About thirty years ago, I designed a set of rules for a LARP. Unlike most LARPs, it didn't use padded boffer weapons, but a simple dice-based conflict resolution mechanic. (We didn't want to exclude people with no athletic ability from playing mighty warriors if they wanted to.) Since the resolution system was dice based, it was convenient to represent game items with cards that had the relevant stats and descriptions printed on them. So, for example, a typical broadsword might be a piece of paper with "Damage 5" and three durability boxes to cross off as it gets damaged, while a high quality one might do 6 damage and give you a bonus of +1 to Combat skill.
Now, these cards of paper became prized trophies sometimes. If you killed the Doom Dragon on last September's quest, you might be very proud of the magic amulet you took, and what's more, you'd want to be able to use it when you came back to play on the May long weekend. Usually, it would be a different organizer writing and running the next quest, and so the plot might take place in a completely different fictional land, but traditionally we would allow items from previous games to be used in the next game. It helped players get more engaged with the game, and it's always nice to have older players be able to tell stories around the campfire about how they got this or that item. Makes it more immersive.
But here's the problem: If you won that magic sword card and took it home, you could quite rightly claim that scrap of paper as your own personal property, subject to the laws of Canada and everything. I cannot take your personal property without your permission, or I might be guilty of violating the Criminal Code. But if you bring your sword to the quest, and in game my character successfully picks your pocket or slays you in battle, then I absolutely can help myself to that slip of paper, whether you want me to have it or not, and after the game is over it's entirely appropriate for me to take it home as my prized trophy, with the tale of how I valiantly wrested it from you.
So the way we resolved that problem was simple: All game items become the property of the game organizers, and subject to any rules they impose. You want your magic sword to be recognized and have an effect in game? Fine: it becomes the property of the game organizers, who allow you to possess it subject to the condition that it can be taken from you, damaged or destroyed under certain circumstances. You want to keep as a trophy, protected from theft? Keep it at home.
The rules that the game organizers impose can be completely arbitrary, depending on the sort of game they want to run, though in practice they tend to be at least somewhat sensitive to the interests of the players. After all, nobody will play your game if they don't think they're going to enjoy it. (Also, enforcement of rules depends on some degree of cooperation from the players, if only to detect violations; if all the parties to an interaction agree that a particular rule is stupid or inconvenient, they can and often will ignore it, and the rulemaker may never know.
But apart from those pragmatic concerns, there is nothing constitutionally preventing a game organizer from enacting whatever rules they want. If the game organizer wants to make a rule that your magic sword will instantly disappear if you use it against an innocent, so be it. Players have no inherent rights to their magic swords or anything else in the game universe. Although the game organizers may delegate a great deal of decision-making to the players (and it is of course inherent to the whole genre of roleplaying games that the player is exercising the free will of their character), the game organizers are absolutely sovereign over the whole game reality.
What I want to suggest here is that the very same principle applies to the laws of a sovereign state, and in particular, that the rules concerning who owns what are nothing more than laws imposed by that state, no different in principle and no less arbitrary in nature than any rule a game organizer might make about your magic sword. Indeed, the very idea of ownership itself is not an immutable natural fact about the world, but entirely a matter of social convention; my claim to own something only has meaning if other people thereby accept that they have a duty not to take or use it without my permission. Otherwise I'm just expressing a personal wish.
This is why I have little patience with arguments against taxation that go "This is MY money, and the government has NO right to it!" The sentiment is perfectly understandable, of course, but fundamentally it makes no sense; the very idea that the money is yours depends upon a notion of property which is entirely a creature of sovereignty.
Now, it's true that a given state might have its legal system constrained by a constitution which implicitly or explicitly guarantees certain rights to individuals, and those rights may well include property rights. I'm not saying one cannot argue against a given tax on these sorts of legal grounds; one can and should make such arguments when they are applicable. Just recognize that even that written constitution is self-imposed, and a sovereign state can in principle amend, alter or abolish anything in it. Doing so may be a bad idea, and one certainly can and should make that argument as well, but the fact that something might be a bad idea does not make it impossible to do it.
