My kids occasionally use arguments like this to challenge my Libertarian
positions. They say "Dad, how come you speak against the use of force
but you don't let us do what we want to do when we want to do it". So
then I have to explain that the basis of government is the individual
and families. And the farther one is away from the family, the farther
one is from real government that is sensitive and knowledgeable and
capable of making good choices on behalf of the members of the unit.
This is the proper place for collective activity. The larger the
collective unit, the less possible it is for the unit to function
effectively.
The founders of the US decided that the largest units of collective
activity to have a place in a national government were the States. If I
had the time and energy to respond to this article by collectivist
Natalie Angier, I would tell her that the fact that monkeys and other
animals demand a certain amount of collective activity within their
familial groups is no justification for a federal government that
consumers a huge percent of the available resources at the expense of
the family unit. Imagine the response these animals would have if
another larger pack of animals came in and took 35% of all the food they
found for themselves. I'm sure they wouldn't see it as a collective
necessity.
By the way, the TSA just made a radical Libertarian out of our 8 year
old son Erik on our trip to Mexico City. He brought a little vortex toy
that has a layer of foam in water that when you twist it, it forms a
little tornado that is fun to watch. The TSA noticed it in their scan
and removed it from his bag. They knew it was a toy and when he started
to cry not understanding why they would take his toy away, they called
in a higher level of management to review the situation. His reply was
"too much water" and told us we would have to leave the area, check the
toy, and go through the whole process again. We were late so we decided
to let them take it. He asked why they took it and I explained they
thought it was dangerous which he of course responded "how could it be
dangerous?" I said it wasn't dangerous but that this was federal
government security and that it was big and dumb. And that if the
airlines controlled their own security, they probably would have let us
through and if they didn't we could chose another airline that probably
would let us through.
Nearly every day for the trip he's been asking questions like "Who is
the government? They are stupid. I want to write the government a
letter." Dorila explained that the government was a lot of people. Erik
asked "Well I want to know who the top guy is?" I explained that the top
person in government was the individual and families but my diplomat
wife explained that in the US, the top government official was president
Obama. Erik said, "I want to send him a letter telling him the
government was stupid and then send a picture of him throwing darts at
Obama's picture." Dorila warned they might send Homeland Security for a
visit but the point was made. He has made his mind up and I don't think
he will ever think kindly about large and intrusive government again.
Mike
Taxing, a Ritual to Save the Species
By NATALIE ANGIER
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/natalie_an
gier/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
On these taxing days, when we become a defiantly bipartisan nation of
whiners convinced that we are handing over to the Internal Revenue
Service
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/int
ernal_revenue_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org> our blood and sweat
and mother's milk, our pound of flesh and firstborn young, maybe it's
time for a little perspective.
Legions before us have donated all these items and more to the public
till, and not just metaphorically speaking, either. Benjamin Franklin
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/benjamin_f
ranklin/index.html?inline=nyt-per> was right to equate paying taxes
with a deeply organic behavior like dying. It turns out that giving up a
portion of one's income for the sake of the tribe is such a ubiquitous
feature of the human race that some researchers see it as crucial to our
species' success. Without ritualized taxation, there would be precious
little hominid representation.
Moreover, plenty of nonhuman animals practice the tither's art, too,
demanding that individuals remit a portion of their food, labor, comfort
or personal fecundity for the privilege of group membership. And just as
the I.R.S. depends on threat of audit as much as it does on anybody's
sense of civic responsibility, so do other toll-collecting species
ensure compliance by meting out swift punishment
<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/discipline/overvie
w.html?inline=nyt-classifier> against tax cheats. For example, Marc
Hauser of Harvard University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/h/har
vard_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> has found that when a rhesus
monkey is out foraging and comes upon a source of especially
high-quality food, like, say, a batch of ripe coconuts, the monkey is
expected to give a characteristic food call to alert its comrades to the
find. "The bad thing about doing a food call is that it means others
will come and take some of the food," said Laurie R. Santos, who studies
the primates at Yale University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yal
e_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . Yet a monkey who opts to keep
mum about its discovery could face worse. Should other group members
happen by while the private feast is under way, they will not only claim
the food for themselves, but the most dominant among them will also beat
the cheater indignantly.
Not everybody is subject to a big macaque attack. Adolescent males that
have only recently transferred into the group are not required to issue
food alerts. They are, as yet, on probation, and only upon gaining the
rights of full citizenship will the young males be expected to shoulder
its duties.
