I have had much of my thinking preoccupied with the heart-rending dream of a little farm in the country.  A serviceable house with room for a library and classroom for my little ones (I collect books); a small house for creatures that make eggs, meat, and milk; a shop building where I can push a plane and beat on hot steel; and a little Mediterranean-style windmill that spins a chunk of granite to grind my wheat into flour for my wife to beat into loaves.  It rends the heart for the speed at which it fades.

I could build such a place myself in five years or so, but even to begin or “get permission” (permitting) would cost more than I am likely to make in all the years remaining to my useful working life. 

I spent the better part of twenty years in various trades — construction, mostly, but also cabinetmaking and tool-and-die.  As the best I ever got from that was herniated disks and the “self-employment tax,” I did what I could to earn my keep with my brain rather than my back — been at that for almost a decade with little success.

For most of that time, it has struck me as absurd that most of my labor was wasted like heat in a poorly maintained machine.  I think I may have profited from 20% of my labor — at best — for all the costs, taxes, punishments, and generally confiscatory parasitism to be found in the “land of the fee.”  I could employ some terribly pedantic scholarly sources to demonstrate this fact — that most of our labor is stolen between hand and mouth — but that has always proven to be a waste of time.

I would like to offer three solutions — none of which will be enacted, and such is the pity of the world we know.  If the reader would consider effects, however...

1. Single-family, owner-occupied primary residence shall be wholly exempted from all property taxes.  Such residences shall be exempt from any prohibition upon or regulation of the production of food or other necessary items, or the collection of water by catchment or ground well-water for such production and the sustenance of life.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why anyone ever accepted taxes on the fundamental necessities for human life — food, water, shelter.  Tax may be necessary for some things, but to apply the ubiquitous authoritarian threat of death (as all law in truth is) to a man’s home, water, and bread robs him of his most fundamental right.  “Pay off” your home?  You’re just renting it from the local goon squad.  Castle doctrine is wholly neutered when the State can (and regularly does) simply take your home.

In my area, around 60% of property taxes are paid to teachers who declare that male and female do not exist — and if I object, I am investigated by the FBI.  If I protest, I am homeless.  By means of property taxes on our homes, and regulations on producing our own food and water, we are all made lower than serfs, because a serf at least can eat of his own produce and drink the rain.  Google “Wickard v. Filburn, 1942.”

2. All profits derived directly from the sale or barter of items produced, harvested, or manufactured in a single-family, owner-occupied cottage industry or family-run farm, when sold or traded directly to the end user or consumer by the one having produced, harvested, or manufactured such items, shall be exempt from all taxes.  All profits derived from the sale or barter of services performed between two individual private persons shall be exempt from all taxes.  Furthermore, no license, permit, or other requirement beyond simple liability for the quality of goods and services, and reasonable transparency in private contract terms, shall be imposed upon private persons engaging in private transactions.

When I hang drywall for some homeowner who wants to finish his basement, will the IRS hand me the screw gun?  When I build a jewelry box for my neighbor’s daughter, or sell a hand-bound copy of my book to some dude at a craft fair, does the Fed spray the lacquer?  Will the FDA help me set up my display?

Taxes on personal labor, family agriculture, and cottage industry are reflective of the authoritarian hubris that has presaged and precipitated every peasant revolt — and most famines — in history.  Famine is rarely a product of purely bad weather and weak harvest; it is normally the result of bad government.  Taxes on personal industry like this (not that of larger stock-traded companies) are a life-draining parasite on prosperity and are always destructive.

3. It shall be unlawful to charge more than 1% simple interest per annum on a loan given to purchase a single-family, owner-occupied, primary residence.  It shall be unlawful to charge more than 1% the total value of said loan for any and all closing costs.  It shall be unlawful to enact any penalty or fee on the prepayment or early payment of such a loan.  It shall be unlawful to charge an insurance premium of greater than 1% of the total fair market value of said property per annum.  It shall be unlawful to compound interest or convert unpaid interest to principal for the duration of the contract.  Any commercial entity purchasing or holding a single-family residence shall pay not less than 30% of the fair market value of said property per year as tax to the county in which said property is located.

To apply usury and market speculation to the home?  To allow such things is perhaps among the top three stupidest things ever done in the history of the United States.  Daily, you and your children witness and bend under the weight of that monumental crime.  It is as bad as allowing fake money.

These three things would solve, address, or otherwise mitigate so many “issues” (symptoms) facing our country today.  It would in one year’s time become an entirely different world — the one intended by the men who imagined it.

It is called a “yeoman,” and it was the sine qua non upon which our liberty was supposed to be built. 

The many ills we suffer today are the result of allowing this and many more very bad ideas that seemed so good, roughly between 1879 and 1950.

All the programs and elections in the world cannot make free those whose lives are subject to the whims of committees and market-manipulators.  I wish I had the popularity or voice to push something like this to Capitol Hill — but we all know that, even if we cannot admit it to ourselves.  Would you abolish the evil forms to which you have become accustomed?

Spencer D. “I normally wear pants” Miles; Emeritus Guy, Super Important Director of Things and Stuff, FAS, MDBS, FPDHA (hons), Hominus notimportantus atallii.

Image: JSMed via Pixabay, Pixabay License.