Glossary of special meanings

  • acquiesce – to acknowledge the claims of tax-collectors of a right to collect taxes in a specific territory.
  • action – instinctive, conditioned or deliberate movement, expenditure, work or attack.  All action needs the explicit approval of the tax-collector, usually gained through the payment of some form of tax.
  • autarky – the operation of a territory relying only on its own raw materials, workers and customers.  As an individual, this is equivalent to subsistence farming or crofting; at a state level, autarky means no economic relations with other territories.  It is the opposite of a division of labour.
  • avoidance – action or inaction that does not result in tax-collector demands.
  • behaviour – a set of actions, repeated individually or as a group over a prolonged period.
  • belief – personal opinion defined by the thought or statement “I believe ……”.
  • bridge – a tax barrier set up over a river or other restriction to travel on or across the water.  The word used to describe a construction that takes traffic across or a long a river without imposing a tax is improvement.  Charges for crossing under or over a bridge that are based on the value of commodities carried are taxes; charges based on potential damage or wear-and-tear are fees.  A bridge, tunnel or motorway whose operator charges fees may still be a tax barrier if the tax-collector grants the operator a monopoly or otherwise restricts competition.
  • capability for violence – a tax-collector’s practical ability to wield his capacity for violence, which he usually delegates to members of the hierarchy or to foreign mercenaries who may not share his objectives.
  • capacity for violence – a theoretical capability for violence consisting of the agents used to enforce taxes through superior numbers, discipline, co-operation, physical strength, moral courage or weapons and tactics.  Violence is any action using these forces.
  • cash – any usually non-perishable store of wealth that can find a market for exchange.  Perishability depends on context; fruit and vegetables are cash for a short period before and after harvest.
  • circumcision – a form of social engineering that helps large numbers of strangers to co-operate with low levels of violence.
  • city – a tax-collector’s base of operations, usually consisting of a tax barrier or other source of revenue, a store for cash, members of the hierarchy, others profiting from trade with the tax-collector and the hierarchy, and those profiting in other ways from the tax-payers.
  • civilisation – not the physical constructions, organisational institutes and cultural accomplishments, but the formal process for tax demands, collection and distribution in the unique culture and language of the territory.
  • common law – refers to Tax Man’s oral tradition of dispute resolution, including that of the Anglo-Saxons who populated England in the 5th Century.  Common Law (leading upper case) is a legal term that refers today to precedent, the decisions made by judges in courts of law.  Legal philosophers argue that there is a difference between Common Law based on judges’ decisions written up in court records, and Civil Law based on a book written up by some judges; most victims of legal authority would not consider this a difference.  Populist democrats and Brexiteers would be surprised to learn that unelected judges rather than elected MPs make most laws in Britain and the United States of America.  Britain and the United States are called Common Law jurisdictions, but the alternative, Civil Law countries, like France, also use precedent, which they call jurisprudence constante.  Today, jurisprudence in English refers to legal philosophy, but the use of the word reflects its common law background, as the basis for a just legal system.
  • complex society – territory where multiple tax-collectors and tax farmers operate.  There is often a figurehead tax-collector, a multi-layered hierarchy, and many mechanisms for members of the hierarchy to profit from the revenues.  Tax-payers and subordinate tax-collectors can be members of one or several groups each of which has its own hierarchy.  Tax farms target specific people, goods or services, or groups of people, goods or services, rather than operating on a geographic or personal basis as in the feudal system.  The result is a depersonalisation that leads to greater efficiency but also permits greater suffering.
  • contribution – money or goods paid on demand to the tax-collector or his tax agent.  These can also demand contribution of property in exceptional circumstances, such as on the death of the possessor or his conviction.
  • corporation – a group of tax-payers who combine to manage their affairs together, especially the payment of taxes demanded by tax-collectors and their particular commercial interests, historically the operation of markets, in modern economics, the operation of the market.
  • corvée – see service.
  • cult – a group whose membership requirement is the statement of belief in a common object.
