When people use the line about how a government backs up every law with a death threat, the very same could be said about any type of contractual obligation or defense of private property. You could extend the same logic to paying for a meal and say that “behind every restaurants’ fulfillment of an order is a death threat. If you don’t pay your fee, you will be apprehended and if you resist being apprehended violently enough, you could be killed.” Kinda seems like cheap logic.
But I understand where the argument is going, because there is a glaring distinction between the two in the sense that the diner scene is voluntary and it does get some Statists to think twice before they holler about which perfunctory laws they’d like to vote on next, but it seems like defense of private property is also backed up with death threats.
I think the coercion aspect should probably be the focal point of this argument, but I’ve noticed some people assume that the State is the only institution that uses a death threat at its core to achieve its ends.
Yeah, I think it’s disingenuous to suggest that the State is the only purveyor of force or that it is the fact that the State uses force that makes it morally illegitimate. Private property relies on force and the threat of force. Without force, possession would not be possible and the possibility of possession is a precondition to property.
That would be a good criticism if it was true. You don’t have to back up defense of private property with anything, nor may you. There is no sitting on the roof with a shotgun picking off salesmen as they set a foot on a cobblestone to your door.
It doesn’t work because people are conditioned by experience to have no imagination of anything else.