Avaaz, is this your right track?

I had signed some petitions of Avaaz that I considered worth caring for. This days Avaaz sent me an email I do not agree with. Instead signing, I answered with this text (in German). As a letter like mine may prove futile, I publish the English translation here.

Dear Alex Wilks, Jeremy, Christopher, Marie, Ian, David, Paul, Ricken and the whole Avaaz team,

Your organization sends me emails asking to sign petitions and donate money. I usually like your commitment when it comes to helping people in need or to protect nature.

However, I am afraid to admit, your last email does not seem to stand up for the right thing. Therefore, I will take the liberty to respond to it in a similar polemical way as you approach the issue. It seems that at least we both agree on this: sometimes a bold statement stimulates deeper thinking.

You write about the huge tax loophole that swallows 1 trillion euros annually because global companies and rich people move their profits and wealth to tax havens. If these lost taxes would be paid, you write, poverty would be eradicated, every child could have a school place, and green investment could be doubled throughout the world.

In fact, 1 trillion, which is a 1 followed by 12 zeros, is a large number. With so many euros you could do much good. The question that remains unanswered is, who? Who is to do so much good? Our governments, which are collecting the taxes?

The global annual tax revenue is about ten times bigger as the figure you mentioned that disappears in loopholes. And what do the governments of the world with this much money? Eliminate poverty? Provide for every child a school place? Double investments to preserve the environment? I respect your immense trust in the people that run our states, but no government administration or authority is really doing that with their present tax revenues.

To believe that these people will do much better if you increase by 10% the tax revenues is nothing but daring wishful thinking. Would it not be more realistic to expect that the same calamity we already have will continue, just only on a higher level?

The most unpleasant corollary would be, I am sad to say, that there would be a few wars more around. From old times, the main motive for starting a war has been money. If more of that becomes available, more wars are likely to happen. For two reasons: First, some would like to steal the money the others suddenly have and, second, there would be more means to finance warfare.

The next sad consequence would be that more money would end in corrupt politicians’ pockets. Unfortunately, when the fiscal officers attain more revenue, this is presently the expected outcome for most countries of the world.

In the few remaining countries, the matter would not be much better. Probably politicians would use the extra money to win the next election. Or they would feed their usually overinflated sense of ego. Rulers are only humans. And humans reason like this: First, it’s about me. Then I consider my relatives. Thereafter I have to take into account my friends. With this I am busy enough. The rest? You cannot care for everybody, can you?

Maybe it works in Switzerland, where no one knows who is governing. And sure, there are a few exceptions among the politicians, such as Nelson Mandela or the kind President José Mujica in Uruguay, who both continue to live as humble as ever. To those it would make sense to give the additional tax revenues. The others, I suspect, would quickly spend the money in white elephants and pathetic welfare gifts that help nobody.

The worst of all effects, however, is that improved revenue increases creditworthiness. Governments would absorb more debt; the financial gaps most of them already have would become even greater.

Look at today’s Venezuela as an example of what I am saying. Due to the rise in oil prices, the country had many years of state revenue on a scale that far exceeds the economic power of the former European Marshall Plan after the Second World War. The Venezuelan Government got probably more than 1.5 trillion euros. And what happened to all the money? Some of that went to social issues for the benefit of poor people. However, this was at most a single-digit percentage of the total available amount. The rest was squandered, stolen or provided to neighboring dictators - to ail their mismanaged economies and prolong their stay in power. And the result is that Venezuela has now a debt as high as never before and a shattered economy. People stand in line to get staples or simple hygiene products. The party is over; the misery shows its ugly face again.

And what has Apple done, the company that you denounce? Or Google? These evil organizations, which reduce their costs by taking advantage of tax loopholes that politicians either devised or overlooked? While this happened in Venezuela as described above; or while at the same span of time a U.S. President invaded Iraq and then, after 150,000 or more people died, his successor withdraws again the troops; or in the years self-seeking politicians disintegrated more and more the European Union; in the same years all this happened, Apple launched the iPhone, the iPad and a computer system that brought benefit and real joy to many people. The Apple devices are not cheap, but what I spent for them was only a fraction of the taxes I had to pay. I will be sincere: The money I paid to Apple has given me much, much more happiness and sense of having done something right than what the so much bigger tax payment has.

Or what so say about Google, the wicked octopus, which also avoided honorary tax payments by applying existing rules to its benefit? I can find on the Internet any information and answer I need, thanks to Google, without paying anything for it. Twenty years ago I would not have believed that such a thing is even possible. I have also a Google email account; it costs me nothing. I use a blog from Google. Free. I can look at any address in the world in stunning aerial photographs on Google Earth. Free. Family videos uploaded to YouTube connect my far-flung kin. Free. Well, some publicity appears on the screen, and my data is collected. The advertising does not bother me, in any case less than the self-congratulatory chatter of politicians on the television news, for which I am also forced to pay fees. Regarding my data hoarded, I am of the opinion that it is better stored at Google than at any state institution. Because Google may have indeed more power than it really needs, but it certainly will not knock at my door in the middle of the night to take me away because I do not use agreeable information. 

You also reach your target audience with emails. Thanks to a system that no state institution of this world would ever have been able to set up. Imagine you would still depend on the old postal system instead of the postage free emails. You would have to buy stamps, envelopes, stick one with the other and write the address. You see now that these global companies really do many useful things for us, the public? Not to mention the initiatives of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has already achieved more good in developing countries than all the official development assistance before.

Dear Avaaz team, you support the wrong. Governments have still far too much power and do not need your help or my donation. Rather than continue to tighten the screws to control the taxpayers, they should rather simplify and unify their tax systems. But as the current situation strengthens their power, any appeal in this sense will fizzle out into the void.

Here is an idea: Why do you not set up a petition for a company that would build roads here, from where I write? Entirely free for the taxpayer; founded with advertising? Every hundred yards a Coca-Cola logo in asphalt would be allowed; and we finally would have a usable road network in Romania.