🧭 “Steuern steuern”: On the Humanist Function of Tax

2025-05-26

In German, the word for taxes is Steuern — the same word used for steering a vehicle or guiding a ship. It's a linguistic accident with philosophical weight.

Where English invokes taxation’s roots in imposing, levying, and burdening, German quietly suggests something different: guidance, coordination, even care. Steuern are not just something extracted, but something directed — a tool for shaping where we, as a society, want to go.

This matters.

Because for most of us, taxes have become synonymous with loss: of income, of control, of time. But this modern framing obscures a deeper function — one closer to the humanist ideal. Taxation is how societies express priorities. It’s how we steer capital toward care, infrastructure, education, and the commons.

In a post-growth world, where GDP is no longer the ultimate scorecard, taxation becomes not a punishment for success, but a calibration of fairness. It allows us to support what lasts over what merely scales. It discourages extractive short-termism and rewards participation in shared value.

This isn’t utopia. It’s steering.

We can tax fossil fuels not to punish drivers, but to accelerate the shift to sustainable transport. We can reduce taxes on open-source development and repairable design — because they build resilience, not just profits. And we can design inheritance taxes not to dismantle family businesses, but to gradually return monopolized means of production to the commons.

That’s the idea: Steuern steuern. Not to crush ambition, but to aim it.

If growth is no longer infinite, then direction matters more than speed. And taxes — properly understood — are the rudder.

This Post is build upon in 🧬 Inheritance as a Political Act

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