The jury’s still out on whether or not His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet ended his speech to a capacity crowd at the RI Convention Center with the eternally sapient adage: ‘F*** it’. But though that’s definitely a discussion worth having, I thought I’d take this opportunity to instead reflect on his great commentary on the world and the way it should move forward in the 21st Century. This article will both serve to discuss some ideas the Dalai Lama presented in his speech through a libertarian lens, and act as the first step in a (crossing my fingers) mental frameshift you might have about the nature of government intervention.
To start, let’s discuss the Dalai Lama’s main point, which was, to paraphrase loosely: Violence sucks.
His Holiness spent a lot of time discussing how a life of frustration can lead directly to a life of violence, how the bloodshed and warfare of the 20th Century rent the world apart, and how the protest culture of the youth in response to recent wars gave him hope for a more peaceful future. He talked about a need for a new environmental consciousness, and an ‘obligation’ to close the gap between the rich and the poor, relating it to the clear evidence that a life of poverty can correlate directly with a life of violence and crime.
Where does the controversy come into this? Why do I even bother writing what must seem to you guys the most obvious description of the Dalai Lama and his policy proposals?
Because, at its heart, it is actually hypocritical.
Now, don’t hold your breath for a vehement rant about how much I hate the person and policy of the spiritual leader of Tibet. Lama-bashing isn’t too popular, and I’m not about to hop on that train at this time.
But let’s see where he erred.
The Dalai Lama abhors violence. He also dislikes poverty and specifically the gap between the rich and the poor, and he advocates the use of the government, through social programs, to fix it.
And how would the government fix such a thing, presumably? Redistribution intiatives. Welfare. Public education, single payer healthcare, etc. And where would the government get the funds to do such things? Well, maybe if they sold something profitable or elicited voluntary donations they could get money that way, but as the way it stands, governments fund themselves through taxes. Taxes are involuntary. If you don’t pay your taxes you go to jail. Police steal you away and put you in a cell, by force. Meaning, that government programs are funded at the point of a?
Gun.
Doesn’t seem to make sense that the patently anti-violence Dalai Lama would be advocating such a thing. But at it’s heart, any socialist program he might advocate for is rooted in the very agression he is trying to end.
Now, this is saying nothing about the end results of the specific initiatives involved, which is what people usually focus on. Maybe welfare is an effective way to close the rich-poor gap and end endemic societal violence. But perhaps, if the end goal is less violence, maybe we should try to find ways to end violence without resorting to … more violence.
Actually, the Dalai Lama himself offered a couple of alternatives to such a system in his speech. Even though he spent some time talking about the nature of ‘selfishness’ in a negative light, he took special care to make the point that ‘selfishness’ in the sense of taking care of oneself first is not only permissible, but a virtue. He clarified that being strictly and solely concerned with yourself was what was to be avoided. This is totally in line with the libertarian principle of voluntary charity, a mode of income redistribution that decreases the rich-poor gap and does not rely on any state-sanctioned violence to function. You can check this out to see why cost-benefit-analysis dictates that a full reliance on voluntary charity works out better for the poor than welfare in the long run, but be assured, there will be an article about it soon.
Beyond this reliance on voluntary giving, His Holiness also espoused the principle of the need for a ‘will to work’ and rejected the idea of life having ‘guarantees’, which are both, at their core, statements that support the ideas of personal responsibility and self-reliance rather than a wide-sweeping government safety net. He also complained about the evils of the state education system China has imposed on his people.
But, I’m not going to get ahead of myself here. This article is about why the Dalai Lama should be a libertarian, not why he is. He came out as a possible supporter of the pseudo-socialist Green Party, clearly still supports wide sweeping governmental and inter-governmental action and for all his railings against Chinese-run centralized schools, his main policy suggestion was their replacement with Tibetan-run centralized schools.
