Anatomy of the state - 1. What the state is not
- The state is almost universally considered an institution of social service
- Some venerate the state as the culmination of society
- Others regard it as an amiable though often inefficient organization
- Almost all regard it as a necessary means for achieving the goals of mankind
- "We are the government"
- If that is true, then anything a government does to an individual is voluntary on the part of the individual concerned
- If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group for the benefit of another, this reality of burden is obscured by saying that “we owe it to ourselves”
- ==We are not the government, the government is not us==
- The government does not in any accurate sense represent the majority of the people
- the State is that organization in society which attempts to maintain a monopoly of the use of force and violence in a given territorial area
- It is the only organization in society that obtains its revenue not by voluntary contribution or payment for services rendered but by coercion.
- State obtains its revenue by the use of compulsion; that is, by the use and the threat of the jailhouse and the bayonet.