  • customs – a tax that has been demanded and paid in preceding generations.  In common usage, a tax for imports and exports charged at the point of entry to a territory.
  • demographic growth – the evolutionary objective of Tax Man and every other living organism.  Growth can be absolute, relative to other Tax men or other species, or geographic.
  • division of labour – the breaking down of complex industrial or agricultural processes into constituent parts, with each part carried out by one or more specialised workers.  Businesses operating a division of labour are usually more efficient than artisans who carry out all tasks themselves, as long as the transaction cost of transporting the goods between different workers, paying taxes and the commercial mark-up are less than the gains in efficiency.  Usually, transactions need to be tax-free for an industry using division of labour to grow.  Large-scale division of labour (for example, mass production) is only possible in societies that support co-operation, as intergroup interactions without violence  are essential.
  • dualism – a belief in the existence of good and evil as qualities of actions and as qualities of people.  Greek philosophers debunked duality thousands of years ago, but legislators, priests and philosophers still use it as the basis of law, religion and ethical discussions.  In this work, duality exists only in relation to demography.  Good action is improvement while the only bad actions (and they are always bad) are murder, mutilation and imprisonment.
  • evasion – covert action that would result in tax-collector demand for homage, service or contribution if he knew about it.
  • excise – usually a new tax, which the tax-collector imposes and which he enforces with the threat or actual use of violence.
  • farm – see tax farm.
  • fee – a tax that is euphemised, usually relating to goods or service.  As opposed to a price, a fee is not normally negotiable as the demander holds a monopoly of violence.
  • feudal – a tax system based on people, comprising a single, pyramidal hierarchy of tax-collectors, in which members of each layer demand homage, service and contribution from those on the layer below, and pay homage, service and contribution to those on the layer above.  An alternative is the complex society, in which multiple, often competing, hierarchies tax things, in other words, goods, services, monopolies, exemptions, heads, hearths, huts, depersonalising the relationship between tax-payer and tax-collector.
  • fine – a tax, initially a financial contribution to replace a service obligation.  Later, tax-collectors charged fines to permit actions generally limited by prohibitions, especially invented prohibitions such as consanguineous marriage and travel outside the territory.  The proliferation of obligations and prohibitions has vastly increased the range of actions, which instigate fines, and the hierarchy that administers the legal system that controls them.
  • First Leaver – Homo sapiens without the tax gene mutation.  They may have left Africa before the later Tax Man and, certainly, they arrived in America, Australia and parts of Asia before later arrivals with their complex tax societies.  First leavers struggle to acquiesce; they do not like to pay homage, and do not understand the obligation to pay taxes.
  • foreigner – any Tax Man who is a stranger to a particular tax-payer.  In the role of tax-collector, tax farmer, or tax agent for revenue collection, a foreigner can be more aggressive, set higher rates and provide fewer services as justification than a local tax-collector.
  • freedom – the state of paying no tax to foreigner tax-collectors, the absence of oppression; the only taxes paid are local and agreed; all revenues so raised are spent on local improvement, locally made luxuries, and on local defence.
  • goods – movable, transportable, exchangeable items which attract tax through possession or exchange and which have experienced the addition of value through the work of farmers, miners, engineers or others, as opposed to property.
  • great – when used as an adjective for a famine, natural phenomenon, tax-collector or battle, murderous.
  • group – within a tax territory, and sometimes astride several, an agreement among like-minded individuals to manage their affairs and taxation together, usually in pursuit of a common object.  Religious, trade, social or geographic ideas and sometimes combinations of these bind the group.  Groups operate a hierarchy.  Members of only one group ignore members of other groups and refuse to pay them homage leading to difficult and sometimes violent confrontations, such as between two different groups of football supporters.
  • hierarchy – tax-payers who work closely with the tax-collector, often operating tax farms; successful members collect more from their tax-payers than they pay to the tax-collector above them.
