Freedom, Society, and State - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Its serVIces. Instead, the agency would charge a price
for its services and each member of the community could
then either purchase protection at that price or go
without protection. "If you want police protection,"
says Hospers, "you will have to pay a fee to obtain it,
but 0 f co u r s e you are f r e e not to wa ntit 0 r pa y for
it, in which case you will not have the protection even
if you need it."(72) While this does have the merit of
eliminatIng the "payment-benefit disjunction," the ind
i v i d uali s tanarchis t rna i n t a ins t hat the propon e n t s 0 f
voluntary taxation are inconsistent. tlIf the government
elected to outlaw all competing defense agencies,"
notes Rothbard,
it would no longer function as the voluntary
society sought by its proponents. It would
not for c epa ym en t 0 f t a xes, but i t wo u 1d say
to the citizens: "You are free to accept and
pay for our protection or to abstain; but you
are not free to purchase defense from a
com pet i n gag e n c y • nThlsi s not a f r e e rna r ­
ket; this is a compUlsory monopoly, once
again a grant of monopoly privilege by the
Sta te to it sel f. Such a monopoly would be
far less efficient than a freely competitive
system; hence, its costs would be higher, its
service poorer. It would clearly not be
neutral to the market.(73)
One fInal alternative is the "voting" or "poll"
tax. Voters would be charged a fee. But voting would
be voluntary so this would not be a tax. Whether a
"poll tax" would be able to generate revenues
s u f fie i e n t t 0 rna i n t a ina go vernmentis do ub t f u I • Even
when voting is free barely fifty percent of those
eligible consider voting important enough to do so. It
seems likely that if a fee were charged even that
percentage would drop considerably. But as the number
of vot er s dec I i ned, the government would only be able
to support itself by increasing the burden on the
remaining voters, thereby discouraging voting even
more.(74) The result would be that either the
government would collapse or it would have to raise the
poll tax to such heights as to disenfranchise the poor,
leaving government policy to be determIned almost
exclUSIvely by the wealthy. Thus, the individualist
anarchist is highly skeptical of any proposal for the
fInancing of government by means of voluntary
contributions.
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