(8) Don’t feed the beast.
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And to it the dragon gave his power and his throne and great authority.
Revelation 13:1–2 (RSV)
Commentary:
Apocalyptic literature portrays great empires as beasts that devour and destroy everything in their path. In the above citation, the Apocalypse of John describes the Roman Empire as a beast which gets its power from the dragon (Satan). The Roman emperors taxed the peoples that they conquered in order to maintain their military might and their political advantage against their internal rivals. Egypt was the bread basket of Rome. It fed the beast.
The world’s beast today is unquestionably the USA. It has extended its military might across much of the planet. It maintains its economic might through the monetary system. The USA beast feeds on the world through its imposition of the US dollar as the world’s currency of trade, and it benefits from most countries maintaining US dollars in their own reserves. Since Nixon took the USA off the gold standard in 1971, the USA beast exports its dollar, which as a fiat currency costs virtually nothing to make, in exchange for real goods (oil, manufactured goods). The USA beast employs deficit spending which devours the value of the dollar and effectively taxes all foreign holders of USA dollars. Not only so, but the USA has weaponized the banking system to combat its enemies. No one can buy or sell anything without the mark of the beast (Rev. 13.16-17).
By comparison to US currency debasement, the taxes paid by expats hardly contribute anything to the beast. Nevertheless, expats do feed the beast in two main ways:
- The US tax compliance industry, which is a tentacle of the beast, depends largely on the hapless expat.
- The IRS brags about their special offshore programs.
We should do everything in our power not to encourage the spread of the USA tax compliance industry. Indeed, I recommend that we lobby for legislation to ban compliance condors from our countries. Feeding this industry, which is part of the agency capture of the corrupt USA government, is a bad idea. It leads to more bad and abusive legislation, as the compliance industry has a huge lobby in DC, and this in turn feeds more parasites around the world. One of the best strategies for curing Candida is to starve it of its main foods, sugar and simple starches. I suggest the same for this world-wide infection of compliancitis–we must starve it of expat sugar.
The IRS brags about how it has made US $6.5 billion from the Overseas Voluntary Disclosure Programs. But of course this is likely gross revenue from the program and has not deducted the countless hours spent by IRS employees who persecuted middle-class citizen abroad like Marvin van Horn. But such gloating would likely fool the math-challenged American public for whom $6.5 billion seems like an extraordinary amount of money. But in terms of annual federal expenditures of $3.95 trillion, it would feed the beast for only about 14 hours. So clearly, the IRS vaunts this figure of $6.5 billion for the purposes of propaganda and demagoguery.
In my opinion, expats can have a significant collective effect on these two aspects of the beast. Feeding the beast only makes it more powerful. So it is definitely in our own interests not to feed it.
Previous discussions:
The nature of the beast: feeding on EX-pats
California genocide and the Indian Tax Revolt of 1851
The Conscience of a Lawyer and the FBAR Fundraiser
Previous Petros Principles:
(1) What the IRS can’t know unless you tell them can’t hurt you.
(2) Fear makes the IRS more dangerous than it really is.
(3) Haste is the devil.
(4) Those most hurt by the IRS’s persecution of expats have engaged the services of cross-border compliance condors.
(5) Those least hurt have done nothing.
(6) Home is where you live.
(7) An unjust law is no law.
About: Petros is the alias of the founding administrator of the Isaac Brock Society. Petros Principles are guidelines that have helped him and others deal with the United States’ world-wide tax invasion.