Freedomain Radio

    Once upon a time there was a small town out west, it thrived peacefully by its farms and shops. Every thing was ok until Mr. Bandit came to town and began robbing Farmer Bill's farm. Now this had never happened before so the people got together and did some thinking. It was decided that someone needed to be appointed to deal with these kinds of problems, so the people voted and created a position called a ‘Sheriff’.

    So the Sheriff went to farmer Bill's place where he would wait for the bandit. He found the Bandit trying to sneak into the barn. "Stop thief!" The sheriff yelled and arrested the bandit. The Sheriff took the bandit back to town where he discussed the issue with the town's elders. Questions were raised as what to do with the bandit. They reasoned that the Bandit must be examined to prove his guilt before punished. So they got people to collect 'evidence' and people to 'judge' they called it a ‘Court’. And it had to have a special building for this so they got to work on building it.

    A ‘trial’ was opened in the Court and decided that the Bandit was guilty. It was admitted that the justice they came up with was not perfect since it was possible he was innocent, but it was better than letting Bandits run around. They decided they should be put the Bandit somewhere where he can do no one any harm. So they made another building to put the bandit in and called it a 'jail'. The jail needed to have 'guards' to keep the Bandit from escaping and also to feed him three meals a day until his sentence was up.

    With the bandit removed, everyone was about to congratulate themselves for coming up with a good system to deal with these kinds of problems. But soon the Sheriff, guards, judges and investigators were complaining that they needed to be paid for their new jobs! No one would volunteer paying for the jobs these people did since none of them did anything directly beneficial to the individuals in the public, except for perhaps Farmer Bill - and he was too poor to pay.

    So one day the Sheriff goes door to door demanding money, he was calling it a 'tax'. The tax was taken it at gunpoint to pay for all the goods and services the 'system' uses up to keep Mr. Bandit behind bars, build the jails, pay the Sheriff, judges, investigators and so on. But the job is too big for the Sheriff alone, so he uses apart of the taxes to hire help collecting the taxes, calling them 'Tax collectors'. If anyone refused to pay the tax, the Sheriff threw them into the jail with Mr. Bandit.

    One fine morning Farmer Bill was talking to his neighbor:

Bill: "I wish I'd just waited up and shot that Bandit myself if I saw him stealing, that way we'd know perfectly well he was guilty."

Neighbor: "Well even though we would be 100% sure of guilt in that case the courts say the punishment must fit the crime."

Bill: He spits on the ground in disgust. "Maybe so, but they also say they justice isn’t perfect. As it is, at least the other way we wouldn’t have a hundred bandits robbing us with their taxes!"