  • homage – tax-payers acquiescence to a tax-collector’s claim of authority to collect tax.  Failure to pay homage results in violence.  In return, tax-payers’ gain the ephemeral protection of the tax-collector to procreate and improve, often seen as a right, but actually no more than the absence of further interference; other members of the hierarchy may still interfere and demand their own contributions.  The law of habeas corpus in English law was supposed to avoid this and allow the tax-payer to continue working to pay his taxes to the king.  Demands for service and contribution follow acquiescence to demands for homage.
  • Homo sapiens – the human race.  Popularly considered a unique species, it is likely that the surviving humans are one or more subspecies of a Homo species that includes the extinct Neanderthal.  The author proposes Tax Man and First Leaver as two extant subspecies.
  • imprisonment – a state of reduced ability to procreate and raise children due to physical separation.
  • improvement – investment that lowers transaction costs, especially in transport and communications, or increases production.  It encourages the mass production of agricultural products or industrial goods which need a large market in which to sell.  Improvement results in economic and demographic growth.
  • liquidity – the ability of a market to support expenditure through easily exchangeable goods such as money, tokens, scrip or trust.
  • local tax – benevolent taxation arranged between tax-collectors and tax-payers who spend their lives close together.  They spend most of the revenues they raise on themselves.  Typical local taxes rarely amount to more than 10% of production or income.  The opposite of foreign or oppressive taxation.
  • luxury – expenditure on consumables, construction, cultural and physical objects that does not directly result in reduced transaction or production costs, or increasedproduction amounts. 
  • mass production – the creation of a division of labour, together with improvement, the investment in specialised tools and infrastructure to produce more than can be consumed.
  • member – Tax Man who joins a group, paying homage to the group, leader or common object, and usually offering service and contribution to members higher in its hierarchy.
  • money – goods which incur no tax in transactions, which make them more attractive for exchange.
  • monopoly – a tax farm bought by a member of a hierarchy.  A subsidy issued to an individual or a selected number or group is a form of monopoly, which operates at the expense of the tax-payer for the benefit of the possessor.
  • monopoly of violence – an ideal situation where only a single tax-collector has the capability to wield a capacity for violence.
  • murder – the permanent removal of a human being from the gene pool.  A typical evolutionary desire for a male mammal when confronted by a male stranger of the same species at mating time.
  • muscular young man – the infantry of tax empires.  They sacrifice themselves in order to win mating rights and, in so doing, they may help to increase the size of the tax territory, or to defend it against others trying to get in.  Success in territorial expansion is entirely dependent on the relative number of muscular young men, so birth rate, child mortality and sex selection are critical factors.
  • mutilation – the reduction of a human’s chances in the marriage market and in his ability to have and raise children through temporary or permanent physical or psychological damage.
  • native – a resident population taxed by a foreign tax-collector. 
  • oppression – the enforcement of high rates of taxation, usually over 10% of production, usually by foreign tax-collectors, with much of the revenue remitted abroad.  Oppression provides no demographic benefit to the tax-payer. 
  • procreate – see demographic growth.
  • property – fixed objects such as land, buildings and machines that attract taxes.
  • protection – ephemeral service as justification offered by tax-collector for tax paid.  Protection does not include protection against other tax-collectors, nor against retribution should the tax-payer contribute to raiding tax-collectors, but usually precludes the tax-collector damaging any improvement made or making further demands for tax beyond the customary or agreed ones.  It implicitly permits the tax-payer to procreate, as long as he pays other appropriate taxes.
  • religion – a cult whose leaders enforce taxation on its members in addition to pious declamations of the membership belief.  Religious tax usually targets the gifts from the gods.
  • scrip – paper-based money issued without the approval or protection of the supreme or figurehead tax-collector.
  • service – tax consisting of work or labour, usually a certain number of days a week or month.  Often called corvée, service exists to provide a workforce for communal construction for houses, roads, bridges, but can also include military service.  Tax-payers usually pay service to a member of a hierarchy but they may also have an obligation towards the supreme or figurehead tax-collector.  Traditional societies maintain service obligations, which are rarely onerous and more like social events, equivalent to barn raising.  Tax-collectors are often happy to accept a replacement or to replace service obligations with a fine.
