Commentary
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where on your own property, with your own money, you could build whatever kind of house you wanted to live in without asking a bureaucrat’s permission? If you wanted to build it yourself out of tinker toys and straw, fine. If you wanted to make it like a hobbit house, round and mushroom-shaped, you could do it without submitting blueprints to a government agent.
And then having built your own house on your own property, being able to live there without paying exorbitant taxes in order to escape governmental confiscation and plunder. Recently a lady visited our farm and told me her 0.67-acre property in New York could only remain in her hands if she paid $22,000 per year in property taxes. At such a rate, does anyone actually own their property?
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where you could launch a micro-business from your home without the cost and hassle of a special use permit? In about 1915, Americans could choose from roughly 1,500 automobile brands. Most of these were backyard mechanic-tinkerers who focused all their creativity and cleverness on building a better car, not on complying with zoning and business licensing.
Whether a micro-brewery or a sculpting studio, home-centered businesses offer entry-level idea testing for entrepreneurs and innovators. In today’s environment, launching any business requires more bureaucrat-navigation savvy than the actual service or product development.
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where you could hire anyone willing to work and negotiate a mutually agreeable compensation plan without being told arbitrarily by a bureaucrat what the compensation and hours needed to be? If someone wanted to work 60 hours a week and receive payment in butter and eggs, fine.
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On our farm, plenty of 16-year-olds would like to work. But a teenager that can legally get behind the wheel of 3,000 pounds of steel and hurtle it 70 miles an hour down the interstate can’t touch a cordless drill because it’s a power tool. That’s off limits until you’re 18. Who makes up this stuff?
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where you could sell some homemade summer sausage from a backyard pig to a neighbor without sending the animal to a federally inspected facility 100 miles away and paying far-off people to manipulate the pork? Artisanal and craft food products, lovingly fabricated in home kitchens already gadgetized with the latest techno-glitzy appliances, could be offered to friends and neighbors as a micro-culinary enterprise.
Food tinkerers, mechanic tinkerers, energy tinkerers—these are the folks who have always found breakthroughs for today’s problems. Often discoveries are serendipitous, germinating out of the freedom to experiment and explore. When one pound of homemade charcuterie must pass through half a dozen licenses and bureaucratic mandates before it can legally be sold, precious little innovation happens in the pepperoni market.
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where you could keep your hard-earned money instead of paying half of it in income taxes, Social Security confiscation, and capital gains taxes? You could invest more in your own business or a friend’s. You could give more to your church or other philanthropic organization.
If the government spent its income judiciously, perhaps the tax bite wouldn’t be as grievous. But it’s squandered on fraud and empire building while the nation’s domestic infrastructure collapses. A nation that hoes its own garden instead of meddling in neighbors’ garners more friendships.
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where people suffered the consequences of bad decisions? If a person mashed their brain into pudding by taking methamphetamine, no government agency would step in with a safety net to pay for medical care. Perhaps in such a place people would think more seriously about snorting, needling, and popping.
With no government welfare, folks would choose employment. Maybe fewer men would abandon their wives and children in order for their lovers, as single moms, to qualify for payments. Even soybean farmers, without subsidy and bailout luxury, would think twice about planting something egregiously oversupplied in the marketplace. Maybe folks would think more about the food they ate instead of waiting for Medicare or Medicaid to pick up the tab for their lifestyle malady.
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where education was as diversified and accountable as local systems? Where good teachers received rewards and bad teachers were fired instead of appealing to the union. In such a system, graduates might be asked to evaluate their teachers. Good ones could get bonuses; bad ones could be fired. Wouldn’t that be remarkable?
Aptitude test scores would go up as education became a meritocracy. With performance-based compensation, good teachers would thrive in an environment of excellence rather than being stigmatized by underachievers.
Wouldn’t it be neat to live in a place where government-owned cameras didn’t catch your every move? Imagine being able to walk down a street without being recorded in a massive AI data center network. You could visit someone without the FBI or CIA knowing.
You could drive somewhere without powerful government security agencies knowing your whereabouts. Perhaps your life could have private spots instead of everything being recorded and disseminated among government agencies.
Americans, we used to live in such a place.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
