First, the “bulwark” had fallen quite a while ago. The extend of government powers is not limited – there is no aspect of individual’s life where government intervention is legally out of bounds.
Property rights, freedom of association, freedom of contract, family, parenting, speech and thought – you have only as much of those as the government allows you. What’s worst, most of the sheople would not even believe anything is wrong with it since you have a right to vote for someone or other.
Now to the taxing scheme. Taxing landowners (or owners of capital in general) makes a lot of sense – as long as the voting is also restricted to the same people as it used to be.
The owners of the capital are the people most interested in long-term increase of capital value of the country, so to speak – since they own it and benefit from the gains or suffer from the losses.
Such people are not inclined to increase the current consumption at the expense of capital exhaustion like modern politicians and mass voters do. There is a very good reason while democracies always destroy the societies they afflict.
You see, in the old days all the land was thought to actually belong to the king.
Not true. Kings in western societies were landowners, just like any other people. Their power to tax came from other sources. In fact, in England it was not the crown but the parliament that had most of the power to tax – and the courts were known to upheld the tax disputes against the kings.
Sure, kings always tried to usurp more powers - and were successfully resisted. Only when the government allied with masses against independent landowners/nobles that the balance of powers was broken and monopoly established. Modern concept of State did not even exist in the West untill well into 17 century.
Just being self-sufficient is not profitable in itself, so eventually they'd come with guns and take your land from you if you just lived independently on your own land.
All property taxes in this country are local. If you homestead outside of an incorporated municiplality – or create/incorporate a municipality that would not levy property taxes. On the other hand federal courts were known to force the municipalities to impose taxes to provide public education – which is now supposedly some kind of a universal “right”.
Anyway, you are living under an unlimited government – government being a geographic monopoly on violence, though US actually claims jurisdiction and taxing powers over people even outside its borders – so if you have something that the government wants, be it money, cannon fodder or example for others, you are screwed.
But the underlying idea, that citizens of a country collectively contribute to the defense of the country via a government, is not illegitimate.
What if I do not care to defend myself against whatever you are afraid of? You are saying you are justified to invade, rob and kidnap me now (and kill me if I resist) in order to provide my protection against Kaiser Wilhelm or Martians crossing the ocean and invading me in some hypothetical future? Yeah, right.
Government grabs our stuff because it is monopoly on violence, period. It may ignore invasion by millions of illegal aliens or commit aggression against countries that could not possibly threaten us and still tax as much as it wants. It may confiscate our weapons, grass, gold, houses, income or children. Because it can.
Just cut the crap about “collectively contribute” utopian fantasy. What’s the point of moralizing if the armed goons are going to force or kill me if I do not agree with you in the end?
miko
