You are a slave
The vast majority of your income goes to taxes, and you don't even know it
Slaves have the vast majority of their labour forcefully taken from them; they are forced - under the threat of violence - to essentially work for others.
Defining slavery
If most of your income goes to someone other than you without you voluntarily making that choice, then you essentially work for that someone more than you work for yourself; against your will no less. You are a slave. And if you can’t admit this fact to yourself, then you are the worst kind of slave: a mentally enslaved one.
Depending on the status of slavery, slaves may be given some freedom to move, change owners, keep some pocket money, or reap rewards for brutalizing other slaves on behalf of their masters. Slaves are even allowed to have children to grow the livestock of their owners: more slaves for the slave owners.
Slaves get to “spend” some of the wealth they produce because their masters have to feed them, provide them with food and clothing, and give them basic medical care, like all livestock. All slaves get to “keep” some of their “income.”
This brings us to the modern slave… the worst kind of slave in history… the deluded one who imagines himself free.
Free-range grass-fed livestock yields better meat, milk, eggs, and even productivity: many livestock are still used for manual labour. This is the role of the human livestock. As The Architect in ‘The Matrix: Reloaded” put it, slaves are more productive, content, and sustainable if they nurture the illusion of freedom of choice.
Your owners give you some room to move freely, even if you still need permission to move. Your owners propagandise you from birth (indoctrination via state-funded schooling, mass media, influencers, and entertainment) to believe that you are somehow free because you learned meaningless buzzwords like “democracy,” “free world” or “bill of rights.”
So, you are the worst of the worst of slaves: bereft of logic, dignity, and courage to at least acknowledge your own slave status. Without this bold recognition - this honesty to admit to yourself how things truly are - you stand no chance to see your shackles, let alone break them.
“The only way to escape the prison is to see it.”
- Morpheus, The Matrix
“Do you think that’s air you’re breathing now?”
Do you think you keep your income? Do you even think you keep half of your income? Think again.
Depending on where you live on this government-infested planet, you might pay an income tax of 10% to 60%. You might be fine with it (even when others aren’t) because you assume that the rest of your income is enough, or that the pathetic “services” you receive from the coerced monopoly of centralized threat-based government are somehow worth it.
Yes, this is the rationalization of the hopeless slave: “Where else could I get food and shelter?” Indeed, if you think this way, then slavery is what you deserve. But we are not all fated to be slaves. And your ‘willing slave’ mentality only enables the enslavement of unwilling slaves.
Income tax and social security/insurance to the government are not all you pay in taxes.
Do you think that at least your “net” income is yours? Think again.
The biggest part of any price tag is taxes
Every price you see in this unfree market is comprised mostly of indirect and hidden taxes.
What are indirect/hidden taxes?
They are fees you pay without even realising it. You assume that the only taxes you pay as a private individual are income tax and social security/insurance. And you don’t protest (or consider this unfair) because you assume that the miserable excuse for overpriced government “services” - a coerced monopoly, no less - is somehow “worth” this extortion of taxation.
That’s not all you are forced to pay in taxes…
The “net” income you are allowed to keep is further slashed by even more and more types of taxation. Depending on where you live and what you buy, every price tag is primarily made from taxes incurred on the business that sets those prices.
In a free unhindered market, businesses are subject to relentless competition, so they have every incentive to lower their price margins as much as they can before they become unfeasible and unsustainable. This is fair, and the direct beneficiary is the consumer.
But when businesses are forced by the stage to take the burden of taxation, they cannot cut the prices any lower than what would cover their costs and said taxes.
What are those taxes?
Different regions have different names for indirect/hidden taxes, and these taxes apply differently depending on the product or service.
Generally, the largest part of every price tag is made of the following indirect/hidden taxes:
corporate tax.
sales tax or “Value” Added Tax (VAT) (they even mock us with the name).
energy/carbon/environment tax.
tariffs and import duties, or customs tax.
licensing fees.
other meaningless bureaucratic “fees,” “charges,” and “penalties,” depending on the case.
payment processing fees (payment processors receive these, but this is still the fault of government forcing businesses - through taxation - to only use the government’s fiat currency.
unnecessary legal and compliance expenses (yes, these are also a form of tax because it goes directly to the lobbyists who bribe government to make their bullshit needless services mandatory).
Businesses are forced to incorporate their taxes in the price tag. What did you think was going to happen? All this “taxation of the rich” nonsense only keeps hurting the poor: All taxation inevitably transfers to the end consumer.
These are all arbitrary taxes decided by fat, corrupt, atherosclerotic bureaucrats without any justification as to why they are so high, or where those taxes go.
Let us not forget inflation!
Inflation is another form of unavoidable hidden tax. As the atrocious government creates more of its bullshit fiat currency (deceptively calling it “money supply adjustment” or “quantitative easing” (QE)), the currency already in circulation loses more and more of its value becomes it becomes diluted: the same more or less supply of goods and services is represented by more units of currency. Sure, the excess money supply may stimulate the economy to produce more in the short term, but the beneficiaries of this excess are always the first to receive this excess money and those who don’t get to pay the price of the inevitable recession. Economic growth by money supply alone is not sustainable. What did you think those economic cycles were?
