Just shut up and pay your taxes and nobody gets hurt

  Comic from xkcd.

Big tip of the hat to Kent McManigal for clueing me in to this article over at nostate.com. 

I'm certainly fond of pointing out that the state--no matter what its form--is and always has been nothing more than "legitimized" theft and violence.  I'm a huge fan of the quote "just shut up and pay your taxes and nobody gets hurt".  And so on.  The topic has certainly been well discussed in this forum.

Sometimes, though, it's someone else who just says it better, and this is one of those cases.  From its very title--The penalty is always death--right through to the end, author Mike Gogulski minces no words:

To be sure, the State is mostly careful to not exercise the penalty too often. The system of compulsion and coercion, backed by the ultimate tool of death, is one which States have learned functions much better when the sword is cloaked in layers of misdirection and abstraction. The simple — and perhaps more honest — compulsion of the local tyrant demanding of his subjects, “Do it thus, or I shall kill you,” has been replaced with a long chain of escalation beginning with paper things like demands for compliance and citations, leading through more forceful papers such as summonses and warrants, but ultimately grounded upon the power of that barely-concealed blade.

Ugly but provably true, and well-said throughout.  And it gets "better"--to the extent that concept makes any sense.  I intend to refer to the article repeatedly, as it makes the point better than I do.

The penalty is always death.  Most of us are only alive because we have not pushed our resistance.  In fact, in the words of Kent McManigal himself, in response to another suggesting that his lack of rebellion against the tax man was somehow tacit admission of its legitimacy,  "my lack of resistance is a desire not to be murdered by the state."

Just so.  It is only meaningful resistance that exposes the illusion for what it is.