimes when committed by the government.

This actually solves one of the biggest riddles of the twentieth century: why did not the German people do more to assassinate Hitler or overthrow his regime? It is because the Germans were a civilized people, raised to have a basic respect for order. Even though they did not like it, the Barbarian Hitler achieved power working inside the system.

If faced with a Barbarian in an alley, a Citizen will fight back. If faced with a Barbarian with a government form, a Citizen is likely to give in and try to work within the system to stop the Barbarian. A stupid Barbarian becomes a criminal; a smart Barbarian becomes a politician.

The Social Contract

Occasionally some social planner, either from the right or the left, will react to opposition to the proposed plan by reminding people that resisting is wrong. The planner will do this by invoking the Social Contract and asserting that by living in society the person opposing the plan agreed to whatever "society" decides to do to that person. The only option, says the planner, is to leave society.

That version of the Social Contract is full of misunderstandings and fallacies.

To start with there is the basic confusion between "society" and "government." Even in a democracy the two are not the same. In a pure democracy, the government is 51% of the public. In a democratic republic the government consists of elected officials and hired bureaucrats and officers. In neither case is it true that the entire public "is" the government.

Second, the Social Contract describes the relationship between the people and the society, not the relationship between the individual and the government. While those two perspectives overlap, the key focus is that the people created a government to protect certain rights. The government is the agent of and not a party to the social contract.

According to such a Social Contract theory it is possible for the government to be the party that violates the social contract. When that happens then according to Social Contract theory the people have every right to declare the contract null and void and overthrow the government that is violating the contract.

By making the argument that people are bound by the Social Contract, the social planner is undercutting his own case. Since the planner is invariably proposing some violation of the rights of the individual in order to implement the plan, the planner is therefore proposing that the people rise up in rebellion against the planner.

In essence, the Social contract belongs to libertarians and not to statists.

But most importantly, the Social Contract is a myth. There is no such actual contract, it is an analogy used by enlightenment philosophers to try to understand the nature of the relationship between the people and the government. While the myth describes pre-government people getting together and agreeing to set up a social system, no such meeting ever occurred.

The first governments were primitive tribal governments that are descended from the primate bands of pre-human ancestors. The pre-human bands were groups of related hominids with a few leaders and several followers. The alphas were those who had first pick of any food or mates. These formed the basis of the first tribal governments, without the intervention of any meeting to establish a social contract. The first tribal government evolved into more complex structures with kings and other sorts of rulers.

Based on that perspective it becomes obvious that kings and presidents are nothing more than self-important chimpanzees who want first pick of food and mates. That rather lowers the prestige of those offices.

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See a very good analysis of the content of the social contract by Kent McManigal.