“The Walking Dead” (8 p.m. Central Sundays on AMC) rarely gets mentioned when lists of “most libertarian TV shows” are compiled, but that might change when the series ends and we see the full picture. Season 5 in particular seems to be embarking on multi-episode vignettes about various forms of government that could arise in makeshift towns in a zombie apocalypse, and their relative merits or lack thereof.
The first “town,” covering three episodes, was the cannibal colony Terminus, where new arrivals were given a choice between being the butcher or the cattle. Terminus Mary argued that because evil was done to them before they rebelled and took control of Terminus, that justifies them doing the same thing to future arrivals.
The second “town,” which we were introduced to in Sunday’s episode, is the hospital colony Slabtown. All Beth knows is that she was attacked by a walker, everything went black and she woke up in an Atlanta hospital. A woman in a police uniform with all its accoutrements, Dawn, tells Beth that because they saved her (using resources such as gasoline for the car and hospital supplies to nurse her back to health), Beth owes them, and must work at the hospital to pay off her debt. Her second-in-command, Gorman, isn’t merely an enforcer of the pact, he’s also a classic abuser of power, as he basically plans to rape Beth the first time he lays eyes on her. (With the arrival of Carol, who would never require rescuing, at episode’s end, we can strongly suspect that the Slabtowners had abducted Beth rather than rescued her.)
The moral lessons of the Terminus arc were not ambiguous: If A does evil to B, that doesn’t justify B doing evil to C. The moral lesson of Slabtown is that taxation of one’s existence is wrong. I think it’s equally unambiguous, but a Google search of “Walking Dead,” “Slabtown” and “taxation” comes up with nothing, so maybe it’s not so obvious, or maybe it’s so obvious that it’s not worth mentioning. Certainly, taxation – unlike cannibalism – draws loud voices on both sides of the debate, but I think the writers of “Slabtown” were presenting an anti-taxation message.
In America (and many other countries), you are taxed because you exist (income tax, property tax). Because the government can acquire your wealth without taxes – it can shift money’s value and who possesses it via the Fed, subsidies, regulations, mandatory purchases and price controls – one wonders why taxes in the traditional sense still exist, but that’s another topic. Also another topic is the debate over whether you are getting fair value for your taxes, thus making it a moral exchange (in addition to taxation being the ideal way to run a civilized society due to the efficiency of a society-wide pact – as pro-taxers would argue). My view is that no, you are most certainly not getting fair value (particularly from federal taxes), and any agreement enforced by threat of imprisonment is immoral.
With these various existence taxes, you didn’t voluntarily agree to any of it, but if you don’t pay it, you will be imprisoned by your rulers. Beth tries to escape at episode’s end, but is recaptured by Slabtown’s uniformed rulers. Noah escapes through a hole in the fence – which keeps the zombies out and the freedom in, as the Slabtown rulers might spin it.
Despite the fact that we liked to call it a “Ricktatorship” in past seasons, membership in Rick’s group is voluntary. Even at the height of Rick’s bad behavior, he wasn’t going to kill people who wanted to leave. At first glance, Woodbury was also a voluntary society, but the Governor’s pre-emptive strikes against anyone he considered a threat ultimately showed it to be a mini-imperialist state with an ignorant populace.
By waking up (metaphorically “being born”) in Slabtown, Beth is alive but also a slave. By being born in America, you are alive but also must do what those in power tell you lest you be imprisoned or legally killed. The laws you must obey extend beyond doing harm to others – for which your imprisonment or killing by the majority could be justified — and into areas such as smoking marijuana in your own home. You can’t leave, except to agree that this huge chunk of the Earth’s land will forever be off-limits to you, and even then you have to pay an exit tax. Clearly, our chains are much longer than those of traditional slaves, but just as clearly, we have not broken them.
Dawn begins to explain that Beth has to eat the food Slabtown provides in order to have the strength to work and pay off her debt of having eaten the food … and then kind of trails off as she realizes the endless loop she is describing. The lesson is that 1) Beth will never pay off the debt, because it’s impossible, and 2) she is being ruled by those in uniform in Slabtown — she is not free to leave.
“Slabtown” – the episode, not the town — contends that freedom and prosperity for all can only come from voluntary interaction and negotiation. If Slabtown operated under the principles of Rick’s group, Beth likely would have stayed and contributed. Of course, some of the people saved by Slabtown (if they were truly saving people, and not kidnapping them) would have taken the free medical care and split, thus leaving the Slabtown citizens with fewer resources and nothing to show for it other than the knowledge that they did the right thing. But most would not behave this way, because 1) most people are inherently good, and 2) it’s better to live among a free, cooperative people than to take one’s chances with the walkers. Indeed, Rick’s tight-knit group is an example of this.
“Slabtown” unambiguously shows that rule by force rather than voluntarism is immoral, and I suspect this is no accident on the part of the writers. I think the next step in the Slabtown arc will be to show that rule by force is ultimately unsustainable. Beth has already peppered a few doubts into Dawn’s psyche about the morality of her governance. And if Gorman is the only one benefitting from the current set-up, and a healthy Carol is lined up on the other side … well, let’s just say Gorman is going to pay what he owes.