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1 E. Barry Asmus, U.S. Tax Obstacles in a Global Marketplace 1 (1997)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/aclemarkxz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: TAX' FOUNDATION July 199 7 U.S. Tax Obstacles in a Global Marketplace Following is an abstract of remarks made at a Tax Foundation conference titled Excise Taxes and Sound Tax Policy, held in January 1997 in Miami, Fla. This is a very, very interesting time we live in. Mankind has experienced four great crossovers: the spoken language, the written language, the printed language, and now the digital language. And this one is going to be a paradigm shift like none other. I mean, this one is going to affect everything, not that Thomas Edison's light bulb doesn't affect everything, or Henry Ford's horseless carriage. There have been other paradigm shifts. But the micro-electronic revolution that we're going through is indeed going to make the other ones look quite pale by comparison. When you think about it, information is power, but it used to be just the kings and queens and presidents and generals who had all the information and therefore all the power. That day is over: CNN, C-SPAN, Internet, World Wide Web, fax machines, photocopies, 100 million telephone calls an hour spreading information/data to the far ends of the earth. The point is, with a decentralization of information comes a decentralization of power. Micro-electronics is pulling decision- making downward and outward from central authorities of all kinds. Government and politics has been the organizing structure of every country of the world for the history of man. I'd like to suggest that we're about to embark on a new era in government and politics, when we will move from centralism to decentralism. The top-down, command- and-control, socialistic model is no longer applicable because it's too bureaucratic. It's too clumsy at a time when we're moving into a world where the digital age is making the market more efficient every day. The digital age is literally driving transaction costs to zero. The information age is driving distribution costs down with every passing minute. Conclusion: Every function of government is really a candidate for privatization and a return to the market. I'm from Scottsdale, Arizona. If a home ever catches on fire, watch out, because a privatized fire department will arrive on the scene. In 30 seconds they put the whole Pacific Ocean on the fire. You can't believe the water. You'll go over and say, How did you do that? How did you do that? And their answer would be, Well, see that fire truck? Yes. I own it. It's mine. And you'll say, So? And he'll say, Listen, pal, when you own the fire truck, when you own the fire company, every moment that you're awake, you're thinking about one of two things, fire and water. See that hose? And you'll say, Looks like a normal fire hose to me. That's not a normal fire hose. See, government uses a 2-inch hose. That's a 5-inch plastic hose. It's amazing how much more water you can put on a fire using a 5-inch hose. My point is, every fire department, with the exception of volunteer fire departments, is going to be privatized. That's going to be true for prisons. That's going to be true for the whole nine yards. Watch the argument once again. With a decentralization of information comes a decentralization of power. Micro- electronics is pulling decision-making downward and outward from central authorities of all kinds. This central power model no longer works. The point is, we're going from a political By Dr. E. Barry Asmus Senior Policy Adviser, National Center for Policy Analysis

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