The big difference between big government and big business is big government can take you to jail, or shoot you if you don’t comply. —Thomas Massie
Tag: Coercion
Personally, I’m very pro-life, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to take money through force and coercion to fund things that are against people’s conscience whether they’re pro-life or pro-choice. —Shane Hazel
Censorship is really about the state being afraid of the ideas of liberty; they’re afraid that it might catch on and that they will lose all control. —Johnny Adams
…to argue that a tax-collecting government can legitimately protect its citizens against aggression is to contradict oneself, since such an entity starts off the entire process by doing the very opposite of protecting those under its control. —Walter Block
Every man who puts money into the hands of a “government,” puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. —Lysander Spooner
The thing about unintended consequences is it doesn’t matter whether your intent is good, it doesn’t matter whether the regulation that you’re imposing is well thought out, it doesn’t matter whether lots of people are in favor of the regulation. It is the fact that the coercion takes away from people their abilities to make decisions for themselves that causes the unintended consequence. —Antony Davies
People often fail to perceive the fundamental difference between the liberal and the anarchistic idea. Anarchism rejects all coercive social organizations, and repudiates coercion as a social technique. It wishes in fact to abolish the State and the legal order, because it believes that society could do better without them. It does not fear anarchical disorder because it believes that without compulsion men would unite for social co-operation and would behave in the manner that social life demands.
Anarchism as such is neither liberal nor socialistic: it moves on a different plane from either. Whoever denies the basic idea of Anarchism, whoever denies that it is or ever will be possible to unite men without coercion under a binding legal order for peaceful co-operation, will, whether liberal or socialist, repudiate anarchistic ideals.
— Ludwig von Mises (Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis)
The robber does not pretend to be anything but a robber. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you.
He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. —Lysander Spooner
They censored us, banned us, and flagged every single post. They claimed it was “safe and effective,” but we were right about it not working or being safe the entire damn time. —Mindy Robinson
Voting cannot be a substitute for individual consent, as voting is forced upon all people whether they agree with having a vote in the first place or not. —Jack Lloyd, The Definitive Guide to Libertarian Voluntaryism