Something I Say a Lot

Governments rule with the threat of force and violence. I don't mean that to sound melodramatic. I mean just what I said. We grant our governments (more on the granting elsewhere) the power to enforce laws against our citizens. Such enforcement is built on the ability to do harm to us. If you doubt that, consider the course of a set of traffic violations. You are fined for parking or speeding or having a taillight out. Should you ignore the fines, your car will ultimately be taken from you. Should you resist strenuously enough, you could be jailed. Should you flee incarceration, attack those who seek to bring you under control, or be perceived as a threat, you may well be killed. That's only the most exaggerated example, because generally speaking, the government is so disproportionately strong that it doesn't need to kill you. It can pin you down and wait for you to cry uncle. 

My point is not that government shouldn't enforce laws or that its use of violence is necessarily corrupt. I am simply acknowledging that it is the threat of violence that gives government its power to accomplish even the most mundane of its tasks--from collecting taxes to collecting garbage to collecting dust on its oil reserves.  

So, I think we should be very careful about which tasks we decide will be carried out on that basis. If you don't think it matters, ask yourself whether the following two invitations are equivalent:
    "Would you like to have lunch with me?"
and
    "Have lunch with me or I will break your legs."

These strike me as very different interactions. I think we ought to save the threat of violence for some extremely special circumstances or mandates. So what should the government do, about a problem, a crisis, a plan for the future? We think about such things all the time, in a form something like "I think the government should provide free health care," or, "I think the government should pay teachers more." These are not uncommon or unreasonable sentiments. I do, however, think they sound a bit more ominous when rephrased accordingly: "I think that all citizens should be required, under the threat of violence, to provide free healthcare to their fellow citizens." 

Hmm.Well, maybe. 


"I think that all citizens should be required, under the threat of violence, to give more of their income to school teachers."


My point is not that there is a right or wrong answer to those questions, but that phrasing certainly changes the mood in the room. And I maintain that it's the right mood in which to answer these questions. Is the problem being addressed so severe, so dire, and so universally understood and agreed upon that it requires the forced consent of all citizens to address it?


Quick examples: 


Should everyone be forced to pay for an army?  I think yeah, probably.
Should everyone be forced to join the army?  Well, no, not most of the time. I think. 
Should everyone be forced to pay for encouraging others to join the army? And my head hurts. 

So no law currently forces you to join the army. But you do have to pay for it and you even have to pay to convince other people to join it, recruitment posters, whatever. But, especially in this day and age, all the activities of government are accompanied by PR and even advertising to convince you it really is a good idea. 


Solid answers? No, not at all but questions worth asking I think. Though doing so is completely optional, no threat of any kind implied by the author.