So, if you regard taxes as “inherently” coercive you are taking a political position that ignores the collective responsibility we all have for the proper functioning of government. Those who cultivate this attitude in themselves or others are being irresponsible. They are shirking their duty.
It is a childish position.
Don’t be childish.
Science
The nature of being human must be inherently determined by what we require in order to have well-being. The causes of well-being are more commonly known as needs. There is rigorous scientific model for distinguishing needs from mere desires that has been developed by the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) community. SDT necessarily gives us insights into human nature. This is a link to a 15 minute video that explains the science of needs in the context of education.
Freedom
Humans are universally recognized as yearning to be free. Having a precise model of how that yearning occurs in human experience through the lens of the well-established psychological model of SDT means we can more precisely define freedom. Freedom is proximately about having our needs satisfied, but freedom is ultimately about enabling each and every individual person to contribute productively to the collectives that make that individual freedom possible. Infancy and childhood present a challenge because infants are literally helpless and their freedom is severely constrained. Parents and other adults who care for children must contend with the fact that the children in their custody are in a transition from utter helplessness to empowered agency. There is a risk that adults who do not provide adequate need support for the children in their care are training them for a lifetime of oppression.
Oppression
Oppression is proximately the neglect and/or thwarting of needs, but ultimately the use of collective powers to prevent some people’s needs from being satisfied either through direct acts against those people’s efforts to satisfy their needs or systematically preventing them from having access to whatever resources would enable them to satisfy their needs (a.k.a. structural oppression).
Liberation
Liberation from oppression requires both the removal of barriers to need satisfying resources and actively educating the oppressed folks about their restored freedoms. An educated person is one who perceives accurately, thinks clearly and acts effectively on self-selected goals and aspiration that are appropriate to their situation without necessarily being aware that any of those things are happening. Education is centrally about the agency to act in community; it is only peripherally concerned with the tools of our culture, such as academics. The centrality of agency follows from the fact that it is an unwavering necessity across all time and space while the choice of which tools (such as academics) to use in any given situation will vary according to accidents of history and society.
Equity
Equity is ownership of the collective in which we are embedded. Ownership means that we have the power to contribute to the governance of the collective, to participate in making the decisions that will affect us, and to participate in resolving the conflicts that we experience as a consequence of collective decisions and of the behavior of others. Achieving equity requires four elements: 1) define needs scientifically (SDT), 2) distribute resources fairly to satisfy needs, 3) remove structural barriers to need satisfaction, and 4) satisfy needs with parity across groups.
Inspired by Dover, M. A. (2019) A Needs-based Partial Theory of Human Injustice: Oppression, Dehumanization, Exploitation, and Systematic Inequality in Opportunities to Address Human Needs. Humanity & Society, 43(4) pp. 442-483. DOI: 10.1177/0160597619832623
Stupidity is celebrating charitable donations while denigrating the creation of a society in which charities are not necessary because of taxes paying for government services. Before claiming false equivalence, read the notes.
Notes:
I’ll get to the equivalence point in a moment.
Complaining that government collection of taxes is coercive is childish.
Consider a 3-year old boy who wants ice cream for breakfast and gets a healthy meal served to him instead.
There are consequences for the behaviors that follow.
If he refuses the food, he goes hungry.
If he refuses long enough concerned parents might even coerce him into eating.
In any case, we recognize that the demand for unhealthy food is a normal behavior for a small child and we provide food that we know is appropriate.
The childish demand is ignored but food is still provided.
Now, let’s fast forward to the child becoming old enough to work.
At 15, 16, or 17 years old it is reasonable to demand that the child contribute to the common good, to the family system that provides that healthy food.
What if the child refuses to contribute?
As a caregiver we cannot starve them, but we are empowered to ensure that the teenager’s food is contingent on some form of contribution.
We need to be sensitive to their needs, but we also need to ensure that they are maturing into an adult who will contribute to the common good.
The government is like the parent of a child in the sense that it takes on tasks that a childish person does not realize are contributing to the common good.