Yet I hope some of you see some of the contradictions here. No matter if you think it’s legitimized by a majority vote or some ‘social contract’, all government action is by its very nature rooted in force and violence. The Dalai Lama advocates the ending of its direct use against innocent civilians in the form of repression, drone strikes and war, while libertarians advocate (and some of His Holiness’s statements suggest support for) ending both its direct and most of its indirect use on the same people.
I’ll discuss how we can solve everything from environmental issues to poverty without the use of state force in other articles, but until then, I just want you all to take a cue (hopefully just this once) from Mitt Romney, and apply a twist on the ‘China Test’ to any future policy initiatives you might support.
Even if you support its end, do you really support a policy enough to point a gun (even an implicit one) at someone’s head to have it carried out?
Your article was indeed a very analytical and thought-provoking piece, Mr. Koatz. Indeed, many argue that the Communists at least provide an alternative to the sorry serfdom that the lamas had governed for many generations. Personally, I have no fixed opinions on the current Dalai Lama or his policies.
But, though this may be taboo, allow me to take a deeper plunge into something you touched upon but briefly. Do you personally believe that China’s occupation of Tibet is thus justified, and would you for one ultimately support or object to the establishment of an official independent Tibetan state?
Ben, the problem is…you think TOO DEEPLY.
Do you have any faith at all, other than thinking about finance and economic theory all day? God does not care about “capitalist corruption” or “reduced government”. Living, and being human, is what truly matters.
I’m a student, by the way.
I am very spiritual in fact, attending Hillel every Friday evening. I do not view my faith as a political issue however, nor as something that should be much of your concern with an article on a tax policy.
“Americans kill themselves by the thousands because access to firearms is deregulated.”
People don’t kill themselves because they have access to guns, they kill themselves because they are psychologically unwell.
“Fortunately for the US, it can square the circle. By slashing the funding for its bloated military (also a massive exporter of state violence), it could set the basics of a modern welfare state.”
Yes, we should slash funding for the bloated military, but we should not in turn negate that gain by turning around and devoting it to some other government program. This may come as a shock, but we could stop spending that money on the military, and then just not spend it at all.
"At the point where you admit that taxation is required to any extent in a society to have like a police force, then the marginal cost of violence in increasing taxation is zero (i.e. the threat associated with not paying my taxes is the same no matter how much in taxes I am paying), so there exists no compelling reason not to impose more taxes to achieve other policy initiatives that fall outside of the realm of preventing violence."
Yes, there is still a compelling reason to resist such taxes on the grounds that state sponsored violence, as a principle, should only be used when absolutely necessary to prevent military invasion or criminal violence. The facts that the government is often ineffective in its attempt to achieve policy initiatives, that private industry and private and religious charity can more efficiently provide many of the services that the government currently provides, and that raised taxes cripple the free market economy which has created the wealth we all enjoy, are other perfectly compelling reasons not to impose more taxes.
Basically you're argument is that any policy based in law is inherently violent in nature because police enforce it and police have guns. This is patently ridiculous. A state with no police force is literally a state of anarchy where there is literally nothing deterring acts of violence. I'm sure you think its a clever argumentative link to assert this but you are so high up in your fantasy world that you reject practically good initiatives because you think it makes you intellectually creative to make iffy links to completely theoretical harms. Yeah narrowing the wealth gap should be a huge goal in the world and yeah government initiatives are probably the most practical way to accomplish it. I applaud how good of person you are and how you hate the coercive police force, so when you live in a world with no police and no government and you get shot in the face because there is literally nothing stopping people from running violently through the streets, every will remember you as such a strong opponent of violence.
I hope you realize that I made a clear point not to advocate for an specific policy proposal in this article. Clearly if we came to the conclusion that closing the wealth gap was not only an absolutely necessary goal, but only achievable by the government, it would probably outweigh our concern for a little bit of implicit violence. Or, in the case of a pure libertarian, it is totally legitimate to use state force to combat inter-citizen force, like the same murderous rampages and riots and thefts that you are concerned about.
