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Comment by zb1plus | Hacker News Reader

Haha, I'm pretty sure that "safe and invasion-proof geography" is stolen property. It's always funny when statists try and pretend national sovereignty or law is more than having a big enough stick to force everyone else within a certain area to obey them.

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I think everyone is well aware that national sovereignty depends on military might, and likewise that the land was forcefully taken from others. No one was pretending what you claim.

It obviously wasn't invasion proof when the Europeans came.

Well, a democratic government is quite different than just who has the biggest stick. But in any case, I was just clarifying for OP that yes, the American people do get to define "illicit" and we do it in the way s/he is describing.

Yea, colonizers democratically genocided Native Americans

Yeah yeah yeah. History is extremely ugly, and the history of the Americas is certainly among the horrors.

It’s a very lame argument for not paying taxes though.

I don't think he was arguing against paying taxes, I think he was arguing that there are _some_ transactions which it is reasonable to expect both a level of privacy, as well as obscurity to the government for purposes of dissent or lack of relevant jurisdiction (private, ad-hoc transactions are still a thing).

e.g. purchasing large amount of print materials / equipment or other distribution tools that are then flagged / targeted by a less than agreeable local political group to repress participation

While federal laws "sound" nice, enforcement and targeting of most laws are still done by local, less arguably democratic practices

I was commenting on the absurdity that I perceive in the preceding comments. One person spoke about the "safe, invasion-proof" geography being stolen and the next person says that democracy is more than having a big stick. I'm agreeing with the person who said that it was stolen and that stealing had nothing to do with democracy

I can add to this though that in a capitalist and supposed democratic state the majority theoretically has the stick but in reality the money has the stick, it was the same when colonists arrived in the US

All laws in the end are enforced by the threat of violence. But in reality the laws don't matter a whole lot of you storm in with enough gunpower, hence the genocide

Hear, hear

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