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Man says he doesn’t have to lodge tax returns because he’s not a ‘person’
Man says he doesn’t have to lodge tax returns because he’s not a ‘person’
Based on his patterns of speech - "who stated his name was Glen, of the family Polglaise" - and his argument that he's a human being who waives his right to recognition as a person, he seems to be a "freeman on the land" (also known in the USA as a "sovereign citizen").
I'm fascinated by the logic used by these people. They spend substantial time and effort researching and building their highly detailed collective fantasy, in which the government is essentially a complex and effective conspiracy of James-Bond-villain proportions, but they truly believe that saying the right words will cause the government to throw up its hands and say "OK, you win, you cracked the code". Rather than, you know, just changing the code. Or shooting them.
Yeah, sovereign citizens are incredibly interesting to me. I think the best explanation of them I ever saw is that they've basically decided that the law is magic, and if they can learn the correct incantation to recite, they will just automatically win:
That's from a decision by a Canadian judge from 2012 called Meads v. Meads, where he refers to them as "Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument (OPCA) litigants". It's a significant investment of time (like, comparable to reading a short novel), but if you're interested in sovereign citizens I think it's one of the best things ever written about them. It's available here (PDF, almost 200 pages): https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.pdf
OPCA looks like a logical (?) response to the conspiracy theory-driven "paranoid style". For each malady inflicted by a magically all-powerful government, there must be a counter-incantation, a magic formula that grants immunity and success.
The relentless pettifogging and ultimate desperation of these strategies implies that the perpetrators actually are less powerful than they might hope. They're genuinely suffering in some manner, but incapable of identifying the causes of that suffering accurately.
The scientist in me wants to get these guys in a PET scanner; the social part of me wants them to be outcaste, far, far away from the rest of us having to deal with them.
That's a brilliantly apt description, and I suppose from a kind of Dunning-Kruger standpoint that must be what the legal profession looks like: lots of people saying strange words and following arcane processes to change the fortunes of the people involved.
I'm going to have to find the time to read the decision properly, it does indeed look extremely interesting.
It's classic cargo cult behavior. They see and hear about lawyers saying things they don't understand to get their clients off free, and they figure that they can say those same things as well.
This:
Reads like something Chris Chan would say...
Here's a video of the person:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfSkBONbDwA
(sorry shameless joke)
If he doesn't accept that he's a person I wonder what rights he believes he has? Right to a fair trial?
That's the thing about SovCits/FOTL: they want all the rights and privileges of citizens (especially public services like roads, military protection, and fire fighters), they just don't want to pay for any of it, nor do they want to have to obey the law if it inconveniences them. They'll yell about free speech but claim the US Constitution is invalid and that the Articles of Confederation are still in effect (but there's a giant conspiracy that all lawyers, lawmakers, judges, etc are all in on to pretend the AOC was replaced by the Constitution).
There's definitely a range of nuttiness, with the idiots who think they can say a few magic words to get out of traffic tickets and taxes (but who will pay up when arrested) on the relatively harmless end, to extremely unstable individuals who believe armed revolution is the only way and will murder LEOs if the opportunity presents itself.
I hope those A-hole ranchers - the Bundy's I think - get nailed to the wall one day. Those people are the worst.
I doubt he even recognises the jurisdiction of Australian courts over him.
Problem with that is all power is mechanically derived from right of might, wherever it is morally derived.
Bottom line is the state has more might than any individual and thus has jurisdiction over anyone outside the protection of another state.
He can recognise the jurisdiction of the courts when the cops lock him up and the VSRO takes his assets...
I love this comment. It reminds me of advice I once got about driving a car "You may have the right-of-way but the law won't save you from thousands of pounds of crushing force."
I've heard that one as "There are cemeteries full of pedestrians who had right of way" :-)
Aw yes, that's what I was grasping at. Thank you for that!
That’s an interesting twist considering in the US corporations are considered people.
People who refuse to pay taxes shouldn't have access to public works and comforts in my opinion. So, unless they're able to be entirely self-reliant and don't leave their property (since roads tend to be public), they should pay taxes.
