VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 5

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 5

That Lock Bites Your Money, and It Bites Your Home

The last section took you up to a height and let you see that lock through, that it is a mechanism, the largest industrial chain on earth, driving dynasties to rise and fall for thousands of years, at the mercy of no one's will. But that was all seen from a height. This section comes back down to the ground, back into the days you live every day, to see what shape that lock takes in the human world, and how, mouthful by mouthful, it bites you and millions upon millions of people. The first two mouthfuls, it bites your money, and it bites your home.

The first mouthful, what it bites is your money. From where does it bite? From a thing you cannot go around, that you cannot dodge, year after year, tax. Let me set out the intent of tax for you once more, the end of the last chapter spoke of it. Tax was, at the start, a most clean, most plain thing. A crowd of people living together always has some matters one person cannot handle, and someone has to build the roads, put out the fires, manage the thieves, run the schools, keep the children and teach them into good people. So everyone puts in a bit of money, pools it, and hires that machine, the government, to handle these public matters for everyone, to give everyone an environment to live and work in peace.

This is the intent of tax, everyone pooling money to ask the government to handle matters for everyone. That money is everyone's, hired to handle everyone's matters, and what it handles is protecting the people, giving the people the peace to live and work. Clean as can be.

Now look at how that lock bites this clean thing out of shape. The first thing, that money, the matters it handles, change their flavor. The tax money that was meant to protect the people, to give the people the peace to live and work, is drawn off, layer by layer, by that chain. The money goes into the coffers, and is not used on building roads, putting out fires, running schools, but is poured into that chain, feeds that hand, keeps those colluding people. The tax you paid, which was meant to come back to you and turn into the peace to live and work, now, for the most part, feeds that lock.

Think how unjust this is. You pay tax hoping this money will turn into the road repaired at your door, into the fire truck that comes to save you when there is a fire, into the school your child can attend. This money was meant to go round a circle and come back to you and your family, so your days would be steadier, better. But now this money, paid up, does not come back to you, it is poured into that chain and fattens those colluding people. You handed out the money, meaning to buy the peace to live and work, and what you bought is someone else's mountain of gold. This is the first mouthful that lock takes out of tax, taking the money that was meant to come back to you off midway and feeding it to itself.

The second thing, that money, is collected more and more. The tax that was meant to be a bit pooled, enough to handle public matters, becomes harsh taxes and sundry levies, collected here, collected there, the headings growing more numerous, the sums growing heavier. Why collected heavier and heavier? Because that chain has to be fed, and the bigger the chain rolls, the more mouths there are to feed, and the more blood has to be sucked from the common people. And so the tax grows heavier and heavier, heavy enough to press people until they cannot breathe. The tax that was meant to let people live and work in peace becomes instead the mountain that crushes the people's peace. This is called harsh taxes and sundry levies, the people having no way to live.

The third thing, and the most cunning, is that when it collects a new tax from you, it can still make you willing. You suppose that to add a new tax, the common people would surely be unwilling? That lock has a way. Every new tax it sets up, it pairs with ten thousand good reasons, this tax is for education, for medical care, for building bridges and paving roads, for relieving the poor, every reason pleasing to the ear, every one standing on the great cause. You hear it, this is for everyone's good, and so you are willing, and hand out the money.

But once the money is collected? Those ten thousand good reasons, in the blink of an eye, are thrown away. The one said to be for education, the money does not go into education. The one said to be for the poor, the money does not reach the poor's hands. That sum is soon moved to other uses, fills some other hole, or, following that chain, feeds that hand again. You see, this is that using means to reach ends from the last section, in the shape it takes on collecting tax. It takes ten thousand good reasons as the means, to reach the end of making you willing to hand out the money. Once the money is in hand, that good reason is thrown away, and the sum is moved to other uses. You were moved by those ten thousand good reasons and willingly paid, but the money was not used on those good reasons. Not only was your blood sucked, you have to be grateful to the hand that sucked it, because when it sucked your blood, it flew the flag of for-your-good.

This mouthful, have you tasted the flavor of it? Tax was, at the start, the cleanest thing, everyone pooling money to ask the government to protect them, to give them the peace to live and work. But that lock bit it into this, the money drawn off to feed that hand, collected heavier and heavier until it crushed people, and with ten thousand good reasons cheating you into willingly paying, and once paid, moved to other uses. A thing that was meant to come back to you turns its head and becomes that lock's tube, sucking your blood, year after year, in good name, and leaving you unable to say a word.

And look back, how is this the affair of any one corrupt official? It is countless hands on that machine, on that chain, sucking together along that thickest tube, tax. Drag out one corrupt official, and that tube is still there, sucking just the same. So it is still that line the last section set up, what you see is that lock biting your money, and what is to be undone is that lock, not cursing, dragging out, some one hand that sucks your blood, for if the tube is not cut, another hand sucks just the same.

That lock bites your money, and then it bites deeper, it bites your home. From where? From a sum you cannot dodge year after year, so long as you still have a home, the land tax, also called the property tax. Let me help you see the true nature of this land tax first. What is a land tax? Laid bare, it is a protection fee. You pay this money, what for? To ask the government to protect this home of yours, to protect this plot, this house, from being seized by force, to protect the safety of your whole family, to give you an environment where you can settle down steadily, live and work in peace. You pay the land tax, and the government protects your home. This is a trade, an exchange, you pay the fee, and it provides the protection.

