Worse than It Seems

Monday, August 23, 2010

The City of Brotherly Love has decided that all its bloggers are their brothers' keepers:

Between her blog and infrequent contributions to ehow.com, over the last few years she says she’s made about $50. To [Marilyn] Bess, her website is a hobby. To the city of Philadelphia, it's a potential moneymaker, and the city wants its cut.

In May, the city sent Bess a letter demanding that she pay $300, the price of a business privilege license.
It's bad enough that, apparently, anything we own or produce is fair game to be looted by any level of the government these days.

What's worse is that most people think of taxation as if it were a law of nature or an immutable metaphysical fact, rather than the man-made (and alterable) phenomenon that it actually is.
It would be one thing if Bess’ website were, well, an actual business, or if the amount of money the city wanted didn’t outpace her earnings six-fold. Sure, the city has its rules; and yes, cash-strapped cities can’t very well ignore potential sources of income. But at the same time, there must be some room for discretion and common sense.
Since when has a city taking its "cut" as soon as some official smells money -- or imagines he does -- been "common sense?" And no, it wouldn't be different if Bess actually made money, because the city would still be trying to steal something that is hers by right.

While Mark Hemingway does us a valuable service by bringing attention to this government intrusion, he is so focused on the licensing fee that he misses a more serious issue. How would some government entity even know whether a blogger is making enough money to "justify" such a licensing fee? By having some kind of auditing mechanism in place and, probably, also setting itself up as an arbiter of what constitutes a blog. From there, regulations on that activity -- regardless of tax status -- would be a hop, skip, and a jump away.

Thanks to taxation, then, what you say needn't even be related to a political campaign to become the business of some little dictator in the government. And with opponents making mistakes like the one Hemingway does here, such a scheme will end up being pawned off as a "reasonable" alternative to the city forcing people to choose between shutting down their blogs or continuing with them illegally over a steep fee.

If it comes to pass that censorship arrives in America, it will not be all at once by the decree of some political figure. (Only the final step down that road could be.) It will come one almost imperceptible step at a time as other, better-established affronts to our freedom breed other government controls.

-- CAV

Updates

Today
: Several clarifications after second excerpt.

7 comments:

Jim May said...

The power to tax is the power to destroy -- and to silence.

Gus Van Horn said...

This reminded me of an example from an economics class of how public ownership of means of communication could result in de facto censorship.

Sadly, the government doesn't even need that!

mo said...

but don't you see Gus taxes are the price we pay for living in society.

Steve D said...

“It will come one almost imperceptible step at a time as other, better-established affronts to our freedom breed other government controls.”

It may very well happen as side effect of the imposition of economic controls such as taxation or imposition of fees as in the case you describe. In most cases the link between intellectual freedom (e.g. free speech) and property rights crucial as it is somewhat indirect. Here is a nice case where the link is direct and obvious. It’s scary to think of censorship being imposed almost by an accident.

“What's worse is that most people think of taxation as if it were a law of nature”

Most people seem to think about taxation as somewhere between alterable and immutable in the sense that they believe we could possible abolish it but with very negative consequences. I suppose it is just one more example of failure of the imagination.

Gus Van Horn said...

Mo,

That's probably about the only thing they'd let you say.

Steve,

"It's scary to think of censorship being imposed almost by an accident."

I hadn't thought of that, but you're right.

Gus

mtnrunner2 said...

Recently I've been enjoying the HBO series John Adams (DVD), so this is all the more nauseating, as I was watching Philadelphia serve as the site of the Continental Congress and the ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Ugh.

Gus Van Horn said...

"... I've been enjoying the HBO series John Adams (DVD) ..."

Great stuff!

Listened to the book-on-tape on which that was based with my father-in-law while driving the furniture up here to Boston last year, and later watched it on DVD.