Sisyphus Understands

Over the last few years, I have gradually drifted away from identifying myself as a Republican and slowly found myself aligning more and more with libertarians. Note, however, that is small "l" libertarians, which must be differentiated from the big "L" party.

While I would love it if libertarians were able to muster the unity needed to build a viable third party, I just don't see it happening. For starters, too often those who talk about running as big "L" candidates seem like they are Republicans or Democrats who couldn't get nominated in their own party and needed someone else to boost them. But the biggest problem I see is the very philosophy of the little "l" folks - it just doesn't work for big party politics.

Let me explain. No, there is too much - let me sum up. One of the basic tenets of libertarian philosophy is individual freedom, keeping government out of as much as possible and allowing people the liberty to believe, do and say what they like. Obviously, there have to be limits, but they should be as open as possible to allow people maximum freedom without infringing on the freedoms of others.

But there's the rub. If your philosophy is built on letting everyone be and do what they want, how do you ever get a consensus about what your group should be supporting? People who subscribe to libertarianism tend to be individualists with very strongly held views - not much can dissuade them from their belief in the freedoms they hold dear. Personally, I think that's good thing, but it sure does make organizing hard.

Ever try to get even two Type-A personalities to reach an agreement on something they have opposing views on? Now imagine that on a nationwide scale, amongst thousands of people, no two of whom hold exactly the same view...

Let's just say I'm not going to hold my breath on the Libertarian Party posing a serious threat to the Republocrats anytime soon. I'll muddle along and try to support whatever candidate seems closest to my personal libertarian views.

Over the last few weeks (and months) we've heard more and more about raising taxes on the "rich." We've also heard more about how the cutoff point for those increases ($250,000 in income) is likely to impact small business owners, most of whom are not incorporated, and who report their earnings on their personal income taxes.

So I got to thinking about how folks might try to get around paying these new taxes, and it occurred to me that for a small business, the IRS really only knows what your income is because you tell them! Think about it. When you own your business, you don't get a W2 from your employer - you don't have one. You are required to report how much you earn, and theoretically the IRS could do an audit and check your bank accounts to see how much went in.

But what if you avoided all that? I could envision an enterprising you business person opening something like a coffee shop, one which only accepts cash. Nothing wrong there - you have to pay for the credit card machine (an extra cost) and most people don't carry checks. Similarly, if he had employees, he pays them in cash - no payroll taxes, so they get to take home more. And if he doesn't deposit his earnings in the bank, there is no electronic trail to follow to show he even earned money!

Granted for some things, using cash would be a pain, like ordering his supplies. But in that case, banks sell cashier's checks, which also leave no trail pointing to our entrepreneur. This would certainly be more cumbersome than our customary electronic transactions, but for the life of me I can't find a major flaw in the theory.

I wonder if we will see something like this sort of illicit aboveground economy emerge as Congress continues to do what it does best - steal every last dime it can from the taxpayer.