Libertarians on equality before the law

Economics Political Theory
1

Greetings, this is my first post here, so hello everybody. A long time reader, I come here asking for advice regarding a current issue in my country. To cut to the chase, the government is currently in the process of mandating that cash-registers be used by people operating in market-places, something that has always been mandatory for supermarkets and the like, under the pretext of equality under the law, with an added bonus of possibly reducing the shadow economy. I‘m interested in publicly arguing against this, using both moral and utilitarian arguments, therefore I‘m scouring the Internet for material. It is a vast place however, which is why I‘m hoping that somebody here might already be knowledgeable regarding this and would be willing to help me.

Specifically, I‘m looking for information on the libertarian perspective regarding equality before the law, especially in the case when the argument is used to increase the number of people being coerced by the state.

What makes this task somewhat tricky is that the audience I have in mind may not see why having cash-registers mandatory may be an unjust act of coercion in the first place, though the people being mandated against sure aren‘t going down without a fight.

Is there anybody here that would like to help me?

2

Well just think about it a few minutes. I did not get it right form the start. But now I understand. I just assume there is a business without cash register (unlikely but who knows) so he just writes e.g an invoice fetches the money and gives the change.

Now if the two have agreed upon that and the goods are changed, then the business is “done”. So it does not matter how one get’s the change and from where. And it would not have to bother any government.

But now comes the full stop. The government claims to have a right to taxes. And now it’s getting interesting. If the state would be right and you would agree, then you’d have to pay your taxes. But even then it would not matter how you do your business, you just have to have some paper or whatever stating your income. So even then there is no argument for the cash-register but making it easier to get controlled.

Now if you think taxes are theft. Then there is not equal law. There is no law which can guarantee equal handling in the case of beeing unlawful. If you are a thive and get caught, so bad luck but if you are not a caught, who will blame you for anything? And in this case the act alone, that the wrong-doer would be allowed to enforce you supporting his wrong-doing a certain way is absurd.

However in all states there are laws on how things have to be done. E.g there are forms which you have used to fill in. You just can not get along give them a piece of paper and are done. So in fact they can force anyone to follow this route. And that is wht their goal here is. They want that people act in a certain pleasnt way for them…

But if you realyl see it they did not give you anything in return. It’s your obligation but you do not get any thing back. So that’s not a “deal” it’s just black-mailing… Do as I wish or we put you on trial, or in prison or whatever…

3

One thing wonders me - why equality is only in one statist direction. I mean it is one way for everyone to be equal under law by making everyone have cash registers (statist way) and it is entirely the same from equality standpoint if noone had them in the first place (anitauthoritarian way). Why first way is the way if the goal is equality? Answer is - obviously equality is not the goal but a rhetoric to advance some other agenda.

4

Why is it a bonus to reduce the so-called shadow economy?

5

The first point - which boniek hinted at - is that equality before the law means equality of every individual, every organization and every actor including the King, prime minister, bureaucrats and the government itself. If the government has the power to levy taxes, then so does every organization. Else, the government’s claim to the power to levy taxes is simply hypocrisy.

This is a bonus from the point-of-view of the government. A “shadow economy” only has to go into the shadows because it is oppressed by the government. Otherwise, it would operate just like the rest of the economy.

The regimentation of business records-keeping always has one and only one purpose: taxation. Let me guess, your country recently came under EU regulations? It’s also going to have to begin paying EU taxes.

You’re not going to stop this but you might be able to use this issue as a platform to question the justice of taxation qua taxation. You cannot consistently argue against this expansion of government regulation without also standing up for the “big guys”. That is, you must argue that government regimentation of business records-keeping is transparently self-interested in all cases and has as its sole purpose the regularization of business records so that government revenuers can more readily assess tax duties. This is the ad hominem (to the State) aspect of the argument. Beware that the statist rhetoriticians will try to then castigate you as a lackey of the big-business capitalists. If you want some prepared rebuttals for this, let me know. Then, there is the simple hypocrisy fo the government arrogating to itself the authority to order private organizations around. What makes that one organization (government) so damn special? Did God annoint it? Is it part of some grand order or great chain of being? By what authority can one organization order other organizations and individuals what to do? Democracy? Can a majority vote make murdering someone OK? If not, then what is the standard of right and wrong that dwells above simple majority vote and is this proposed rule consistent with that standard?

