Here’s a little something for your imagination. It is half proposal and half prediction.

As we well know, taxes are rarely enjoyed by anyone. They are simply tolerated more by some and less by others. Part of the reason for this is that the tax system represents a great hole in our democratic influence. We vote for our politicians; but we can’t vote for what they actually do, day to day. We are mandated to pay tax, but even less are we able to influence what happens to that money.

Now that commerce is increasingly global, and money has so many ways to be liquid, this represent an ever more atrocious lack of control every passing day. And so it makes sense that some acknowledgement of this is seen at local levels, where citizens can vote on property tax budgets.

Well, folks, I propose that this be expanded to larger local, then state, and eventually federal levels. The more inclusively higher levels, the better, and the more specific the control, the better.

The advantages of this would be immediate in terms of proactively reinvesting people in their government. There are certain harms that discourage people above all else about the government’s use of their money. For red voters, it is often about funding for abortion or birth control, or for social programs, or inefficiency. For blue voters, it is about war funding, or about misapplication due to diluted policy. These things often lead people to be 1-issue voters, and this only cedes more predictability and control to the “incumbent” parties, contributing to their misrepresentation.

I imagine that if a citizen-controlled tax system were set up, its most simple and therefore likely form to take would be that of denying funding for certain agencies. One would still have to pay their entire tax burden, but they would have some choice in the distribution. So, suddenly, no red voter would have to pay for anything religiously objectionable, and no blue voter would have to pay for elective war. This would mean far more engagement in the process, since a cynical resignation would no longer have to dominate. Paying your taxes could be like shopping at a department store.

So, what are the disadvantages? For one thing, any government agency would feel far less of a sense of security predicting its budget. This could lead them to clean up their act and be accountable, so as to look favorable and deserving. But it could also lead to a raging false-advertising environment. However, the agencies would soon be denied advertising money, and so all advertising would fall to the parties. But the parties would be somewhat marginalized now, since people wouldn’t have to worry as much about electing representatives into full control for 2 to 4 years, since every year they would have the tax referendum. The party would have to worry about its agencies and its reputation every year more than its own culture and identity, since it is now more of just a manager or adviser while the citizen is more the contoller of the treasure.

I’m not enough of a futurist to know how well all that would play out on the internet, the advertising media, or ultimately, the whole information-age.

But time and again, we have learned that it is better to distribute power, rather than keep it concentrated, or worse yet, allow it to concentrate for its own sake. I cite nothing other and nothing less than the whole loose and varied concept of western democracy. Plus we have learned that, when given the choice between evolving and stagnating, evolving is better. Waiting till we are “more ready” doesn’t bear fruit. Think civil rights. What could have been more needed, yet waited longer for, than that?

So, like many types of change, there would be pain. But ultimately it would be worth it.

One more direct yet long-term effect, partly a disadvantage, would be that at first, the agencies would probably still hold a practical monopoly over each of their own core services. Noone’s going to be able to do va like the VA. Noone is going to be able to do forest service like the Forest Service. So if someone in the agency screwed something up, and it led to a giant punishment of the agency come tax time, it could be too hobbled to successfully carry out its services, and the result would be that average citizens had punished each other severely for the fault of “some guy”.

Well, here is some more evolution for you. Possibly even the very first time something like that happened, another agency would see an opportunity to step up and either take over that service for the year, or directly fund the punished agency. The opportunist agency would probably poll its funders to test for approval first. If all went well, it could be a great “coup” for the opportunist agency.

When I mentioned “monopoly”, that gave a hint of what could come, from further in the future. Movements in the culture could naturally prevent monopolies by gravitating to different styles of agency function.  Agencies could eventually become accustomed to occasionally selling / buying functions from each other, they could specialize to a degree yet also generalize for versatility and safety. We could end up with “brands” of government, operating colocally and contemporaneously! Again, I’m not enough of a futurist (by far) to see where that could lead, but perhaps just perhaps, people could terminate their contract and funding of one government and transfer their account to another, all without moving or getting a medical checkup, much as people do now with cellphone carriers. Maybe they would get slightly different services, experience a slightly different beaureaucratic culture, and possibly even be subject to different laws! If pulled over for speeding, you would show the officer your card for your govbrand, which has a 5 mph higher limit for a safer driving record. What this would mean is that different types of government would be in competition with each other, trying to serve a target demographic, or trying to be a general moderate for all. They would seem like corporations, but a different type of corporation, much as there are types now: wholesale, service, retail, extraction.

This could be a natural step from the government side just as we have natural steps from the corporate side. Corporations try to get government contracts. Corporations have been becoming stronger than government in many ways. If the future dominant genre is more corporate, then this vision could be a favorable result – government and corporate coopt each other, rather than government weakening to a point of no return, leaving corporate to become a field of robber barons.

So, if you like that scenario and think it is likely… or you think it would lead to apocalypse and are excited by that, then start agitating for distribution choice in a reformed tax code!

P.S. – An interesting question would be, how would laws be legislated in govbrands, and what would be the relevancy of Congress?  But, you know, people regularly ask that now already.