Is it Time?
I’ve seen this comment, or one very much like it, several places around the Web:
Only one solution… if the bastards have no money, they can not steal it. Tax revolt 2010. Don’t send the IRS anything. Pass it on.
This is what Billy Beck has been advocating for as long as I’ve been reading him. It’s actually a pretty good idea, but it depends on significant buy-in by the tax-paying population – enough that imprisoning us becomes a significant problem, and confiscating our property must be made as difficult as possible. Onesy-twoseys like Wesley Snipes are easy “example” targets. Flood the system with these cases, and that’s a problem of a different order.
So now we have unemployment at about 10%. Is ten percent of the population enough? Would it take twenty? Twenty-five? And what exactly happens when the .govs – Federal, state and local – can’t fund their daily operations, much less their pyramid schemes? “Starve the beast” is the challenge, but we all have a pretty good idea of what a starving beast can do.
I’ve said previously that one thing that struck me on my first reading of Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was that after the plotters decided to revolt against the Lunar Authority, the first thing they did was go about making the lives of their fellow citizens worse, and antagonizing that government to be the agent of that worsening. It was necessary in order to motivate the majority of the population to stand up and say “ENOUGH!”
A tax-revolt won’t do that. It’ll be people “not paying their fair share” etc, etc. But would it be possible for people to just drop off the IRS radar entirely? No principled stand, middle finger held high, just walk away. How would they go about doing that? CAN a significant chunk of the contributors to this society “go Galt”? What would be the actual result?