Chicago is contemplating one of the more effective ones:
Breaking down communities by creating incentives for friends and neighbors to betray one another is a much more effective tool in developed nations with less salient cultural cleavages a ruler can exploit. Creating distrust in society increases the public’s demand for government and reduces our ability to create (market and non-market) voluntary institutions to compete with government. If we think our neighbors are out to get us, we’re less likely to want to deal with them on a voluntary basis and more likely to demand they be controlled by government. Destroying community is good for government.
The Chicago city government seems to have realized this. It is considering a “Tax Whistleblower Program” which would pay people to rat on “tax cheats.” Grassers will most likely be paid a percentage of back taxes collected. The city officials are claiming that it’s “just another way of bringing people into compliance.” No doubt it will be an effective one too, since community can be a fragile thing.
All it takes is one neighbourhood busybody being financially rewarded for squealing on the guy down the street. Everything tends to snowball as trust evaporates and everyone starts to view their neighbours as potential threats.
Wonder where they’ll build the first gulag?
Comment by Tired — October 29, 2009 @ 08:58