That is what government of the people, by the people, for the people is all about.
Regarding equivalence: Governance consists of making decisions and resolving the conflicts that arise from the decisions that were made.
All organizations are forms of government.
The mechanisms of funding (coercive or voluntary) do not relieve them of the burden of making decisions and resolving the conflicts that arise from the decisions that were made.
If you perceive taxes as coercive, that is your childishness on display.
You should be ashamed.
I don’t want to contract for infrastructure, make weather predictions, nor enforce safety rules in mines.
Those things are necessary to the proper functioning of our society, so the common good demands that those things be done.
As an adult I am expected to contribute to that common good through taxes because neither charities nor businesses are the right mechanism for supplying those things.
And if you think they are that is a conflict that has to be resolved through the proper mechanisms of governance, not according to the childish whims of one person.
Refusing to pay your fair share and complaining that the resulting consequences are coercive is childish.
Don’t be childish.
I am creating a series of memes that portray Trump as the Anti-Trust.
Taking such an overtly political stand outside of education might seem like a departure from my usual modus operandi, so I shall explain.
The core of my work in education is about making the case that trust is central to learning and teaching.
Specifically, trust arises out of the satisfaction of needs.
Another way to say it is that trust is a by-product of experiencing equity.
There are four practical steps for producing experiences of equity:
(Numbers 2, 3, and 4 are slightly modified versions of consensus definition of equity presented by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.)
Understand that this equity recipe is universal to all humans.
That understanding gives you the key to my inspiration for creating the “Trump: the Anti-Trust” memes.
Nearly everything I have heard about how the Trump administration is managing the federal bureaucracy leads me to believe that they are consistently undermining equity and destroying trust in the federal government.
They are distributing resources unfairly.
They are destroying institutions that are supposed to remove structural barriers to the satisfaction of needs.
They are erecting structural barriers to need satisfaction.
And it all stems from Trump.
This description of Trump by Michael Lewis in his interview with Stephen Colbert inspired me.
He said, "He likes chaos.
"If I’m trying to predict what Donald Trump is going to do and where he’s going to go, one rule is look for where there is trust in the world and he will try to destroy it.
"He’s really uncomfortable with trust.
"And I think there is a logic to it.
"The logic to it is, he himself is untrustworthy.
"And I don’t mean that as an insult.
"It’s just true, right?
"He lies all the time, and when he says something true it’s kind of an accident.
"He stiffs people on deals, all that.
"That’s the way he thinks you move through the world.
"If we’re in a world in which we trust each other, he’s at a disadvantage, he doesn’t belong.
"But if he eliminates trust between people, he’s leveled the playing field.
"He gets the world into a place where he’s good at it."
This is the most sensible explanation of Trump I’ve ever heard.
I have been against Trump-ism all along, but this description of his attitude to the world crystalized the distinction between Trump-ism and conservatism.
Conservatism seeks to conserve something valuable in our society.
Conservatives rely on trust, not the opposite.
I respect conservatism.
I see myself as this kind of conservative.
In my books I have clearly stated that I am anti-bureaucracy.
This commitment might seem to imply that I might be in favor of the DOGE program, but that is not true.
DOGE is not anti-bureaucratic, DOGE is unprincipled wanton destruction of valuable institutions that exist for the purpose of removing structural barriers to need satisfaction.
DOGE is led by and is only serving the interests of Trump and his cronies.
It is the essence of Trump-ism.
Trump-ism is neither progressive nor conservative, it is not even anti-bureaucratic, it is crony-ism.
I want government to progress away from bureaucracy.
I want to conserve the equity and trust building institutions of the federal government.
I am against crony-ism, regardless of which party it might be aligned with.
Trump-ism is a brand of crony-ism, so I am against it.
