The only reason for a community, on any level, to have a legislature empowered to pass positive law is to serve utilitarianism, i.e., the greatest good for the greatest number.

Positive law may deviate to some extent from natural law for the sake of this end.

So, we’d have utilitarian law and utilitarian taxes whose benefits on the whole outweigh the costs. Even if taxation is admitted to be theft, we are trading justice for welfare.

As an empirical matter, genuinely utilitarian taxes are very low.

But in the case of the U.S. Congress, all the congressmen are crooks and sellouts. It’s not that the congressmen should be schooled in economics, or something of that sort. It’s that the government is run by private interests for private profit, not for the common or greatest good.

As a result, the Congress is worse than useless, it is an evil institution. So as per the Declaration of Independence, “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…”

And that’s just what needs to be done. National divorce is beginning to sound like a great idea.