Take it as a protection fee, and the sense of this trade comes clear. Since it is a trade, it has to be even. You paid the protection fee, and the government has to hold up its end, give you a safe environment where you can live and work in peace. This is what it has to do, having taken your money. Now look back at the last section, at the things the front of this chapter spoke of, did it give you a safe environment to live and work in peace? It did not. You go to handle a matter, and the front line torments you. The tax is collected heavier and heavier, crushing you until you cannot breathe. Departments take suggestions as grounds and fine you. That chain of the collusion of officials and business sucks your blood. You paid the protection fee, and what you got in exchange was not protection, it was being bitten, mouthful by mouthful, by this machine.

So let me ask, on your behalf, a plainest, and most rightfully-stood-up question. I paid the protection fee, and you did not give me a safe environment. Then may I ask for a refund? Or, stop paying this property tax, until you provide me a safe environment again?

Savor this question. It is not in the least overbearing, it speaks the plainest sense of a trade under heaven, I paid the fee and did not get the service, on what grounds should I go on meekly paying? This joins the true nature set up in the first section, the people are the boss, and the government is a hired hand the people hired, who takes money and does the work. A hired hand who takes his wages and, far from doing the work, turns around and wrecks the boss's own place, by what grounds should the boss go on paying his wages? To withhold the wages, to stop paying, until he does his work well, is only right and proper.

But in reality, this protection fee, you can neither get a refund nor stop paying, and if you cannot pay, the end is far more wretched than that. In the beacon country, the ones who lost their homes because they could not pay the land tax are not one or two, they are a great many, one case after another. Let me show you the one, in the middle of this, that is the least defensible. A person, all along paying his land tax fine. Later, he lost his income, perhaps culled off his post by this great fire of the AI turning. With his income gone, he cannot pay that land tax. At this step, look back at the last chapter, at a rule set up there, that once a person has lost his income, even the bank, the one that most recognizes money and most ought to chase the debt, has to stop the chasing, has to give him time, save him, and must not chase that debt and drive a person who has lost his income to the wall. Even the bank was made to stay its hand, to save the person. And the government? The government's land tax is collected right on, not a cent less. You have lost your income, cannot pay, and the government not only does not stay its hand, does not save you, it turns around and, by the procedure, auctions off, seizes, the home you guarded your whole life.

Do you see, in the middle of this, how indefensible it is? Even that profit-chasing bank, the one that most ought to chase the debt, set up a rule, that when a person has lost his income, it stays its hand, saves the person. But this government, which was meant to protect you, meant to give you the peace to live and work, which collected your protection fee your whole life, is instead fiercer than the bank, and at your most wretched, most cornered moment, it is the first to put out a hand and seize your last home. The one meant to protect you comes down on you before the profit-chaser does. You paid a lifetime of protection fees, and what you got in exchange is that the moment you fall, the one collecting your protection fee is the first to come seize you.

Then you will surely ask, how can the government do this? Is this not plainly robbery? This brings us to the skin that lock puts on here, the most frightening, the most high-sounding, and it is called procedural justice. The people who do this thing, the civil servant who handles it, even the judge sitting on the bench, will tell you, with a straight back, we did it by the procedure. The notice, sent. The public announcement, posted. The auction, run through the process. Every step, compliant, by procedure. So this thing, there is no fault in it, it is just. As for the end of that procedure being a living person, a home guarded a whole life, gone, they do not concern themselves with it.

Let me pierce it for you. These civil servants who recognize only the procedure, even those judges sitting on the bench, are, at the bone of them, illiterate in the law too. Where is the illiteracy? It is not that he does not understand the procedure, the procedure he knows through and through, every step walked without a seam. His illiteracy is that he has forgotten what the procedure is for. A procedure is, at bottom, a formality that protects people, and it is for not wronging people, not mishandling people, that it is walked step by step, steadily. Its intent is to protect people. But these illiterate-in-the-law take this formality that was meant to protect people and use it backwards, use it as, so long as I have walked every step of the procedure right, then even if the end of this thing is driving a person to a broken home and lost people, it has nothing to do with me, I have discharged my task. The procedure, from a formality that protects people, they have used into a shield behind which, harming people is no matter, so long as the formalities are complete. Take that eye, the one set up in the first section, read the intent, not the letter, and cast it on this, and you see through it. These people fix their eyes dead on the few letters of the procedure, compliant will do, and in their hearts there is no intent of the law, to protect people. A thing, however completely the procedure is walked, its intent, has it protected this person? If it has not, and has instead driven the person to a broken home and lost people, then this procedure, however compliant, has betrayed the law's intent of protecting people. It is not justice, it is doing mischief. The intent of the law is to protect people, not to protect the procedure. A thing that drives a person to a broken home and lost people, however complete the procedure, is not justice. The next section takes you to see the next two mouthfuls that lock takes, tormenting you at the window, and turning administration into law enforcement to fill a private coffer.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.