I had it first.

"I had it first!" is a concept most people come to understand by the time they're five years old. Imagine yourself at five years old. Imagine yourself at the playground. Imagine yourself playing with your favorite toy. Imagine a bigger kid walking up to you, punching you in the face, and ripping your favorite toy out of your hands.

That kid is a bully, right? Who is he to hit YOU or take YOUR toy? Your parents gave you that toy. You were using it first. It's yours; not his. What's more, your parents gave you your body. It is also yours; not his. Trespasses against your toy and trespasses against your body are therefore wrong for the same reason: they're yours and you were using them first.

If this principle of first use wasn't legitimate or universal, it would be perfectly fine for any kid to hit or take toys from any other kid. Every playground would degrade into a Mad Max style children's dystopia. Teachers would be powerless to restore order.

Now replace your five year old self with your adult self. Replace the playground with your every day life. Replace your favorite toy with your paycheck. Replace the bully with the men and women calling themselves government. Replace the theft of your toy with taxation. Replace the punch in the face with a prison sentence for refusing to give up a portion of your paycheck.

Take a look around you. Children are sold into transgenerational debt to finance mass murder overseas before they're even born. Bullies tax everyone and everything regardless of who was using what first. Voters are bribed and paid to do nothing but watch Netflix with resources that are stolen from their neighbors. People are killing each other in the streets. So much weaponry has been created with stolen money that there's enough of it to kill everyone in the world several times over. Without the principle of first use, the world has become a Mad Max style dystopia for many people. Statists claim that this chaos could only have happened absent the men and women calling themselves government, yet here it is.

It's obviously not the expropriation of thugs with a monopoly on violence that prevents rampant expropriation, violence and chaos. Expropriation, violence and chaos can only be avoided through adherence to the property norms of first use and consensual exchange. "Government" is founded on a rejection of these norms. The end result is unsurprising, and it could have been avoided if not for collective, selective amnesia with regard to a simple principle that almost everyone learns by the time they are five years old.