Patient Zero is the trope of many a zombie movie — the first person to be infected with the deadly virus that is destroying the world. Sometimes Patient Zero must be killed to stop the virus spreading. Sometimes Patient Zero is the means to find the cure. Whatever angle the story takes, the solution lies with Patient Zero.
A society has its own Patient Zero, a way by which many of its ills can be remedied. Patient Zero is its system of tax.
Taxation, like death, sadly, is inevitable. In all the years since man settled on the fertile plains between the Tigris and the Euphrates, there has never been a civilisation without taxation. In fact, a sense of duty to the greater collective probably existed in the hunter-gatherer tribes that pre-dated civilisation.
Yet there have been good systems and bad systems. Get your system of tax right, and a healthy and happy civilisation, even a great one, will follow. Get it wrong and you get no end of problems, for history is littered with examples of injudicious or inequitable taxation having terrible consequences. It lurks near the heart of virtually every great revolution or revolt.
“No taxation without representation” was the cry of the American revolutionaries. Punitive taxes led the French to rise up against their decadent leaders in 1789, and the English peasants to do the same back in 1381. Perhaps most explicitly, the Philippine Revolution began with the Cry of Pugad Lawin, exhorting rebels to tear up their tax certificates. From Spartacus to Boudicca to Robin Hood to Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest rebels in history were usually tax rebels.
Even today, there is evidence of this — just across the Channel, where heavy fuel taxes have resulted in the riots of the gilets jaunes.
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