Taxation is a Form of Censorship

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Taxation is a form of censorship.

It prevents citizens from expressing their own purchasing choices in the marketplace, and forces them to conform and contribute to government choices instead.

Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
The great-great-great-granddaughter of Adam Smith.
Posted on X, December 20, 2024

This is an interesting way to think about it. I can’t say that she is wrong. But I’m not sure there is practical alternative to at least some limited form of government.

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7 thoughts on “Taxation is a Form of Censorship”

  1. Well ya, OK? I’m of the mind we should try Capt. Nim’s solution. (in the John Wayne movie, green berets).
    “I go home someday. First, kill all stinking cong. Then go home.”
    To me the problem isn’t taxes so much as the amount of them, and how they get used.
    And having “Cong”, in your government only exacerbates those problems.
    And Nim’s solution, though not a total cure for government overreach. Would certainly pair it back to a somewhat more manageable standard.
    Plus, it would set a fine example for many generations to come.
    And why not? Congism is a crime against humanity after all.

  2. She’s definitely talking about the targeted forms of taxation: sin taxes, taxes on guns and ammo, etc. Those are all the “nudging” taxes intended for the government to put its big clumsy ignorant simplistic thumb on the market. All the various taxes on different income types at different levels are also an imposition of legislator preferences over ours. A neutral tax on all income, or all business transactions, or usage fees that are not used for general revenue doesn’t have that skewing effect.

    She is also talking about spending. We have so much taxation because the taxes are being used to implement legislative preferences over our own. Who wouldn’t have rather had all that Social Security tax taken over the years and put it into a better retirement plan, or just keep it to use as you see fit?
    Rather than welfare, wouldn’t it have better gone to a church or civic organization with a capped 2% overhead, rather than the massive overhead of the government bureaucracies?
    Rather than having veterans suffer at the indifferent hands of the VA, a better, more efficient use of that money would be to establish a monetary amount for the service-related conditions and just put those monthly payments into either a HSA or health insurance plan of the veteran’s choosing.
    Rather than the haphazard nature of foreign aid, how about the federal government be banned from using involuntary taxes for that purpose, but they can establish funds that will receive voluntary contributions from citizens for specific (or general) purposes, such as delivering food to the hungry rather than funding to the foreign government allegedly for food for the hungry but actually for gold-plated toilets for the Supreme Leader.
    Of course, this covers all the government-directed subsidies: payments to farmers not to farm, and the like. I can understand why government might subsidize a domestic steel mills or electronics factories that are outcompeted on price by a foreign competition for strategic defense purposes, but that is the kind of thing that has to be re-evaluated year by year, but that is better done with a buy-American defense contract with a little clause that says “be capable to expand to a larger production volume of X within 90 days” for a negotiated amount, rather than just an undifferentiated open-ended payoff.

    • Also per SCOTUS, excessive taxation on a right constitutes infringement. At least for 1A. Need to expand to 2A

  4. If government were limited to the specific and literal allowances and powers given in the Constitution, I would think that Alice Smith is right and that these issues would go away. As we have allowed it to grow, government, at all levels, will always get the money it wants, not the money it (we) truly need it to have. Our biggest problem in reversing this is the fact that the government has no compunction for using deadly force to obtain what it wants in specific instances and as a form of terror to force, through fear, compliance from those not yet dead. And with so many people already compromised by government employment, there is a very significant number of people whose souls have already been seduced and thus purchased by the power inherent in government that they see no problem with the immoral exercise of such government power and are willing to wield it.

  5. Two Thumbs Up, Powerwagon!

    The Declaration of Independence states only one purpose for legitimate government, and that is to protect individuals’ God given rights. “… that to protect these rights governments are instituted among men….”

    Our Washington State Constitution, enacted roughly 100 years later, recognizes that our rights come from God. “… grateful to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe for our liberties….”
    And then in the very first Article of our Constitution states that “governments… are established to preserve and maintain individual rights”.

    These are unambiguous statements. It seems obvious to me that any legislation that is enacted in the name of the people, that would diminish in any way the people’s individual rights, is contrary to any legitimate authority leant to government by the people for the sole ststed purpose of preserving and maintaining individual rights. Therefore. any such legislation would be illegal on its face, Unlawful, and immediately void.

    The main reason that our republican form of government doesn’t work the way the Founders intended is that there is no immediate remedy and substantive punishment for legislative and judicial lawlessness.

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