I’ve gotten myself into a bit of a jam. A series of natural disasters is barreling towards my home, and there is a severe shortage of resources and trained professionals available in my community to help me stave them off. So, I am putting out a call for any available public service personnel to help me protect my property. I’m willing to pay literally any amount of money, just so long as I don’t have to pay a fixed, reasonable amount of money in taxes regularly.
Look, I will give you the full balance of my Robinhood account. Money is no object. Unless, of course, that money will be added to a pool of community funds that would then be used to pay for the services I’m currently requesting. In that case, money is the only object. After all, why should I pay a small amount to help myself and my community when I can pay an exorbitant amount just to help myself? Taxation is theft, but price gouging is just good business. So gouge me all you want. Just don’t trample my freedoms by taxing me.
Seriously, I don’t care how much it costs. Take every dime I have. But know this: I would level my house to the ground before I paid slightly higher property taxes to fund infrastructure that would prevent a landslide from leveling my house to the ground.
You might be questioning the economics of my position. You might say that it would be more financially beneficial for me to simply make regular contributions to a governing body that sets up services for myself and my neighbors. That by combining resources with my fellow citizens, I would get the same help I now desperately need for a fraction of the cost. And you’re probably correct. But the truth is, it’s not about the money. You see, taxes are an implicit acknowledgment that I exist within society and not above it. That my fate is tethered to the fate of humanity at large. That I am not the special little boy I’ve always believed myself to be.
I will pay anything to deny this reality, even if it makes me objectively worse off. That’s why I’ll give up everything I own to save my home, and absolutely nothing to save both my home and the homes of my neighbors.
And before you ask, yes, I believe this holds true for all of our, or more accurately, all of MY biggest problems. Why use tax dollars to fund public health research when, in the event of a pandemic, I can just spend millions building myself a hermetically sealed chamber? Why pay a modest transportation tax to build a subway system when I can throw billions of investor dollars at a high-tech underground network of tunnels that is definitely not in any way just a glorified subway system for rich people? Why pay a carbon tax to offset climate change when I can simply buy a new, completely uninsurable megamansion after each inevitable disaster?
I’m even investing in my own personal asteroid defense system for if/when a giant meteor threatens to strike. I just have to figure out how to save the planet for myself without also saving it for everyone else. Otherwise, that would be collectivism, which is basically what taxation is all about.
Oh lord, my home is about to be swept away in a flood. Can you all help me? Please?
