How To Dispose of the State

The State's crimes rest fully upon public opinion; on the people's support of its aggression as moral and just invasions of property rights. Usually attached to this thought is that such actions – of violently intervening in the voluntary trade of two or more persons as a non-contractor to such transactions – produce some benefit to the people, however they claim this "social benefit" is measured.

Of course, really, it's just exploitation; that which is defined as being an appropriator (actually, an expropriator) of property that has not been originally contracted through homesteading, voluntary exchange, gift, etc.

In other words, a thief. "The means (aggression) justify the ends (supposed prosperity)", we're told, to make up for the lack of moral or economic footing such an institution stands on. As no private criminal could convince his victim that it was "for their own good", the State must invent justifications for what it does as being something other than what was committed by the private criminal.

As the 19th century American abolitionist Lysander Spooner says of the State vs. the private criminal (the highwayman), and of the latter as the more moral one:

"The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man:
Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under
the compulsion of that threat.

The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place,
spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head,
proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery
on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.

The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility,
danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any
rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own
benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not
acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a "protector," and
that he takes men's money against their will, merely to enable him to
"protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect
themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection.
He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these.

Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him
to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will;
assuming to be your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection"
he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by commanding you
to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding
you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for
his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor,
and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if
you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a
gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as
these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make
you either his dupe or his slave."

Therefore, they're left with the need to control – through propaganda via monopolization of the education system, the media, and the minds of the people – the psychology of the public. Since there are no valid economic or moral arguments based in logic for the State, they opt to fool the people in other ways.

Just think: If a majority of the population quit believing in government propaganda toward the alleged voluntariness of taxation, or the supposedly positive economic benefits of socialist economic policies, then just as they've already done with marijuana, to regard the government's claims as false, and asserting instead a right to consume a harmless plant, so too could all of the other fallacies be over with.

Politicians could stand there and look like idiots as no one roared to their lies anymore. We wouldn't get any more fake old men with messy hair lying about economics, attempting to appeal to the people's emotions, if their preying upon the youth lost it's effectiveness due to the truth being discovered: that minimum-wage laws don't raise wages, but cause unemployment; that government-operated health care is a disastrous idea; etc.

Once the people aren't fooled anymore on economics as they've finally come around with marijuana, albeit slowly and over many decades, then the State's agents would appear as fools to stand before the people and assert their "necessity" in their lives; "the people", never being "the government" which is a different and separate entity, would call their bluff: "Lies!"

"No", they could shout in assurance, your taxation doesn't enrich us, but makes us relatively poorer!; No, your central-banking isn't necessary to prevent recessions and manage the supply of money, but indeed is the cause of the business cycle and rising prices!; No, there's no such thing as you protecting us when you're the very institution that uses aggression against us to rob us of our rights!; No, no, no: You're all a bunch of lying criminals, and we can't stand to have you around anymore.

It is a possibility, at least. The brainwash can be broken. Nothing says it must remain this way.