If you allow that some people shouldn't be under a requirement to pay taxes under some circumstances, then things start to get slippery.
You're self-sufficient, but the country in which you live is protected by a military and a diplomatic apparatus that needs to be funded.
But then again, you shop at stores, so your purchases get taxed.
But if you don't shop at stores?
Indeed, so people should pay taxes.
And good luck for them getting to stores without making use of public or government-controlled systems. If they need emergency services or someone to visit them, they (indirectly) make use of those same systems as well.
Hell, I even find tax-dodging by the rich questionable, since they tend to get their riches from making use of those systems, or people using those systems.
IMO, tax avoidance by the rich should be harshly punished, because it sets a bad example. If the richest among us won't pay up, then why should anybody else?
Oh come on man, everyone is going to protect their own interest. Tax avoidance isn't illegal and everyone does it from the rich to the person reporting their charitable donations. Yes, loop holes should be closed. Yes, laws should be obeyed. Yes, higher taxes should be paid on higher income brackets. But don't ding people for watching out for themselves through legal means.
Reminds me of this quote from the government inquiry into Kerry Packer, an Australian billionaire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBg7DnQjjcY&t=90
A great quote! I think the part that is troublesome about tax avoidance is when those with power start changing the law to benefit themselves.
Exactly. If you don't pay for the common good, you don't get the common good.
That sounds like a lot more trouble than it's worth. I get the sentiment but it's hardly practical to enforce.
So is their idea of not having to pay taxes while using all of the stuff society provides to them.
Well that sounds more like libertarians but yeah, again I get the sentiment and agree.
EDIT: I should say that I messed up and thought I was in a different thread and your comment was about Republicans, so that's why I mentioned Libertarians specifically, but this whole thing reeks of libertarians anyways.
These "freemen of the land" are the ultimate libertarians. The only sovereignty they recognise is their own. They refuse to recognise any government's sovereignty over them.
Part of me really likes that idea but I have found that it breaks down as soon as humans start living in groups of more than a few and start to face real-world problems. I've yet to meet a libertarian who can actually describe in any detail how a libertarian society would work and still address even the most basic of problems.
I think a good exercise is to ask a libertarian to describe how firefighting would be handled in Colonial America . It's a very basic challenge of any community of that era and I've yet to hear a good explanation that didn't violate the underlying principal of individual liberty.
The article continues like this with more and more rules being added and increasing authority handed out to fire departments as the Colonies moved further and further away from the ineffectual citizen fire brigades.
Source: https://www.firehouse.com/home/news/10527819/firefighting-in-colonial-america
I don't disagree. I find libertarianism to be valid in theory - everyone should have the right to self-determination - but noone has ever explained to me how it's supposed to work in practice. It seems to rely very much on people working together cooperatively merely out of the goodness of their heart, but the people who espouse libertarianism often do not seem to be cooperative, goodness-of-one's-heart types.
You got an audible chuckle out of me!
I have no sympathy with these people, because they insist on trying to justify and rationalize their refusal to recognize legal authority. Anybody serious about refusing to obey the state should state their intent to disobey and then shut up.
We shouldn't have to justify refusal to obey the state or capital. It is the state and capital that should justify their demands upon us -- and it is obvious that the only justification they have is power.
I have found an effective argument (or at least one without much counterpoint) for Republicans to get "on board" against voter ID laws is to ask them to pretend the situation is about gun rights. "For gun ownership, the onerous is on the state to prove why you should NOT own a gun through things like the terrorist watch list, list of felons, etc. Why would you want voting to be different than that? Why must a citizen prove that they should be able to vote? It's up to the State to prove why they should not be able to!"
There are some holes in that but it catches their attention.
And if we look at the Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms is mentioned once. The right to vote is mentioned five times.
I once researched the supposed rationale of these "freemen on the land", and it's quite convoluted. It's basically a complicated semantic justification which supposedly proves that their refusal to accept authority is somehow an adult choice based in law rather than a tantrum by a toddler who's learned how to say "No!"