The more closely knit an animal society is, and the more interdependent
its members, the higher the rate of taxation. Among bell miner birds of
Australia, for example, pairs of breeding adults are assisted at the
nest by several youthful helpers, usually male. The helpers provision
the couple's fledglings with a steady supply of lerp, sugary casings
secreted by plant-sucking insects. And though some scientists had
wondered whether lerp wasn't basically a junk food, offered up to the
young bell miners as much for show as for substance, researchers report
in the March issue of Animal Behaviour that lerp is, in fact, as
important to the fledglings' growth as is the meatier arthropod prey
supplied by their parents. By all evidence, the helper birds are
honestly "paying to stay," trading a valuable currency for the right to
remain within the aggressively guarded precincts of a bell miner
breeding colony, with the hope of better times and personal propagation
opportunities ahead.
Or at least of averting personal injury. Among another Australian
species of cooperatively breeding birds, the superb fairy-wren, dominant
males notice when their helpers are less than superb about paying their
taxes. Should a helper fail to feed and groom the dominant's nestlings,
or to give an alarm call on seeing intruders enter the territory, the
dominant male will angrily chase, harass and peck at the helper, for up
to 26 hours at a time. In the case of the highly social cichlid fish,
fear of punishment inspires delinquent helper fish to ostentatiously
redouble their contributions to the communal nest, their digging in the
sand, their cleaning and fanning of the eggs - rather like politicians
who suddenly pony up three years of back taxes for themselves, the nanny
and the gardener. "If they don't pay their bill, there will be
punishment," said Michael Taborsky of the University of Bern, "so they
try to pre-emptively appease the dominant individuals in the group."
If hope and fear don't guarantee compliance, there's always
embarrassment. Vampire bats are famous for their willingness to
regurgitate a blood meal to feed fellow bats that are down on their
luck. In fact, hiding one's wealth is a problem. A fully fed vampire bat
is as bloated as a fraternity water balloon, and the bats appear to rub
bellies to see who is in a position to share. "It's hard to cheat when
your stomach is obviously distended," Dr. Santos said.
It's also hard to cheat when you live in a small band of big-brained,
sharp-eyed individuals, as humans did for vast stretches of our past,
which may help explain why we are so easily taxed. "There's not a human
society in the world that doesn't redistribute food to nonrelatives,"
said Samuel Bowles, director of the behavioral sciences program at the
Santa Fe Institute. "Whether it's through the state, or the chief, or a
rural collective, or some other mechanism, food sharing of large
nutritional packages is quite extensive and has been going on for at
least 100,000 years of human history." In hunting and foraging cultures,
the proportional tax rate is so high, said Dr. Bowles, that "even the
Swedes would be impressed."
Take the case of the Ache tribe of Paraguay. Hunters bring their bounty
back to a common pot. "The majority of calories
<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/diet-calories/overvie
w.html?inline=nyt-classifier> are redistributed," he said. "It ends up
being something like a 60 percent income tax."
Pastoral and herding societies tend to be less egalitarian than foraging
cultures, and yet, here, too, taxing is often used to help rectify
extreme inequities. When a rich cattle farmer dies among the Tandroy of
southern Madagascar, Dr. Bowles said, "The rich person's stock is killed
and eaten by everyone," often down to the last head of cattle. "That's a
100 percent inheritance tax."
Modern taxes are just a "newfangled version of commitment to the group,"
said David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, the result of the
invention of money. Yet even with our elaborate, abstracted tax code,
fear of public opprobrium remains an impressive motivator. "It's
expected that powerful, high-status members of society should be
contributing more," Dr. Wilson said. "If they don't, they won't remain
high status for long." And for the fat bats among us who just won't
cough
<http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/symptoms/cough/overview.html?in
line=nyt-classifier> up the goods - there's always jail.
Home <http://www.nytimes.com/>
* World
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html>
* U.S.
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/national/index.html>
* N.Y. / Region
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/nyregion/index.html>
* Business
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/business/index.html>
* Technology
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/technology/index.html>
* Science
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html>
* Health
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/health/index.html>
* Sports
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/sports/index.html>
* Opinion
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/opinion/index.html>
* Arts
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/arts/index.html>
* Style
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/style/index.html>
* Travel
<http://travel.nytimes.com/pages/travel/index.html>
* Jobs
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/jobs/index.html>
* Real Estate
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/realestate/index.html>
* Automobiles
<http://www.nytimes.com/pages/automobiles/index.html>
* Back to Top
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/science/14angi.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&pag
ewanted=print#top#top>
Copyright 2009
<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New
York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/>