The third pressure lies in the realm of taxation. Taxation is, of course,
a payment for social services and, therefore, is accepted as a reasonable
cost of production, provided it is not too high. Now what has determined
the level of taxation? To be sure, there has been the constant demand of
security (the military, the police). This has, as we know, steadily risen over
the centuries because of the increasing relative costs of the means of
security, the scope of military actions and the perceived need of police
actions. The second steady rise has been in the size of the civil bureaucracies
of the world, a function first of all of the need to collect taxes and
second of all to perform the expanding functions of modern states.