Sunday, January 4, 2009

What is voluntary compliance?

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Tax authorities in OECD countries have been embracing the notion of 'voluntary compliance'. You might well ask - exactly what is voluntary compliance? Basically its a meaningless word. There is nothing voluntary about paying tax. In fact George Orwell would be turning in his grave because thar wordsmith anticipated such a 'word craft' in his book '1984', where he depicted the sordid state of affairs in a severely collectivist Russia.
Words have ceased to have any objective meaning in modern society. Political correctness is just the start. The assault on language is an assault on your mind. The intent is to make words meaningless, so that these 'wordsmiths' become unaccountable for their actions. If you want any sense of the objectivity of the court system, you need only look at its lack of restraint for government legislation. The courts have allowed government's to get away with the most blatant abuses of power, and its important to ask why. I would suggest its for 3 reasons:
1. Government has the mandate of the people: The notion of mandates is of course a total fraud for several reasons. How can you say that because a voter supported a particular party, that this is an endorsement of its party. You might simply vote for the least offensive party available. Also endorsement of several policies is more likely than all, and who can know what policy detail is involved. For instance, years ago I've had supported privatisation, but if I knew the way they would use it to lock in captive power contracts I might have opposed this hidden form of taxation in many OECD countries where it was practised.
2. The judiciary is paid by government: Being a judge is a pretty safe occupation. Its a self-serving boys club, full of arrogance more than pride judging by my experience with them. This is a massive conflict of interest in the current structure of government.
3. The judiciary is a position of safety: Judges are bureaucrats, which means they are relatively safe people. In a sense that is a good thing because they would be less inclined to be blackmailed, but it also makes them more inclined to other forms of self-delusion. They love their titles, and like other public servants they are essentially guaranteed a job, and are detached from the real world. They are judging real world situations, but in a certain context you can expect them to detach, and that is when their own value system is in question. Being paid by the government is a basis for such a distortion. In this sense the judiciary can be expected to support the government. We have seen this with several prosecutions in the USA, where judges have even discarded the U.S. Constitution, in one case arguing that it has no bearing on State law.
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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com

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