Let us stop pretending that the government is some loving grandma who lives to bring us cookies.

in government •  last month 

image.png

Don't you just love it when people condescend to you after you've said, for example, that people pay taxes or obey regulations "at gunpoint"? "When," they demand to know, "has anyone from the government pointed a gun at you to make you pay taxes or obey regulations?"

This sort of response is hard to take seriously. Even if one has never encountered evidence of police carting folks off to jail for such violations of law, one might take the time to read the sanctions expressed in the statutes: fines and imprisonment. Does anyone really imagine that enforcement of such sanctions is carried out by unarmed government agents?

Yes, normally, people either obey the government's laws and regulations or, when charged with violations, submit to the legal process that imposes fines or tosses them into prison. Why they go along peacefully is no mystery. Determined resistance would bring forth the government's violence in an instant. So in fact the gun is always there, and always known to be there, whenever the government requires or forbids anything, especially when it categorizes an action as a felony, as it has done for hundreds, maybe thousands, of actions, many with no victim except the grasping and intrinsically violent state itself.

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!