Government Law is a Death Penalty

I didn’t properly credit my friend and co-host Morgan Aldous for the way I heard him explain how government law leads to the death penalty. Here’s what I wrote in “If You Need Violence to Enforce Your Ideas…” which I got almost verbatim from Morgan:

Law is the death penalty for setting up an unlicensed lemonade stand. And that’s not hyperbole. What good is law if not enforced, and what good is enforcement if it won’t escalate, and what is the end point of escalation? Death by decree.

Now you might counter with, “Wouldn’t you escalate to the point of killing someone attacking you or your family?”

Well, yes, I might. I’d like to think that I’d be brave enough and capable enough to do exactly that if absolutely necessary to protect my life or the lives of my loved ones.

But is that the same thing? Most, like 99.999999~% of government laws are not enforced as a response to an act of aggression against innocent people. In fact, virtually every government law that is enforced is done so as an initiation of conflict via the threat or use of violence. Opening a lemonade stand, not maintaining your yard, collecting rain water, keeping all of your hard-earned income, smoking weed, paying for sex, moving across a fake “border,” copying digital fileset cetera, et cetera, et cetera, are not akin to attacking innocent people.

If you think it is, I have a bridge to sell you.

We already know that government laws are just a bunch of opinions. Factually, that’s what they areBut that’s not all they are. They’re the opinions of lawyers and politicians backed by the death penalty.

What good would they be if they weren’t? “The force of law” is not just getting punched by a cop. It’s getting murdered by a cop if he deems it necessary to escalate his attack on you, and he’s been granted permission by his bosses to do exactly that. It happens daily all over the world.

Read it again: people innocent of aggression are getting murdered by government every day all over the world.

Are you okay with that? Do you advocate for that? Are you a psychopath?

Maybe so. But I’m not. Maybe I’m relatively unique. Maybe I just happen to be one of the few who considers it wrong to be willing to murder people over non-aggressive actions.

If so, woe is me.

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Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.