  • service as justification – tax-payers negotiate services in return for their homage, contributions and service.  Tax-collectors offer services as justification for enforcing taxation.  They include ephemeral promises such as protection, the construction of roads and bridges, and social services that are bribes to tax-payers.
  • soldier – muscular, young Tax Man recruited through obligations of service, promises of pay, prize money or loot, to serve in the army, navy or air forces of a tax territory for the purposes of war.
  • slave – in a complex society with layered hierarchy, a tax-payer who owes obligations only to his immediate superior and not to the supreme tax-collector.  Usually owes only homage and service, not a financial contribution, and pays no other tax to anyone else.  Tax-collectors tax the slave owner for this property.
  • stranger – any human other than close kin and friends with whom a Tax Man spent his infancy and passed through puberty into early adulthood.  In tax behaviour, strangers are usually of the same-sex and species, but can be animals or plants.  Tax-collectors and tax-payers that are strange to each other experience much higher, often oppressive rates of taxation.
  • superior – in the hierarchy, a position closer to the supreme or figurehead tax-collector.  This does not reflect any moral, physical or financial superiority.  An inferior member of the hierarchy owes homage to a superior.  A member can rise in the hierarchy only by forcing homage from those around or above him.
  • tax – homage, service or contribution paid to a tax-collector by a tax-payer.  Demand and payment define the role of Tax Man.  The payment is an obligation and in itself provides no rights.  Tax-collectors calculate the tax rate by the wealth that the tax-payer carries, owns, inherits, marries or makes, regardless of the environmental, political, economic and social conditions at the time, but usually follow custom.
  • tax barrier – a physical or virtual location where tax payments are enforced.  The entrances to market towns and ports, rivers, especially in narrows or where islands force passage near to the shores, mountain passes and desert oases make good tax barriers.  Where natural barriers do not exist, these can be invented, such as national frontiers, anti-pollution or anti-congestion zones.  Social tax barriers have evolved in the rites of passage such as birth, marriage and death or burial.
  • tax empire – a geographic region over which a system of taxation operates that incorporates several foreign tax territories.  The original territory suffers only local taxation, but benefits from taxes raised abroad, while the foreign territories suffer oppressive tax levels and receive fewer benefits.
  • tax farm – the right to collect tax sold to members of the hierarchy.  These can be overt farms, such as the salt tax gabelle in France, or covert farms such as the bishoprics and, later, parishes in the Christian Churches.  Tax farms are the typical method of operating a complex society.
  • tax-free – see freedom.
  • tax gene – a genetic mutation present in certain humans to inhibit violence against strangers and replace it with three-stage taxation.  It is possessed by Tax Man, but not by other humans such as the First Leaver or Neanderthal.
  • Tax Man – a subspecies of human whose defining behavioural trait is the tax gene.  The gene principally affects males, hence the name; the exact relation to sex is not yet clear to the author.
  • Tax Woman – work in progress; it appears initially as if females have suffered under successful tax regimes, although they recuperate some of their social and political power when a tax empire declines.  While Tax Man’s tax gene controls adult male stranger interactions, it may not control women’s behaviour in similar circumstances.  A simple explanation for this difference could lie in the tax gene’s location on the Y-chromosome.  Another explanation is that, in monkeys and apes in general, females are much more receptive to strangers, with whom they interact without violence, especially while on heat.
  • taxation – a general system of tax implemented under the aegis of a defined tax-collector by a hierarchy over a tax territory.  Usually in this work meaning oppressive taxation, unless specifically identified as local taxation.