For a deep dive into the foundations of my politics read my post entitled First Principles for Political Realism
Recent events in my home country of the United States of America have prompted me to extend my perspective on equity in education beyond the schoolhouse. I have been striving to rethink education from first principles for over two decades. Evidence that I’ve made some progress is that The Independent Press Association gave my book Schooling for Holistic Equity awards in both Psychology and Education. Now, the political situation in my nation has taken such a tragic and foreboding turn that I cannot help but apply what I’ve discovered more broadly.
My perspective is primarily grounded in the science of Self-Determination Theory, the most widely respected and productive model of human psychological needs, motivation, and engagement in the world today. The principles I am sharing today go beyond that scientific grounding into the realm of politics. Given my presence on a few social media platforms my biases are easily discoverable. For eight years I was the co-founder and primary administrator for Portland Clean Air which fights industrial air pollution in Oregon. That suggests that I tend to favor the left side of the political spectrum in the USA, though I think there are valid and important criticisms of both major parties. I may have once or twice been registered as a Democrat decades ago but have not been affiliated with either of the two major parties since. The point being that I have aspired to a degree of independence from the ideological commitments of the major political parties; this is also consistent with my educational perspective. I have criticisms of both progressive and conservative sides in the education arena, too. My aspiration is to ground my critiques as solidly as possible in science, though going beyond that limited realm is necessary.
I believe that the first principles that I have posited for education have relevance to our current political situation, both nationally and globally. My principles below start off with a bold statement about what makes the United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child meaningful. The current events here in the USA show that the current executive branch has abandoned almost all meaningful pretense that the constitution, and the Bill of Rights specifically, are relevant to their policies. What makes my perspective unique is that mainstream schools, public, private, and charter have never even put up a pretense that the UNCRC was relevant to their policies here in the USA. We are the only nation in the world that has not ratified that particular convention. The fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of children must now be extended to a fight against institutional reluctance to honor the rights of the entire population of the USA.
I. The United States Bill of Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child are meaningless unless they are used to achieve pervasive need satisfaction (a.k.a. liberty and justice) FOR ALL
I.A. Human rights are legal fictions that are useful for dealing with reality, they are neither real nor fantastical
I.A.1. Griffins, nifflers, and unicorns are fantastical beasts that are not real
I.A.1.a. They are only useful to those who profit from talking about them and those who are entertained by that kind of talk
I.A.2. Center of gravity, zero, and mind are useful fictions but they are not fantastical
I.A.2.a. They are broadly useful for understanding unseen features of reality
I.A.3. Rights are useful fictions for systematically creating a societal pattern of pervasive need satisfaction (see item II.)
I.B. Proper enforcement of human rights will create equity (except for the legal ownership aspect stated in item I.B.1.d.)
I.B.1. Equity is:
I.B.1.a. parity among groups in regards to getting their needs satisfied
I.B.1.b. distributing resources fairly to satisfy needs
I.B.1.c. removing barriers to need satisfaction
I.B.1.d. a felt sense of and/or legal ownership in a collective
I.B.2. Those subjected to enforcement actions should have their human rights respected through fair decision making and participation in conflict resolution (a.k.a. due process), in spite of being accused, and in some some cases being guilty, of violating the rights of others
I.B.3. If ignoring or undermining human rights leads to the neglect or thwarting of needs, the result will be members of a collective that are alienated from it
I.B.3.a. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by the actions of people, individually or through the operation of institutions, is oppressive
I.B.3.b. Being alienated from a collective to which you belong by circumstances that are not caused by people is not oppression, though it is unfortunate
II. Needs are real
II.A. Needs are the causal sources of well-being
II.A.1. Equity, except the legal aspect, is an inherent outcome of systematic need satisfaction by a collective
II.B. A scientific understanding of needs recognizes primary, secondary, particular, and derivative needs
II.B.1. Persistently thwarting the universal primary physiological needs for air, water, food, and shelter causes death