Finally, there is also a utilitarian argument to be made, though I think the utilitarian argument should only be thrown in as a “kicker”… in other words, I recommend that you say something like even if it were not flatly hypocritical and self-serving for the government to impose these rules, it would still be harmful. How? These rules will force small businesses that do not need the capital equipment of a cash register to buy one anyway. This will artificially inflate demand for cash registers drawing resources from more valuable uses to the production of cash registers. It will prevent the other more valuable capital maintenance or investments that small businesses would have made (maybe updated, safer electrical wiring or better lighting or non-slip tile or fixing the leak in the roof or who knows what) from being made. Those small businesses which cannot afford both necessary capital maintenance and the capital investment in a cash register may go out of business, reducing competition in the marketplace and driving up prices for the poorer consumers who tend to patronize smaller businesses. Please read this brief essay to understand my line of reasoning.

Clayton -

6

Everyone has to use cash registers because of “equality under the law”? What in the hell? That is twisted.

7

I think the libertarian (and classical liberal) notion of “equality under the law” is different from the notion you refer to by the same phrase. Mandating that all people operating in marketplaces use cash registers is taking an existing unequal regulation - unequal because it heretofore applied only to supermarkets and other such large “business entities” - and extending it to all marketplace operators. However, the regulation is still technically unequal, because there’s still a condition for where it applies, namely when one operates in a marketplace. For the regulation to be truly equal, it would have to stipulate that every single person, whether he operates in a marketplace or not, must go out and buy a cash register.

As Clayton stated, the libertarian and classical liberal notion of “equality under the law” refers to equal liability under the law. Interestingly enough, this was intended to be a limitation on what could rightly constitute “the law” - if proposed law couldn’t apply to everyone equally, then it didn’t qualify. The implication was that law concerned actions, not status. It also meant that any unequal law destroyed equality under the law as a whole.

8

First of all, thank you all for the replies. I‘d like to appologize for my previous post-and-run, recent developments have led me to prioritize other things somewhat over this, though now I‘m back to hopefully wrap it up.

Why is it a bonus to reduce the so-called shadow economy?

This is a bonus from the point-of-view of the government. A “shadow economy” only has to go into the shadows because it is oppressed by the government. Otherwise, it would operate just like the rest of the economy.

Yep..

The regimentation of business records-keeping always has one and only one purpose: taxation. Let me guess, your country recently came under EU regulations? It’s also going to have to begin paying EU taxes.

nose tap

Anyhow, thank you all again for the answers, you‘ve filled in a lot of the picture, but if you guys have not (understandably) wandered off, I‘d like some additional input. The thing that‘s missing is some sort of an analogy, a general case of why it‘s a bad thing or a misaplication of the principle of equality of treatment [in this case, to treat all vendors, regardless of size, equally by requiring them all to have cash-registers] to use it as an excuse for placing an additional burden on a group of market participants. I have read the following of Rothbard‘s:

“The justice of equality of treatment depends first of all on the justice of the treatment itself. Suppose, for example, that Jones, with his retinue, proposes to enslave a group of people. Are we to maintain that justice requires that each be enslaved equally? And suppose that someone has the good fortune to escape. Are we to condemn him for evading the equality of justice meted out to his fellows?”

And it is close to what I‘m looking for. The part that may not fly with the intended audience is the unjustness of the treatment in mind, or why it is actually harmful to hold smaller traders to the same standard as large chains. I intend to spin this by saying that the requirement for cash registers is unnecessary in the first place in the case of supermarkets because they would be using them regardless; the usefulness of registers and point-of-sale systems is dependent on the number of transactions, which is why smaller vendors can and do get by without them, making this proposal actively harmful (thanks to Clayton for putting me on the right track with this one), instead of simply redundant, arbitrary and busy-body-like as the original requirement for supermarkets.

To get back to the point: does anyone have anything close to the Rothbard quote off the cuff, but for a less convinced audience?

The thing is, I do not intend to preach this to the choir, meaning that I have to find an approach that does not require the receivers of the message to agree fully to the premises of austrolibertarianism, yet still convince them that policies of the like are a bad thing. Inch by inch… I feel somewhat dirty simply for arguing this on their level.

Oh, Clayton if you could share the big-business-lackey rebuttals you’ve mentioned, that would also be great. Those are always useful.