Almost Everyone is Enslaved in One of These Ways
We all live in an increasingly unfree world. It seems that every week we hear of new rules that make us less free. We often hear the mantra that taxation is theft. That’s true, of course, but I’d go one step further and say that taxation is slavery. Unless you can find a way to escape onerous tax systems the burden’s likely to increase every year. Collapsing economies and rising interest rates will make things much worse in the coming years.
Taxation
Everyone accepts that taking 100% of the value of someone’s labour is slavery. But when is it not slavery? Would forcing someone to work and only taking 75% of what they earn be slavery? What about 50%? 30%? The fact is that anything that’s taken by force from us enslaves us. Anyone living in a western country has at least 30% of their earnings confiscated. That’s just the start. From the remaining income people must buy essential items. That could be food, fuel for their vehicles or clothing. It’s all subject to more taxes. We pay property taxes for the homes that we live in.
We’re taxed on investments, on capital gains and a whole assortment of other things. If there’s anything left over they tax it when we die. Taxation is a tool used to enslave the masses.
Government ID Makes an Unfree World
Governments would like to to see us all branded like cattle. As they’re unable to do that physically, they force us to use government issued ID. For almost everything we want to do nowadays we’re asked for government issued ID. We need it when we open bank accounts, when we check into a hotel and of course when we cross international borders. Passports for international travel were introduced during the first world war. There were active campaigns to abolish them right up until the 1960s. Those campaigns failed.
A passport is one of the most important documents governments use to control us. I’d rather we didn’t need passports at all to travel around our planet. But as we do it’s better to have as many as possible. That way no one government can control us.
In an Unfree World Time is Stolen
Of all the things that government steals from us, time is perhaps the most important. Time is the one thing we can’t get any more of. The state robs us of our time in a multitude of different ways. From filling in complicated tax return forms to applying for a new drivers license or paying property taxes. The state takes away a significant portion of our lives with pointless bureaucracy. In facts not wasting time on pointless tasks demanded of us by the state could be the greatest single benefit of moving overseas.
Talking to expats in the tax haven of Monaco recently there was a consensus that one of the greatest benefits of living in a tax haven was never receiving mail or demands from the government. Once you complete the immigration paperwork to move to a tax haven you’ll mostly never hear from the government again. The only time you’ll have to deal with bureaucracy is to update your residence permit once every couple of years.
Conclusion
These are just 3 ways that the state makes an unfree world. But you don’t have to play along. It’s possible for everyone to escape the system. It’s possible to have second residences in different countries. You can make your assets untouchable. You can make the decision never to fill in another form or comply with time wasting demands of pointless bureaucrats. You can escape an unfree world by having multiple citizenships.
We all have a choice of the kind of life we want to lead. The choice is increasingly between slavery and freedom. As Albert Camus said said the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
