Government Coercion

Every state does things that would be a crime for anyone else. It takes property by threat, restricts movement, forbids exchange, and, when it decides to, kills. The moral question is not whether this is legal. It is whether it is right.

Authority is a claim, not a source of permission. A majority does not own the minority, and a piece of paper does not turn a demand into an invitation. Consent has to be voluntary and revocable to mean anything at all. A consent that cannot be withdrawn, and that is enforced whether or not it was ever given, is not consent; it is the appearance of it.

The strongest objection is order: without coercion, who builds the roads, the courts, the defence? The answer is not nobody. People organise common goods voluntarily all the time, and the burden of proof belongs to the person demanding obedience, not to the person refusing it. A service does not become moral because it is compulsory.

None of this requires a theory of utopia. It requires consistency. The standard you use against a mugger in an alley is the standard you are obliged to use against a bureau with a letterhead.

No one acquires the right to rule another person by winning an argument in a room.