Quotes from the Liberty Archive

✓ Verified in Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market

From Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market — surrounding passage

However, the support may simply reflect apathy—perhaps from the resigned belief that the State is a permanent if unwelcome fixture of nature. Witness the motto: “Nothing is as permanent as death and taxes.” Setting all these matters aside, however, and even granting that a State might be enthusiastically supported by a majority, we still do not establish its voluntary nature. For

“The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.”

— Murray N. Rothbard

Since States exist, and they are accepted for generations and centuries, we must conclude that a majority are at least passive supporters of all States—for no minority can for long rule an actively hostile majority. In a certain sense, therefore, all tyranny is majority tyranny, regardless of the formalities of the government structure. 9 , 10 But this does not change our analytic conclusion of conflict and coercion as a corollary of the State.

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