Go Discriminate!

Discrimination is an important skill that everyone should learn.  Most of us can find numerous examples of a group in which some are better than others.  The ability to identify qualities or features that tend to correlate to the value of a group member often proves remarkably valuable.

Animals serve as an excellent example.  While many animals have nice soft fur which is pleasant to stroke and pet, they fall into two classes, one of which is rather dangerous.  The domestication of cats makes them ideal pets, but bears and beavers do not make such good pets.

More useful examples are found in school, where there are many people who will tell you how to do math problems.  Some of them are young and some are old, but among both groups, you can get bad information ("Just do it this way.  I don't know why, but it works") and good information ("It works for these reasons... but you can also do it this way because...").  This leads me to a very important example.

Subjects of a government are expected to obey its laws, and such obedience requires knowledge of the law.  In many cases, enforcers of the law will permit accidental disobedience of esoteric laws, but for more common laws, ignorance will be inexcusable.  Complicated laws create a different kind of dynamic that encourages most people to imprison themselves in behavior patterns that are recognized as safe and therefore followed.  In this way, complicated laws prevent innovation, growth, and progress, and instead allow governments to grow more oppressive over time.

Taxation is a great example.  Gary North points out that "Lawyers and accountants of the super-rich find ways of avoiding payment" and also makes the ridiculous claim that "they do not subject their clients to the risk of jail."  What he means, of course, is that their handling of the law tends to be legal (and therefore escapes punishment) even though it violates the spirit of taxation, which is to steal a significant portion of everyone's earnings from them.

Some of us understand that what the lawyers and accountants can do reflects legal implications of the law as written, and that those implications hold whether or not a person has an accountant or lawyer to explain them.  This is a nuance that appears to escape Mr. North.

What Mr. North fails to do is discriminate.  Instead of discriminating between those who actually find ways of avoiding payment, and those who attempt and fail to find ways of avoiding payment, he simply tags one group as "lawyers and accountants of the super-rich" and the other as "tax protestors."  If, like me, you legally avoid paying the income tax and you aren't paying an accountant or a lawyer (never mind about being super-rich - I'm not either), then you are clear evidence of Mr. North's failure here.  If you do pay an accountant or a lawyer who fails, as Wesley Snipes' accountants (and then lawyers) did (he was super-rich, by the way - might still be!), then you are still yet another clear example of Mr. North's failure.

It is important to me that you discriminate successfully.  If more people do it, then they won't have to be rich or hire lawyers or accountants to keep Uncle Sam's hands out of their pants.  They will simply have to avoid engaging in taxable activity to earn their money, and then be patient with the IRS agents who are encouraged to keep their heads where the sun doesn't shine on this issue.  The patience is necessary because they are led to believe that everyone is liable for the tax.  If the agency had to train its agents on the details of the tax code, or only hire people who already understood it, their budget would have to be far higher, and their efficacy at maximizing revenue would be far worse.  Instead, they hire people who believe what you probably believe: Everyone has to pay.

As someone who discriminates, and who also avoids taxable activity in order to prevent the US Empire from profiting off my work (and thereby avoids contributing to its growing menace to the human race), I would like to present you with this evidence showing that discrimination is helpful and profitable.

If you would like to build up your patience and skill in dealing with very poorly trained people (who are poorly trained on purpose so that you pay more in taxes than you owe), you will enjoy reading through the stories of people who worked with IRS agents to help them understand.

Taxation isn't the only example.  The behavior of police officers is far more limited than the police officers want you to know.  Learn the limits of their behavior by googling "probable cause" and "search warrant" and "Am I being detained?"  In many cases where YOU can demand one or both of these things, the cops don't have them and will back down once they realize that you can discriminate.  The trick is to know your rights!

By the way, the racist undertones in my first paragraph are a special kick in the nuts to the nuts who decided to use the word "discriminate" when what they really meant was "generalize."  Once you start discriminating, you see that racism is a foolish application of the principle of generalization, a form of induction which is often useful, but can be dangerous in the minds of those who fail to discriminate.