I’m sure that I ruffled a few feathers when I stated that taxation is no different from robbery and can be equated to slavery. We have been conditioned to think that “we” have a right to other persons’ tax money. If rich people or corporations use loopholes to lessen their tax burden, most Americans feel that they stole from “us.” Somehow, protecting your money from theft makes you a thief. I can sympathize with this thought process, though. Bombs are expensive and the rich should pay their fair share. Those middle eastern children won’t blow up themselves, you know. We need all the tax money we can get.

Anyway, if you disagree that taxation is slavery (but refer to persons who voluntary work at a company as “wage slaves”) then please walk me through your mind for a minute. I’ll present you with a hypothetical scenario and I’d like you to tell me what you think. All right, here we go.

Scenario 1

A man named George is living on a plantation in the American South, circa 1850. He doesn’t want to live there, but he’s forced to. George must get up early every day and pick cotton for his master. George must pick cotton or else he will be punished. Usually this punishment is getting whipped, but if he adamantly refuses to comply, he may be tied down or shot. He may only live on the plantation in a specially designated house that his family had to build themselves. Only after a hard day’s work can George go home to tend to his own needs. The cotton that he picked will be sold by his master, who will keep 100% of the money.

Do you think George is a slave? Well, I should certainly hope so. The main characteristics of his life are as follows:

• He must live and work where the government tells him.
• He must relinquish 100% of his property.
• He must comply with all demands made of him or he will be punished.
• He does not have recognized sovereignty–the master may kill him, but not vice versa.

These are all hallmarks of slavery. You might want to add that the work George must do is very hard and this was another hallmark of slavery, but this work was actually quite light compared to the work slaves did in Brazil during the 18th and 19th centuries, or Poles during the 20th century German occupation. Slaves in the US were unique because they lived long enough to breed. Most Brazilian slaves died within five years of being imported from Africa because the work and environment were lethally difficult. So back-breaking work isn’t necessarily a condition of slavery, right? Someone could bring up the case that if George were truly a slave, he’d already be dead. I hope you disagree with that, because it’ll come in handy for scenario 2.

Scenario 2

George’s master notices that the North is far more industrialized than the South, and much richer. The master likes the sound of this, so he decides to change George’s lot. He figures that if he sets George to more profitable work than cotton, the whole plantation will be richer for it. So now George’s work is quite different. Now George can choose his own workplace and place of residence as long as it is inside the town where the master and his friends live. In order that George should be motivated to earn more money, he is allowed to retain up to 70% of his earnings- the master only keeps 30% for himself. But in order to squeeze money out of George through more subtle means, the master requires George to commute to work in a specific way. If George wants to walk, it must only be in designated paths. If he wants to ride a carriage, he must buy a letter of passage from his master, allowing him to ride without being whipped. Of course, in order to keep George in line, a taskmaster continues to follow him about with whip at the ready. If George breaks one of his master’s many arbitrary whims, he will be punished. He may be whipped, or have an additional portion of his 70% earnings confiscated, or so on. George’s master uses some of the ill-gotten gains to build a church next to his plantation. The church was paid for with money that was taken from George. Whether George chooses to attend that church or not, he paid for it anyway. George must remain a subject of his master for all his life; for he can only leave on his master’s own terms. The master may set his price of freedom at an astronomically high price, or have George captured if he stops paying the 30% fee after leaving for another master.

The characteristics of George’s life are now thus:

• He may choose where to work and live, as long as it is inside boundaries set by his master.
• He is allowed to keep up to 70% of his earnings before fees and fines.
• He may freely use the church that the master built next to the plantation.
• He does not have to crawl to work; he may walk or ride in a carriage as long as he follows his master’s rules and pays whatever fees are levied for the privilege.
• As long as George follows the rules and keeps quiet, he will probably never be whipped.

Is George still a slave? His lot in life is much more luxurious than it was previously. Just as the slave in Brazil would wish to work on the plantation, so would every plantation slave wish he were George. But is George still a slave? He no longer has to relinquish 100% of his earnings to his master, so we must ask, “At what percentage does the seizure of earnings cease to be slavery?” Yes, George may keep up to 70% of his earnings, but his everyday life is still dictated by the whims of a greedy and cruel master. He will still be whipped by the taskmaster if he disobeys and he must still do what his master says, whether on the plantation or off. Furthermore, he knows that it is the seizure of his own earnings that pays for the taskmaster’s watchful gaze. Yet if he were to complain, a fellow “free” slave would rebuke him for not appreciating what he has, and for scoffing at the church that the benevolent master built for him. Now let’s look at the final scenario.

