I remember early in November driving past intersections filled with children waiving colorful signs. They were advocating voting for a new school. After seeing this, my own children asked me what I thought. I explained that it was morally wrong to vote for a new school.

To my 5 year olds this was confusing. What could be wrong with a new school? Everyone loves new things.

I took this opportunity to explain to them something that my children will never learn in school. The vote was not actually about “building a new school”; whether I personally wanted a new school was irrelevant. The vote was actually about if it is proper for a majority of people to extract money from a minority who did not support their goals. In this case, “was it moral for 54% of people to force 46% of people to pay for something that the 46% did not support?”

When people originally moved to town, taxes were one cost that they considered. They designed their lives around their home, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars, but at any time their lives can be uprooted by the 54% of the population. That is not democracy; that is mobocracy.

Childless individuals and homeschoolers will now see more of their money being taken for a service they do not use. The increased taxes will further limit the brand new school’s access for the poor, as the cost of living increases (due to taxes).

I asked my children if there were any moral funding alternatives. They instinctually understood that the people who wanted the school should be the ones paying. If the law was changed to read that only those voting for a tax increase would pay that tax increase or if the proponents started a Kickstarter campaign, we could have avoided mobocracy.