do I have to share my candybar in Denmark?

I received a comment from a person from Denmark who noted that he comes from a society in which there is a thriving version of “institutionalized sharing” of a similar type to what I described in a previous post. His point being that taxes are a form of sharing, and certainly a forced sharing (perhaps similar to my description of “not sharing is a sin”), and yet society runs and runs well.

Well, I agree, Denmark has a model economy by most standards, especially in recent years since its unemployment rate has dropped significantly. However, I think that the comparison (of Denmark and my “not sharing is a sin” remarks) is flawed. When I pay taxes, though I am certainly sharing, I am doing so in a very institutionalized way, that is, in an almost contractual way. If I pay 500 dollars a year for roads to be repaired, I can rightly assume that roads will be repaired. More importantly, I can rightly demand that my money is spent correctly since I have somewhere to demand to. However, in the more general version of “not sharing is a sin” that I was talking about, you can demand nothing. Not only can you demand nothing, but you have no one person or intitution to demand it from. Government is accepted on a contractual basis by the people (though not by every individual seperately), and though we are born into it (therefore having the contract forced upon us before we can really accept it) it remains a contract in the sense that I have some control over its conditions and stipulations on how it affects me. Especially in the case of Denmark, this contract is beneficial to nearly everyone, and so you can’t say you receive nothing as a result (unless perhaps you’re a childless upper-class entrepreneur in perfect health). So though part of the taxes in Denmark are redistributive (from those who have to those who need), a large part are also a simple, efficient unification of services like health care, child care, pensions, etc. I would not consider this part of “not sharing is a sin”. Finally and most importantly, in the case of taxes, the government has the capacity to seek out and punish those taking advantage of the system (regardless of whether it does it well or not… but anyway…). In the case I describe, it is impossible to punish cheaters without taking on the risk of looking stupid yourself by doing the punishing.

I am interested to know if the sort of sharing that I described – the giving-a-piece-of-my-candybar sort – is perhaps more prevelent in Denmark or in other countries. Though I think it’s very possible that culture has some effect, I still believe that the chaotic result I described is logically inevitable if you are morally obliged to give up a part of anything you receive (see both posts 1 and 2 (called Our Water Bottle)).

Thank you for the comment Henrik :).