This was just to bring an aspect of the government to the forefront that most people shunt to the background as kind of a 'non-issue'. The violence of government action should be a concern for anyone advocating a policy proposal. It doesn't necessitate NO policy proposals, but it helps guide many non-anarchists in their principles and perhaps it will help some of my other readers as well.
At the point where you make these concessions then the impact of your argument is pretty irrelevant. Sure i could theoretically say that implicit violence is the threat behind any government law but this is purely theoretical and thus if a government action has any perceived benefit it would easily outweigh the theoretical harm you assert, meaning that this isn't a compelling argument for reduced government.
Well, notice I didn't say just 'perceived benefit', I said 'not only an absolutely necessary goal, but only achievable by the government'. Now this doesn't have to be exactly your criteria, but I hope running a policy through the litmus test of having to put a gun to someone's head for it leads you to more compelling justifications than 'ANY perceived benefit'.
Again, this article was meant to be a base that I will refer to in later articles. It was not meant to be a vehicle for policy suggestions in any sense. But, let's say in the case of libertarians, the idea that taxation is violence leads them to say that state actual is only justified when it's stopping *someone else's* implicitly or explicitly pointed gun. Theft, murder, assault, property violations, etc. Other people foray out farther into how much state they are willing to accept, but this 'test' is meant to temper those initiatives that shouldn't be undertaken by a coercive government. That either the government might make worse, might not effect, might be done better by voluntary associations or the private sector, or whose benefits might not be justified by threatening innocent people with violence.
To me, that's a pretty compelling argument for reduced government.
At the point where you admit that taxation is required to any extent in a society to have like a police force, then the marginal cost of violence in increasing taxation is zero (i.e. the threat associated with not paying my taxes is the same no matter how much in taxes I am paying), so there exists no compelling reason not to impose more taxes to achieve other policy initiatives that fall outside of the realm of preventing violence.
A national government does not only raise revenue through taxes. They may also sell bonds.
That's actually so true. Wow I totally missed that. I guess this theoretical piece exists in a fiscally neutral world. I guess you could say a couple of things: a) that government creation of debt is just basically a contractual agreement to raise future taxes (perhaps the rationale being that the debt will help lead to higher growth, but either way it's ultimately taxes that pay for this debt)
b) if this debt is 'inflated away' by quantitative easing, open market operations, various ways of 'printing money' (lowered reserve requirements, etc), then the currency becomes devalued, cost of living rises, and the citizenry is in fact taxed through the 'back door' of inflation'.
A is pretty self-explanatory I feel, B is not and I will write about it to clarify, but either way, thank you very much for pointing this out.
Yes, law enforcement is founded on coercion. Coercion and widespread violence are orders of magnitude apart. Do you recommend legalizing murder because the law enforcement required to prohibit it is hypocritical?
Absolutely not. Which is why I made the point say this wasn't an article advocating or not advocating any certain policy proposals. Personally I only advocate using government violence to combat other direct examples of violence: force and fraud, murder and theft. I wouldn't, for example use it to enforce moral codes, redistribute wealth, enact prohibitions, or any case where one person isn't infringing on someone else's rights.
But here I was just introducing a principle and way of thinking, not policy suggestions.
Politics is based on violence, although liberal thought has trouble coming to terms with this fact. Having said that, I don’t see the explicit tax/violence relationship you describe. And I don’t think it is obvious to most people outside the US, the global champion in fiscal fobia.
There are more important variables at play. Franquist Spain had a regressive tax system and a repressive state. The Swedish state enforces fiscal pressure like there’s no tomorrow, but Swedish society is not at war with it. Americans kill themselves by the thousands because access to firearms is deregulated. Etc.
Fortunately for the US, it can square the circle. By slashing the funding for its bloated military (also a massive exporter of state violence), it could set the basics of a modern welfare state.
…so bad I missed the Dalai Lama though!