What I'm objecting to here is rather the visceral, superstitious belief in ownership rights that the state somehow has an absolute duty to recognize, because property rights fundamentally depend upon the existence of a society to recognize them, not vice versa. And the idea that people have an absolute right to "their" money in particular is even sillier, because money is explicitly something that is created by and has no meaning outside of a sovereign state. It is exactly like the paper cards we use as weapons and equipment in the LARP, quite worthless outside of that context, and valuable only because of their function within it.
The sovereign isn't taking your money by taxing it. The sovereign already owns ALL the money there is, and rather issues it to us for us to use according to the rules the sovereign establishes for it. In an everyday sense, we can talk about my money as distinct from your money, but all that really means is that the sovereign has delegated a certain amount of decision making authority over this amount of money to me, and over that amount of money to you. It's still subject to the rules of the sovereign.
The rules that the game organizers impose can be completely arbitrary, depending on the sort of game they want to run, though in practice they tend to be at least somewhat sensitive to the interests of the players. After all, nobody will play your game if they don't think they're going to enjoy it. (Also, enforcement of rules depends on some degree of cooperation from the players, if only to detect violations; if all the parties to an interaction agree that a particular rule is stupid or inconvenient, they can and often will ignore it, and the rulemaker may never know.
But apart from those pragmatic concerns, there is nothing constitutionally preventing a game organizer from enacting whatever rules they want. If the game organizer wants to make a rule that your magic sword will instantly disappear if you use it against an innocent, so be it. Players have no inherent rights to their magic swords or anything else in the game universe. Although the game organizers may delegate a great deal of decision-making to the players (and it is of course inherent to the whole genre of roleplaying games that the player is exercising the free will of their character), the game organizers are absolutely sovereign over the whole game reality.
What I want to suggest here is that the very same principle applies to the laws of a sovereign state, and in particular, that the rules concerning who owns what are nothing more than laws imposed by that state, no different in principle and no less arbitrary in nature than any rule a game organizer might make about your magic sword. Indeed, the very idea of ownership itself is not an immutable natural fact about the world, but entirely a matter of social convention; my claim to own something only has meaning if other people thereby accept that they have a duty not to take or use it without my permission. Otherwise I'm just expressing a personal wish.
This is why I have little patience with arguments against taxation that go "This is MY money, and the government has NO right to it!" The sentiment is perfectly understandable, of course, but fundamentally it makes no sense; the very idea that the money is yours depends upon a notion of property which is entirely a creature of sovereignty.
Now, it's true that a given state might have its legal system constrained by a constitution which implicitly or explicitly guarantees certain rights to individuals, and those rights may well include property rights. I'm not saying one cannot argue against a given tax on these sorts of legal grounds; one can and should make such arguments when they are applicable. Just recognize that even that written constitution is self-imposed, and a sovereign state can in principle amend, alter or abolish anything in it. Doing so may be a bad idea, and one certainly can and should make that argument as well, but the fact that something might be a bad idea does not make it impossible to do it.
What I'm objecting to here is rather the visceral, superstitious belief in ownership rights that the state somehow has an absolute duty to recognize, because property rights fundamentally depend upon the existence of a society to recognize them, not vice versa. And the idea that people have an absolute right to "their" money in particular is even sillier, because money is explicitly something that is created by and has no meaning outside of a sovereign state. It is exactly like the paper cards we use as weapons and equipment in the LARP, quite worthless outside of that context, and valuable only because of their function within it.
The sovereign isn't taking your money by taxing it. The sovereign already owns ALL the money there is, and rather issues it to us for us to use according to the rules the sovereign establishes for it. In an everyday sense, we can talk about my money as distinct from your money, but all that really means is that the sovereign has delegated a certain amount of decision making authority over this amount of money to me, and over that amount of money to you. It's still subject to the rules of the sovereign.
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