Traditionally, the government is defined as a legal monopoly on the use of force; in other words, the state is permitted to use violence as a means of achieving its ends where others are not permitted. Regardless of an individual’s feelings on the ethical nature of this privilege granted to the state, this special right is what makes the state the state.

Accordingly, what if the size of government was a measuring stick? What would it tell us about our society? Provided that the government is an organization of force, the size of the government bears a directly proportional relationship to the amount of force being used in society. The greater prevalence the government holds in society, the greater is the amount of force present in society.

To put it bluntly, if the government were to be used as a measuring stick, the observer would be able to measure the amount of sanctioned violence employed in social interactions. As a result, every piece of legislation passed and every regulation imposed, regardless of its merit, sanctions the use of legal force.

This is not a partisan view; it is an objective observation made by practically all political theorists and philosophers regardless of their respective political ideologies. However, many in today’s modern political arena have forgotten this point, and forgotten it to the extent that they disagree with this philosophical truth.

So for those unbelievers, here is an example. Consider relatively uncontroversial regulation such as the requirement that all automobiles must be insured in order to operate on public highways.

Imagine that an unaware motorist forgets this requirement, drives an uninsured car down the interstate, and a rather keen highway patrolman pulls this car. The patrolman will either write this person a ticket, impound the driver’s vehicle or, in the worst case scenario, cart the motorist off to jail.

In the case of the ticket, the policeman, as a government official claims the right to take the violator’s money; in the case of the driver’s car being impounded, the policeman claims the right to seize the motorist’s property; and in the case of imprisonment, the officer claims the right to violate the offender’s personal liberty.

Even though it is fair to assume that the motorist should have driven an insured car and the policeman was in the right, the point still remains; the cop, acting on behalf of the government, utilized his right to exercise force on the offending motorist.

Here I would like to briefly introduce a principle called the non-aggression axiom. The axiom basically holds that it is wrong or disadvantageous to exercise unnecessary force, so force should be used as little as possible, only becoming a legitimate when it is used to defend a person’s rights.

The real-life application of this axiom means that unnecessary pieces of legislation, excessive regulations and the like should be avoided because they only sanction the increased use of force in society.

The non-aggression axiom would make room for the prohibition of crimes like murder, theft, child abuse, slavery and a long list of clear, objective rights abuses; however, the non-aggression axiom would find it incredibly difficult to sanction programs like corporate welfare, paternalist policies like the prohibition of narcotics or restrictions on the freedom of speech because these types of restrictions, which are hardly necessary, only increase the amount of state-sanctioned violence in society.

While, I will leave it up to you to decide what you deem to be necessary uses of force in society, this is an important principal that needs to be remembered in public discourse. No state action (laws, regulations, interventions, etc.) can occur without the use of force. We should choose wisely what we allow to be a legitimate use of force.

Nathan Fox-Helser is a junior political science major from Glen Alpine, N.C.