The penalty is always death
There used to be a really good essay (on a site I can no longer access) called "The penalty is always death". I searched the internet archives, found it, and have now saved the text. For your edification, here is the link to the archived post: The penalty is always death (I also updated the link on my "Important Readings" page).
It seems to have vanished from current availability. That's a shame because I think it is a very important concept to understand. That, no matter how small and seemingly unimportant some legislation or policy is, the end result of enforcing it is always a death penalty.
The argument I see most often against this concept is that government rarely kills anyone over "small laws" because almost everyone gives up and complies before they get killed. As if that disproves the point. It doesn't.
It goes like this: You "break" a rule. Enforcers come to enforce it. You don't comply. They either escalate the violence or they go away. If they go away, then there's no more enforcing and you're OK. That makes the state look weak, so they don't usually do that. Instead, they continue to escalate the situation as long as you keep refusing to comply with their latest demand. This ends up with one of you dead (and they have hundreds or thousands more people and robots to keep sending at you even if you manage to kill every one of them for month after month) if it goes on long enough, unless they are able to overpower you to the point where you can't defend yourself from them anymore. If you continue to struggle, you'll probably still die one way or the other, especially if you've had to kill one or more of them to avoid being kidnapped up to that point.
A government that won't murder you as long as you comply quickly enough is a very low bar. And yet this is the most common argument I get for why government isn't a murderous gang: as long as you comply fast enough they'll let you live (in a cage...).
Most thugs who don't have murder as their main objective will do the same for their victims. Yay. What angels they must be. We must support and praise them and protect them from too much criticism.
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What i really hate is that the thugs with badges will continue to escalate even if you and they know they are wrong.
You have rights... only if the thugs with badges agree with them that day.
(no knock raids at the wrong address?)
And what really scares me is that these thug's typical MO
is to torture people like me to death.
How do you tell one of these thugs that you would rather be shot through the heart then to go with them? Most would take this as a challenge.
If you're going to die anyway, why not attempt to take out as many of them as possible before you do? If the penalty is the same either way, Heemeyer the thugs as hard as possible. Make it cost them.
The problem is, you don't know if you are going to die anyway.
And you are hoping that you won't.
There is never a clear line between what is a fishing expedition and when they have decided that you need to die.
And your old peaceful life is gone.
You cannot reason with them.
You cannot call a truce
And any negotiation will be used to find you, to track you down.