A Note from the Author of The Crescent of Circumcision

As a travelling salesman, I have walked, sailed, ridden, flown and driven over the ancient trade routes from China to Land’s End and from the North Cape to Cape Horn.  I have sailed through the Panama Canal and climbed extensively in the Pyrenees.  I have walked across the Andes and driven under the Alps.  I have been robbed only twice: once by a nice, old gentleman with a cut-throat razor; and once by a person unknown on board one of Her Majesty’s warships which was enforcing the Freedom of the Seas.  But as a businessman, I have been robbed by tax-collectors in Russia and Brazil, South Africa and China, and as a consumer, I have paid taxes in 50 countries.

I have sold society-changing technology to the great British and Flemish textile manufacturers, to the chemical process industry, to the military-industrial complex, and to the largest industry in the world, the automotive; I have worked in the paper and print industry, the military, and in IT, and I have worked for bosses from America, Japan, China, Iran, Vietnam and Britain.  I have toured factories from the industries that have defined the global economy – the PC, the motor-car and sugar.  I have had meetings in the rooms where James Watt created the industrial revolution, and where the tank was first designed and stayed in hotels next to the world’s first cast Ironbridge, the massive gold deposits of the Witwatersrand, and in great cities of the Orient like Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, and Delhi. [1]  I was the first person in Europe to use a GPS satellite navigation system, and one of the first non-academic users to have an email address on the internet.

Wherever I went, I asked the questions: why here ?  Why then ? Why them ?  The standard answers provided by the guide and history books did not really answer the questions so much as introduce others:  Why did Britain in the 19^th century, Holland in the 18^th, France in the 17^th, Spain in the 16^th, Portugal in the 15^th , Venice in the 14^th Century AD, Athens in the 5^th century BC, Macedonia in the 4^th, Rome in the 3^rd, become global powers, seeming to dominate the world ?  The common history books relate these results to great people, sometimes to technology, sometimes to religion or philosophy.  Looked at logically, these explanations fall almost immediately.  Britain, France, Holland, Spain and Portugal all wanted to remain powerful countries, yet none was able to maintain its position of power for longer than about 100 years.  Whatever was the cause of their rise to greatness also included its almost automatic demise.  A human angle could account for such a rise, except that in almost every case, the greatest humans of the time were against such imperialism.    Neither military competence nor great generals seems to explain the rise or the fall of empires.

Although there is a common human factor, in a great leader who is willing to spend his available funds on international conquest, the common factor seems to be finance – both cash and credit - gained from taxation.  But nowhere was this clearly set out as the reason, and there are few books which even document this; mostly, facts relating to finance are injected into books that would otherwise be nothing more than historical fiction.  A good example is the plaque at Harlech Castle, stating the cost of building.  Harlech Castle cost £ 18,000 to build.  So what ?  How was this calculated ?  Who paid it ?  In what currency ?  What terms ?  Where did the money come from ?  How much did Caernarvon Castle cost ?  Was this price the starting price or was it negotiated down from a higher starting price ?  Was the money ever paid ?  How does this compare to the English King’s annual revenues ?  Did the tax-payer get good value-for-money ?  Did the exploitation of Wales repay the cost of conquest ? 

In researching the answers to these questions, far more popped up: how did finance work ?  What was the role of religion ?  Of military technology ?  Why did people pay taxes ?  Man’s curious nature, his ambivalence towards violence, his eagerness to kill others, but only under certain conditions and, worst of all, his ability to stand by and watch as literally millions of fellow human beings died around him, had to be explained.

Taxation is like the Goose that laid the Golden Eggs.  Each day, a small golden egg was laid by a big fat goose.  Every day, the farmer got a bit richer, but each day he spent more and more money; eventually, he was desperate and killed the goose to get at the eggs faster.  But when he cut it open, there were no eggs inside. [3]  tax-collectors are like the farmer, ever increasing their demands on the  tax-payer until the poor goose is taxed to death.  sometimes the death of the tax-payer is clearly the result of the tax-collector's activities, but often the cause of death is hidden.

European countries today have a legal requirement to charge VAT – up to 25% or more. [2]  This tax is levied on money that has already been taxed at least once – employers pay charges or national insurance contributions, and employees pay their income tax of typically up to 40% or more.  As well as paying VAT, drinkers, drivers and smokers pay additional taxes, as much as 90% of the retail cost of drink, petrol and cigarettes.  High wage earners can pay up to 75% of their money to their government in taxes.  

Taxation has been an integral part of civilisation since at least man learnt to write: indeed, the word scribe means tax-collector in Egyptian, where they documented the taxes raised to fund the pyramids: 20% of their agricultural produce, and labour when there was no work to do in the fields.

It is unlikely that taxation will go away but in a democracy it may be possible to reduce the suffering that it can bring, and to delay the disaster that awaits the tax-payers of Western nations.  In particular, tax-payers can refuse to support tax-spenders who use taxes to bomb poor people, promote their own candidacy as tax-collectors, and generally increase taxation.

Taxation followed the money.  What a single man could carry was worth the effort of two men to steal, but a mule, an ox-drawn cart or a boat could carry enough to make a village or a town rich if one passed every day.  Taxing it at 10% made sense because it did not dissuade other mules, carts or boats; reasonable tax kept the goose that laid the golden eggs alive.

In history, every city or state that has taxed its citizens at rates as high as European states do today has collapsed, either through civil war, foreign invasion, disease or famine, or emigration, and often a combination of these.  The original population has been reduced by a third or a half and sometimes more.  This is a great warning, if it can be heeded.

Modern taxation consists of millions of computers invisibly taking a percentage of transactions and passing the details to a tax-collector, or visibly adding a percentage to a bill to increase the amount paid and still passing the details to a tax-collector.  Growing up with these systems, taxation seems neither surprising nor onerous.  Only by looking at the world before taxation existed can its effects be understood.

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[1] The SoHo Foundry is still in use as the head office of AveryWeigh-Tronix in Birmingham, and the meeting room is available for hire in the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln.  In fact, the first tank in the world was designed and built before the Great War by the Austrian Navy, but their mountainous terrain and inter-service rivalry meant that it did not go into production.  Photographs of the tank are available at the Austrian Naval Museum,Vienna, Austria.

[2] Businesses can recover VAT, but as they have paid it upfront they lose the interest on the money; the government treats business VAT as a cheap loan.

[3] A traditional tale documented as early as Aesop’s fables.