"A global tax revolt is brewing. To prevent it from boiling over, governments will, as a last resort, finally turn to the free market."
Unlike their seemingly gleeful liberal counterparts, conservatives are often derided for their apparent pessimism. The charge has merit, and a simple explanation. What makes the typical Tory testy, whilst the Whig waxes winsome? There's a reason conservatives come across as negative, why they seem so obsessed with the evils of the world, and here it is: Conservatives look for things that are broken, so they can fix them; liberals do just the opposite.
The marvelous system of government that our forefathers bequeathed to us has long been in disrepair, thanks to the ongoing abuse of reckless liberals. Conservatives have labored mightily to set it right again, and rapid developments in technology may cap their valiant efforts with success.
"Despite the predictions of many economists, the largest and fastest growing market in the world in the next 20 years is not going to be in China," declares Wall Street Journal editor John Fund. "It is going to be in cyberspace. We are about to witness incredible technological developments that will make it very difficult for traditional nation-states to 'capture' income, to tax heavily, and to enforce burdensome regulations," Fund predicts. "Just as communism in the East failed to survive the technological revolution of the last half of the 20th century, big bureaucratic governments in the West will fail to survive the advances of the first half of the 21st century."
In a speech reprinted in a recent issue of Imprimis, the monthly journal of Hillsdale College, John Fund argues that the ease of electronic money transfers and the security afforded to them by encryption will force the nations of the world to eschew punitive tax rates. "In the next century," he forecasts, "more and more technologically savvy individuals will also choose to set up shop where their capital is best treated. It will thus be impossible for tax collectors to penalize successful entrepreneurs, because goods will be made in one country, sold in a second, financed in a third, by investors living in a fourth, whose profits are sent to a fifth, which is a tax haven. In the 21st century," Fund figures, "governments will surrender power to citizens not because they want to, but because they must."
Fund foresees a decrease in the financial dominance of governments over their citizens, and a reassertion by those citizens of their personal prerogatives. "People will look to private instead of public alternatives to fulfill their needs," he predicts, citing educational choice and privatization of pension systems as ideas whose time is near. Fund senses growing demand for accountability in the political arena, as manifested in term limits legislation and similar proposals to curb the arrogance of incumbency. Fund also detects "a growing consensus that personal responsibility is important," which should spell the end of our era of victimology and send a passel of pandering politicians packing.