Scenario 3

George is transported to the 21st century where his master no longer lives in a plantation house. His master now works from within a marble dome in the capital city. There is a 40% chance that George will be forced to purchase a license for his job. He must also purchase a license if he wishes to run his own business. George is free as long as the government regulates his every action. He must buy a license in order to get married, cut down a tree on his own land, go fishing, breed dogs, or any number of other things. George must every day contend with the frustration of being told what he can or cannot eat, consume, say, buy, sell, rent, lease, or create. Any inventive idea that George comes up with must be subjected to a lengthy and expensive review by an uncaring bureaucracy. Any money that George saves will invariably start to diminish in value over time because of inflation. Although George is constantly reassured that he is a free man, he must continue to pay up to and exceeding 30% of his earnings to his master. Refusal to do so will result in George being threatened with additional fees or being caged. The men who would cage George will be paid from money that the masters took from George’s paychecks. George knows that because of well-intentioned government policies, his chances of being caged are very high as a young, black male.

If George wishes to leave the US, he must do so according to the whims of his masters. They will charge around $4,000 to start the process for revoking citizenship, and even after George moved to another country he would still have to pay his American masters a percentage of his income–all while being subjected to the whims of his new masters also. George knows that at every moment a minion of his masters is spying on him, reading all of his communications and watching his every move. His masters could, at any moment, have him killed by raining down death from the sky and there is nothing he or his family could do about it. His sovereignty as a being is not recognized, but the sovereignty of his masters is. Although George can choose where to live and where to work (within certain boundaries, both physical and imaginary), he knows that he is very much a slave. He still picks the cotton at his masters’ discretion and they keep however much they want. Whenever George complains, a more loyal slave rebukes him, defending the masters that oppress them both. An ingenious system has arisen, in which  government indoctrination camps begin to brainwash children as young as five years old; by the time these children are eighteen, they are lifelong drones of the state. Of course, the funding for these camps comes from George’s paychecks, whether he wants to enroll his children in them or not.

Now tell me, what’s the difference between George and you? The main difference is that you are much more likely to think that you are free. You have been taught to believe that because you’re allowed to vote, that you can be an active participant in the democratic process. The government isn’t really oppressing you; they’re just looking out for your best interests. Sure, the government messes up, but it’s far better than having freedom. If you don’t like it you can always work within the system to change it, because a corrupt system can easily be used to fight corruption, right? You are told again and again, “You are free. Now do as I say.” If Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was correct when he said, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free,” then patriots are much more slaves than the slaves ever were.

The all-encompassing definition of slavery is the infringement upon the freedom of association. All freedom is, invariably, freedom of association. If someone is protecting your freedom of speech, it means that you are able to, without punishment, associate with whichever ideas or thoughts you wish. If no one is encroaching upon a person’s freedom to own property, then it means that a person is allowed to be associated with whichever property he wishes. And every true freedom also includes its opposite. If you are free to do something, you are also free to abstain from it. After all, if you choose to drink milk, then at that moment you are simultaneously associating with milk and disassociating with wine. If you are free to speak, you are free to remain silent, for the freedom of association with speech necessarily includes the freedom of disassociation with speech. Every freedom on Earth is in essence the freedom of association, and every freedom must also include its own opposite. Slavery is really just the infringement by one party on the freedom of association of another. George was a slave because he was forced to associate with the plantation, forced to associate with its master, forced to disassociate from the fruits of his labor and the reward thereof. Anyone who is forced to associate with the US and its constitution is likewise a slave. If you are free as an American citizen, then you are equally free to be a non-citizen without penalty or pain. To say, “You signed a social contract at birth and now you owe America your allegiance and tax dollars,” is no different from telling a slave that he signed a social contract by being born on a plantation. I never signed any such contract, and I never will. I never signed the Constitution or any other law. I never told Congress to be my representatives, and I never told police to be my taskmasters. If a contract may be forced upon a person without him signing it, then its terms are not the terms of a contract, but the conditions of his enslavement. If a government can be said to be moral because it is a Constitutional Republic, then a lynching may be said to be moral because it is democratic. It is a great sin that we tell all persons, “If you commit the crime of being born within certain imaginary borders, then you become the property of whichever imaginary entity and of whichever persons pretend to have authority over you.”

On the third and final page, I will demonstrate a perfect example of cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias. You will also be able to see a bit of explanation of a previous statement I made. I said earlier that eventually, you will come to find out that every excuse or justification made in defense of “government” is wrong not only morally, but also factually.