Why should some people be legally empowered to use force on other people? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
Everyone has their take as regards the problems besetting us. Few seem to grasp there is fundamentally just one problem. It is the problem that animates the others, giving them the power to be problems.
What is this one problem that leads to all the others?
It is force – especially when its use (and threatened use, which has the same effect) is legalized.
If force institutionalized were taken away, there would of course still be disagreements – as well as annoyances. But that is all there would be. Or at least, mostly. Violence – its use and its threatened use – will of course always be with us as there will always be people willing to resort to the use of force to get what they want. But they would be outliers – and occasional rather than ubiquitous threats.
How often have you been mugged?
Have you been able to go even one day without being forced to pay what are styled “taxes” – i.e., legalized mugging? You are forced to pay the “mugger” every single time you pay for anything. And when you get paid for the work you do, too.
Because such mugging it is legal – and so ubiquitous. The mugger in the alley is a kind of freelancer; he enjoys no such advantage and suffers the disadvantage of it being legal to attempt to avoid his depredations and to defend oneself against them.
…. no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
– Orwell, George. ”1984”