So, all this money supply manipulation (creating fake money out of thin air) is the only reason prices keep going up faster than your income, and why the poor keep getting poorer while the ultra-rich keep getting richer.
Government needs taxation
Many people erroneously assume that the government does not need taxes, since it can finance its activities by “printing” more and more fake fiat currency. This is false.
The only thing that gives perceived “value” to fiat currency is the violence of the state, which it uses to force businesses to pay taxes in that fiat currency. If the government created a fiat currency but never asked businesses to pay taxes in that currency, then you can bet that no business would charge anything in that fiat currency. They’d use precious metals, cryptos, deposit certificates, or any other financial instrument that the market would organically make valuable. Why would any business choose to use a fake fiat currency, backed by nothing, that keeps losing value? Free markets always find a way… money supply included.
So, taxation is vital to government. It is what keeps its fake fiat currency “valuable” in the minds of its users. This is why a coordinated mass tax strike is the only thing that can defeat any government.
The reality of taxation
These taxes give zero value to you or the business with which you conduct voluntary transactions. Taxes are simply tributes to your warlord or feudal lord. These are simply permits to hunt in the king’s woods, permission by the highwayman to pass, or “protection” money to the mafia (protecting you from themselves).
And this is what centralized coercive government is: a band of warlords and slave masters who not only own your body, but they own your mind as well. Not only have they enslaved you physically, but spiritually as well, as they deny you even the dignity of knowing you are a slave. They treat you as if you are free, and broken as you are, you begin to believe it, and you begin to love your oppressor for his occasional kindness in between abuses - Stockholm syndrome.
At least traditional, more honest slave masters gave you the courtesy to name things are they were. And they also respected you enough to use direct force to take from you what they wanted; today’s slave masters rape your mind so that you willingly give them what they want from you, and you even call it “fair” and a “small price to pay to live in a civilized society.” If this is civilized, then give me chaos and barbarity any day of the week.
Modern slavery
You are a slave in body, mind, and spirit. At least traditional slaves of the past had the courage, honesty, and dignity to acknowledge their serfdom. They didn’t delude themselves with gay false optimism that kept them down and oblivious. They occasionally revolted.
They were reluctant, recalcitrant, and deliberately unproductive, which led to their masters finally understanding that the slave collars needed to be loosened. The consequence was the masters had to work much harder to keep their slaves brainwashed and in line; the masters’ benefit, though, was higher productivity from free-range grass-fed livestock.
Regardless, this teaches us one thing: when slaves become recalcitrant and deliberately unproductive, they become a liability to their masters, and the masters begin to fear. The masters must make concessions. And where they give an inch, we must take miles.
We can debate which kind of slave is better: the traditional honest slave, or the modern deluded slave. You could argue that modern ignorance is bliss. But the fact remains: if we have the honesty to discard false optimism, and the courage to accept our harsh reality, we can get the slave masters to kneel before us.
Only by acknowledging your shackles can you ever hope to break them.
Conclusion
Traditional slaves at least were granted the respect of honesty: they were slaves and they were allowed to know this truth. They were allowed to see the evil of their slavery, and they were granted by their masters the courtesy of honest direct violence. Slaves were allowed to be indignant of their masters.
Modern slaves, on the other hand, are not spared the indignity of willingly doing the work of calculating their own tax tribute, and then delivering them to their masters on by themselves
Traditional slaves were honestly stolen from. Modern slaves are not even allowed to acknowledge this reality.
You need to lose false hope, you need to be sad and angry, and you need to embrace your doom, if you could ever hope to stand a chance at maybe doing something about it, and maybe winning.
Demolish the false idols of false hope.
Let yourself sink to the seafloor; only then will you be able to push off to the surface.
The biggest loser is he who deludes himself he’s a winner when he demonstrably is not. It takes guts to accept you’re losing. It takes courage to accept you’ve been beaten.
If you can’t admit to yourself that you’ve lost the battle, you will never make a meaningful effort to win the war.
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your time. All my work here is free.
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Recommended reading
‘Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy’ by Robert P. Murphy
‘No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority’ by Lysander Spooner
‘For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto’ by Murray N. Rothbard
‘Power and Market: Government and the Economy’ by Murray N. Rothbard
‘Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market’ by Murray N. Rothbard
‘The Enterprise Of Law: Justice Without The State’ by Bruce L. Benson
‘The Machinery of Freedom: A Guide to Radical Capitalism’ by David Friedman
I know this one all too well. We’re stuck in The Matrix.
Once you see the reality you can’t unsee. Had a discussion the other night with someone who could not understand that government is not necessary. That taxes are not a good thing. They took the old “doing my part” stance. It was kind of pathetic to hear.