Voluntary funding mechanisms

Overview

• Some essential services, like the courts and defense, need to be voluntarily funded in a free society. That challenge will be made easier by the greater prosperity that ensues from freedom, in both reducing the cost of services and the prosperity of those funding them.
• There are many ways that can be envisioned for accomplishing important goals without violating the Legal Principle. Some of these voluntary funding mechanisms are explored below.

Essential services will require funding

• It is unavoidable that some cost would be incurred by enforcing and adjudicating the Legal Principle. These services are essential to sustain a free society.
• Currently, these services are paid for via taxation, which itself violates the Legal Principle. All goods and services, including essential ones, should be voluntarily paid for by the people that want them.
• However, as we intelligently transition away from our addiction to taxation, police services, courts, and national defence should remain funded via tax until voluntary sources of funding are established. Without these essential services, the viability of the free community would be unsustainable, so these must be the last to be de-funded by tax.

Freedom reduces costs

• Some estimate that decriminalising victimless crimes would reduce the majority of the costs of the justice system.
• Global free trade also would also increase the incentives for peaceful cooperation, such that we can expect the required spending on national defence to decrease.
• A free society is likely to be much more prosperous, such that even the least wealthy could better afford these services.

Freedom increases prosperity

• Entrepreneurship
  • Unfulfilled market needs are exactly what successful entrepreneurs seek for a durable business model. We don’t need to look further than the phone in our pocket to see what innovation and competition can achieve.
• Eliminating taxes
  • Eliminating taxes frees up vast amounts of money that would have gone to the government to inefficiently spend on politically motivated programs (to secure votes).
  • The transaction costs alone of paying people to administer the complex tax systems detract from the total wealth of the society.
  • Instead, this money would be immediately available for its owners to start or expand businesses, invest, or spend on the consumer goods and services of their choice, such as increased security, better quality education for their children, better quality food, or a better family vacation.
  • It is an error to imagine that eliminating taxation would remove even one dime from the economy. Instead, the same amount of money would flow more efficiently according to the preferences of the owners of the money rather than from inefficient political decision-making.
• Prosperity’s multiplier effect
  • The spending of the money that would otherwise by paid in taxes would create more jobs, and has a multiplying effect on wealth creation, benefitting rich and poor alike. Even when a billionaire purchases a giant yacht, the billionaire inadvertently helps the less fortunate low-income workers who manufacture, sell, and service the yacht, along with many other workers whose jobs depend on such transactions.
  • Even if the richest people simply save that money in a bank, those savings increase the money available for banks to lend at lower interest rates, which also helps contribute to a more robust economy.

Forced charity truly is not charity at all

• The transitional solutions will necessarily rely upon the good nature of people to be charitable in areas where the bad fortunes of our fellow humans morally require our help. This is why those in the 3L Movement practices the aspirational value of “voluntary kindness” toward others, especially throughout the transition and for as long afterward as is necessary.
• A virtuous and civilized society and world cannot be mandated. To achieve these goals, we must inspire each other to act voluntarily in ways.
• As we transition to a world better calibrated toward justice and non-aggressing, we should expect increased civility and voluntary kindness toward each other. We have been evolving in this direction for centuries.
• We should also work to inspire each other to voluntarily assist our less fortunate brothers and sisters who morally deserve our help. There are many creative ways we can incentive this.

Specific voluntary funding sources

• Charity
  • Money spent on voluntary kindness generally increases when taxation is reduced – charities can fill the void of taxation to help those unable to pay for protection services. Our goal of creating a virtuous society is doomed if we don’t have confidence in the goodness and charity of enough people.
• National Lotteries
  • A national lottery could also serve to provide funding for essential services from the excess revenues.
• Collecting money from fines as punishment for crimes
  • Those who we have appropriately convicted of crimes can, among other sanctions, be adequately assessed fines and fees as punishment for those crimes. We could also levy fines on people and corporations that commit civil violations such as trespasses that spread pollution. We could use this source of revenue to fund essential services as needed and to fund the substantially smaller, far less expensive justice system required in a 3LP-compatible world.
• Selling government owned property
  • In many countries, the government owns many assets like land and buildings that can be sold to raise money for vital services. in the USA, the federal government owns over 25% of the total land mass. If plots of valuable land were for sale, we could anticipate a bidding war from different groups seeking to own those plots for various purposes. Groups seeking to purchase the valuable land could solicit investors to raise the necessary funds to win the bidding war and decide how best to use that land. Governments should responsibly sell their assets to the highest bidders to generate the revenue necessary to retire national debts.
    • Beautiful and unique land can be protected by property owners using reasonable and responsible restrictive covenants to protect the land from development. The tourism value of beautiful natural parks provide a natural incentive to maintain the pristine beauty.
• Sovereign Wealth Funds
  • If we intelligently invested the substantial proceeds raised due to the government carefully selling these valuable lands to the highest bidders in conservative, reliable, interest-bearing accounts. The interest alone could be sufficient to fund certain essential services in perpetuity.

Interim transition plan

• Immediately elimination of taxation, harmful as taxation is, would induce chaos and widespread damage that would undermine the credibility of sensible efforts to create freedom, peace and prosperity.
• Like a heroin addict, the best path back to health is a tapering off; a steady transition.
• Taxation should be ratcheted downwards over time in conjunction with the reduction in government expenditure, towards the ultimate goal of zero taxation.
• The 3L Philosophy does not prescribe the plan or pace for the transition. There are many creative ways it could be done.