In the western world especially, the notion of democracy, as a system in which the people rule, or at least, get a say on whom they are ruled by (in theory), is much touted as a fair and moral mode of social organisation. The belief being, that democracy is equivalent to freedom. That if you have any say at all then you are your own master and not controlled or owned by someone else. There are some major holes in this thinking that I will not go into now. Today I will talk briefly about the anti-democratic effect of taxes and government spending on society.
This is because, a capitalist free-market is the ultimate democratic voting machine, where the expenditure of money (or barter for that matter) are votes. In a free-market where goods and services are exchanged between people with mutual consent, without force, coercion or fraud, the sum of the individuals preferences reign. Those offerings which are unpopular are allocated little money and the more sought after goods and services garner greater resources for the producers, which guides future productivity by way of incentives. In this way resources are directed by the unforced choices of market participants.
Conversely, when government seizes money through taxation and subsequently spends it, it is in effect rigging the voting mechanism of markets in favour of the preferences of those who govern. Since government does not spend money precisely as the taxpayer would have, it necessarily results in an allocation of resources in society that is not what taxpayers preferences would have created. This is true of all governments and rulers that we would recognise as governments or rulers, whenever other peoples money is seized and spent, whether it is called democracy or not.
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