II.B.2. Persistently thwarting the universal primary psychological needs for sleep, relatedness, autonomy, and competence causes increases in anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress (death can be an indirect result)
II.B.3. Persistently thwarting secondary needs does not affect well-being, even though supporting secondary needs boosts well-being (e.g. beneficence, a.k.a. benevolence)
II.B.4. Particular needs are causes of well-being for an individual (e.g. being put on life support systems in a hospital after a car accident), in a specific situation (depending on a space capsule as an astronaut in orbit), or in a cultural milieu (knowing what to eat versus starving to death when lost for an extended period of time in a specific ecosystem)
II.B.5. Derivative needs are terms that consist of combinations of other types of needs (e.g. meaningfulness, a.k.a. purpose)
II.C. A person’s true identity consists of the unique combination of need satisfiers that ensures individual well-being which is also aligned with achieving the well-being of the collectives in which the individual is embedded
II.D. False identities arise from:
II.D.1. A collective pursuing collective desires and/or need satisfaction without regard to individual consequences (e.g. conscripted soldiers as cannon fodder, corporate wage slavery, national or international test scores)
II.D.2. A collective exerting control over an individual’s behavior by pitting that individual’s needs against each other and/or distorting the individual’s understanding of their situation (e.g. abusive interpersonal relationships, “cult” mind control, ideological purity movements in politics and religion)
II.D.3. An individual deactivating or distorting one or more of their needs in response to delusions about themselves, the world, and/or the relationship between the two, which they know as their situation (e.g. mental disorders)
III. Political advocacy in favor of universal need satisfaction through the enforcement of human rights will be optimally effective when voters and other decision makers can perceive the connections among 1) the issues they face, 2) the policies that are proposed to address those issues, and 3) how the satisfaction of their needs can be aligned with collective well-being
III.A. Everyone always has and always will vote according to some version of their identity
III.A.1. Despite folks sometimes misunderstanding it, identity politics (in the psychological sense stated in items II. C. & D.) is the only kind of politics
III.B. A realistic political party:
III.B.1. Clearly articulates their values (an emotion-laden form of discourse) in a manner that is strategically aligned with their constituents’ issues and is supported by specific policies
III.B.2. Refines their platform through internal debate among allies
III.B.2.a. Allies should discuss the issue of how to level criticisms of each other’s strategies and tactics in way that will minimize undermining the broader movement in the public eye
III.B.3. Supports built-in accountability structures (check and balances) that avoid the worst hazards of both bureaucracy (a long-standing wide-spread grievance) and political infighting (dominant pattern of the current regime)
III.B.4. Governs best in the face of principled, effective opponents who share a commitment to universal human needs satisfaction and human rights
III.B.5. Will disagree with other parties on how the State should enforce human rights, what issues are currently faced by their constituents, and/or what policies would be the best for enforcing rights, addressing issues, and expressing shared values
III.C. Ideological purity is an extreme form of collective delusion
III.C.1. Ideological purity movements in politics and religion are fundamentally based on mass generation of false identities (as identified in item II. D.)
III.C.2. Ideological purity is reinforced by political advocacy that relies on strong emotions elicited in association with ideological framing of issues without regard to policies and their effects (e.g. Trump-ism)
III.C.3. Ideological purity is politically effective in the absence of a proper opposition
III.D. In the absence of both a proper opposition and ideological purists, effective political advocacy occurs when issues and policies are ideologically aligned, which means those policies might not align with the realities of individual and collective human need satisfaction (e.g. mainstream party politics, pre-Trump)
III.E. Proper structuring of institutions can achieve the alignment of diverse individual need satisfactions while maintaining collective well-being, though it is difficult and can sometimes become fragile (like now)
III.E.1. Both state and corporate governance should be seen in this light because any benefit that might be gained through tyranny is always fragile (while properly structured governance is usually stable with fragility arising only occasionally)
III.E.2. The civil society sector should be considered a necessary third element in a system of checks and balances for anti-fragile national/global societal structures
III.E.2.a. Complex systems are more stable with an odd number of elements (e.g. having more than two political parties, a media/scientific ecosystem dominated by civil society entities balancing out a societal system that would otherwise be dominated by for-profit corporate entities and state-controlled entities)
