For example, take licenses. I guess many people see them as a stamp of freedom. I gain a driving license, I am now "free to drive". No actually, you were already free to drive, by virtue of having a body capable of pressing peddles, etc. You just sought someone's permission for an act you were fundamentally at liberty to do anyway.
So, what right does any state have to confiscate property or amend rights which it never had place granting?
Obviously, we tolerate states because we believe that we are receiving some benefit from being a subordinate.
But it helps to clarify the real relationship between an individual and a government - one of master and subject, where the master has no right at all to impose itself (it merely wields the most force) - in order remind people that our relationship with government is not romantic, and it is open to negotiation and modification. The founding fathers of the USA knew this; they wrote that a person has inalienable rights, irrelevant of what laws will subsequently be imposed on them. Abraham Lincoln's generation just assumed as a matter of routine, that workers in the new industry would have to own what they produced - renting yourself out to a private organisation in exchange for survival was seen as not much better than chattel slavery - yet we now accept it; the institution of wage slavery. We accept debts that we did not create, and were not even created in our interest - there is nothing preventing us from simply refusing to pay - except force and coercion. Romantic ideas or misunderstandings have built up around what our relationship is to our countries, and this leads to warped ideas, in which we subjects are not subjects in an ongoing negotiation with our states, but somehow the states embody our identity. But reality is, states don't have identities - they are organisations, not people - there is no such thing as a 'British state', or 'British system' with 'British characteristics' - only people living in an island, called Britain, in a particular historical moment. By not being objective and rational about our status in life, we fail to engage in the most pertinent and fundamental questioning.
So, what right does any state have to confiscate property or amend rights which it never had place granting?
Obviously, we tolerate states because we believe that we are receiving some benefit from being a subordinate.
But it helps to clarify the real relationship between an individual and a government - one of master and subject, where the master has no right at all to impose itself (it merely wields the most force) - in order remind people that our relationship with government is not romantic, and it is open to negotiation and modification. The founding fathers of the USA knew this; they wrote that a person has inalienable rights, irrelevant of what laws will subsequently be imposed on them. Abraham Lincoln's generation just assumed as a matter of routine, that workers in the new industry would have to own what they produced - renting yourself out to a private organisation in exchange for survival was seen as not much better than chattel slavery - yet we now accept it; the institution of wage slavery. We accept debts that we did not create, and were not even created in our interest - there is nothing preventing us from simply refusing to pay - except force and coercion. Romantic ideas or misunderstandings have built up around what our relationship is to our countries, and this leads to warped ideas, in which we subjects are not subjects in an ongoing negotiation with our states, but somehow the states embody our identity. But reality is, states don't have identities - they are organisations, not people - there is no such thing as a 'British state', or 'British system' with 'British characteristics' - only people living in an island, called Britain, in a particular historical moment. By not being objective and rational about our status in life, we fail to engage in the most pertinent and fundamental questioning.