Barrow's Sheriff is everywhere

The moment you think about why you pay taxes, someone will remind you that you have to pay them

In the brilliant 30 Days of Night, Sheriff Eben Oleson imposes an almost ridiculous fine, which could well have been drowned, to the big brash Beau Brower; after which, his Deputy Billy Kitka reproaches him: "You know, Beau's not so bad. Why'd you bother writing him up", to which the former replies: "He lives alone out there on the south ridge. A little citation now and then lets him know he's part of this town". Well, don't give it another thought, that's just what They want: that at no time and in no place should you forget that you are part of the tribe They rule.

And there is basically only one situation in the world that (for the moment) escapes the tax or monetary Thinkpol —the one that reminds you of which tribu you belong to—. This situation occurs where Thinkpol's eye cannot reach: in black markets, in jungle places, in family intimacy and in other spaces of (potential) maximum privacy understood as spaces that escape the domain of The Public (spaces where in one way or another the Public Administration cannot get its paws in). So, nothing you do in your home will, in principle, constitute a taxable event.

But don't be under any illusion: not because They don't want to, but because They don't want to be like Cagancho en Almagro (make a complete fool of themselves):

As They do not want to sanction a law that They cannot enforce, They do not sanction it; but the day They can, do not doubt that They will do it as a PreCrime Division.

This, and only this, is the only reason why there are no taxable events in your living room. There, you can play poker with money —poker without money...?, vade retro Satana!—, throw colourful parties, or exchange all kinds of goods and services.

There is no crime in that heterotopia of consent and privacy that is your living room —which unfortunately is in the process of becoming a utopia as well. But not because there is and it is denied as in the soviet paradise of Child 44, but because with consent and privacy there can be no crime unless They tell you there is. Because in the definition of crime, as in the definition of madness, there is a very strong component of social construction.

As recently as 2013 the transgender phenomenon was a psychopathology according to the DMS-5; and now addressing a woman (= a human who has artificially removed or neutralised the biological reproductive organs she was born with) who claims to feel like a man as a woman is on the way to being classified as a crime.

Rhetoric and hyperbolic facts aside,

it is in the space of privacy where there is no taxable event —it should not be.

In other words, the same fact, inside or outside that space of privacy, becomes a taxable event.

In the living room of my house I can give you an hour of law classes at the highest level and you can give me, in return, one bottle of Pago Garduña vintage 2019 (a red wine with protected designation of origin Abadía Retuerta, Ribera del Duero) which, in exchange, let's say, would cost about a hundred US dollars in a wine shop. And this is not an illegality: (i) it is a barter between acquaintances, colleagues, collaborators, friends... —consider it as you like—, a mundane fact that is not a taxable event because —and only because— they cannot scrutinise it; but (ii) it is a taxable event if I convert it into an allowance of services for goods for the sole accessory circumstance —a circumstance that They define and impose— that it is formalised with a piece of paper that They calle "invoice" or takes place in a building that They call "business premises".

So, you, human, faced with such a situation —the same mundane fact is a taxable event, or not, depending on the accessory circumstances that They define and impose— you can consider of going to the jungle where you came from, for that reason: to do whatever you want, your junglewill —which is something of yours, much more powerful and all-encompassing than the royal will that is granted to the king as well as taken away from him. "There, in the jungle, I will be calm" —you will say to yourself—. But no. Go to the less travelled space of the most remote mountain in the country where you live and build a cabin to give shelter to your private facts and yours, to mundane facts that are not taxable events. It is only a matter of time before They not only find you; it is also only a matter of time before They remember you with a little note that you belong to a tribe, straightening you out, making you pay for everything you wanted to do on the sly of the tribe, including the construction of the cabin that they will also knock down for lacking a building permit.

Yes, the Sheriff of Barrow is everywhere.