  • tax-collector – a Tax Man who demands homage from strangers and, if they acquiesce, then follows up with demands for service and/or a contribution (which can be goods or money).  If they fail to offer homage, he reacts with violence.  Tax-collectors can be supreme tax-collectors, who wield violence themselves and/or have a capability to wield a capacity for violence.  A complex society, which controls a monopoly of violence, is also a tax-collector, relying on figurehead tax-collectors as 3rd party references.  Tax-collectors who are simultaneously members of a hierarchy may also pay taxes to a superior but if they are net tax recipients then they are not tax-payers.  Tax-collectors that collect more than they pay will usually rise in the hierarchy.
  • tax-payer – a stranger who acquiesces to demands for homage by a tax-collector in his claimed tax territory, usually when entering a territory or working, but also just living.  The stranger then supplies service and/or a contribution while remaining within the claimed territory.  Tax-payers pay, avoid and evade.  A tax-payer’s obligations relate to his body, work and property.  Tax-collectors demand tax while he crosses tax boundaries, on the production of his work, during rites of passage, on inheritance and his death.  Domesticated animals and plants are strangers that have acquiesced; wild animals and weeds refuse to pay homage.  Tax-payers on the lower rungs of a hierarchy may still contribute more than they receive and are thus mostly tax-payers, only sometimes tax-collectors, the definition depending on the then-current behaviour.
  • territory – the space within which a specific taxation or tax-collector operates.  A territory is usually geographic but tax-collectors can also operate on belief or other abstract notions.  It does not have to be contiguous.
  • token – coin-based money issued without the approval or protection of the supreme or figurehead tax-collector.
  • town – a community, which has bought a tax farm to manage local taxation, contributions to the tax-collector, and to operate a market or other improvements.  Towns are usually organised under a corporation.
  • transaction – an interaction between two humans in which they exchange goods or they exchange goods for money.
  • transaction cost – the transport, commercial and taxes incurred by operating a division of labour instead of autarky.
  • tribute – bribe or subsidy paid to another tax-collector, perhaps initially to render them amenable but eventually to encourage or discourage their attack, raid, or participation in war.
  • useless products – Adam Smith’s concept refers to goods whose consumption produces nothing of value, in his examples, whiskey and tobacco.  In this work, the author classifies their consumption beyond a certain value as luxuries, although most of their consumers would claim that they are necessary for subsistence.
  • village – a residential group that owns no tax farm.
  • violence – murder, mutilation and imprisonment, plus any action that temporarily or permanently removes a tax-payer from the gene pool.  Violence can include a close physical or psychological approach designed to encourage, discourage or punish specific actions.  Examples of such actions include payment of tax, incursion into one’s territory, and evasion.  Violence, or at least the threat of violence, is a necessary tool for a tax-collector to enforce tax.
  • war – any action initiated or encouraged by a tax-collector with the objective to maintain or increase the population of tax-payers paying homage or the geographic range over which taxation is imposed, excluding procreation and improvement.  War includes action to resist internal unrest among the hierarchy for a change of tax-collector.  War usually consists of foreign raids, conquests, attacks on rebellious native tax-payers, but also includes the bribing of potentially rebellious native tax-payers through unemployment benefit and other social welfare programs.
  • wealth – the ability to invest in improvement or squander on war and luxury, measured as the difference between the value of assets and the cost of obligations.  Assets are the total of cash and work invested in property, raw materials, work-in-progress, finished goods, tools and non-perishable foods, as well as financial credit, almost always determined to some extent by the flow of tax revenues; luxury items and weapons can be included, not at their cost but at the resale value of their components.  Tax-payers, livestock, plants and trees, and perishable food have a different quality than wealth.  These assets are much more vulnerable to changes in value, and that value is dependent on the time and location of their use, consumption or sale, not to any cash or work invested therein.  Calculations of wealth should maintain separate the non-perishable goods from the perishable.
  • weapon – any object that gives a tax-collector a significant advantage over an artisan or farmer in a fight.
  • work – the labour of tax-payers and slaves, excluding the making of luxury products for local consumption and service in war but including improvements made for the tax-collector.