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Comment by joeclark77 | Hacker News Reader

It's always amazing to watch modern-day "educated" New York liberals discover things that every 12-year-old with a basic education in civics understood 100 years ago.

The lesson of this article: Government has only one means to carry out its policies: force (more precisely, threat of force). When you vote for a new tax or fine (cough Obamacare cough) you are voting for rough men with guns to take stubborn objectors away to prison. Period.

This is at the heart of the libertarian argument: government should be used cautiously, and the default position should always be not to impose a law unless you're sure that force is justifiable and necessary.

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> The lesson of this article: Government has only one means to carry out its policies: force (more precisely, threat of force).

This is simply factually false. Government has all the means available to any other institution or person available.

You seem to have reversed the common definition of government as whatever entity or aggregate of entities exercise a monopoly on legitimate use of force into the idea that the government somehow magically loses access to every other tool that people and groups of people have.

All right, I revise my statement to "government has only one means to enforce law: force"

I suppose there are some "policies" (not laws or taxes) which can be encouraged or enacted by spending money. Doesn't detract from my point though. This is still a humorous case of some over-credentialed nitwit at WaPo "discovering" what most educated children should be able to tell you about the rule of law.

What are you arguing for? That there should be no punishment for traffic violations?

The biggest issue here is the financial incentive of the private parties involved in collections.

On the contrary: the issue is that we are being encouraged to see this case as a moral injustice not based on any principle or law, but because the protagonist is portrayed sympathetically. If this were reported in a neutral tone of voice the story would be simple: guy breaks law, fails to pay fine, goes to jail.

I wasn't trying to make any argument, but if you want one, I guess it's this: that in a nation ruled by law, adults who vote for laws and punishments in the abstract ought to be mature enough to face the fact that there are hard consequences.

The writer wants to denounce the lawful punishment, but imply that it's caused by racism or something, so that he doesn't have to stake his credibility on arguing for a change to the law. This kind of sob-story approach is used by those who do not respect the danger of law, are willing to vote for anything that sounds "nice", and want someone else to be blamed for the downsides.

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