System Based on Consent or Physical Coercion? The WashPost observes “Around the world, as a [manufactured] consensus has formed around the [perceived] need for quarantine and social distancing to fight the coronavirus, a more delicate question has emerged: How do you enforce those new rules? [the same way you en-force all rules - violence]

In every region, under all kinds of political systems, governments are turning to increasingly stringent measures — and deploying their armed forces to back them up.

Countries as varied as China, Jordan, El Salvador and Italy have sent service members into the streets. Guatemala has detained more than 1,000 people. In Peru, those who flout government restrictions can be jailed for up to three years. In Saudi Arabia, it’s five.

Deploying troops is a startling but often effective way to keep people indoors, but its impact could ripple well beyond the end of the coronavirus, as countries decide when — and if — to cede the powers endowed by a global pandemic.

In Lebanon, Chile and Hong Kong, beset for months by protests, fear of the coronavirus has allowed the state to ban public gatherings without overtly violating civil liberties. In several countries, leaders have used the public health crisis to suppress freedom of speech and other constitutional protections. [MORE]

Statists continually marvel at the situation right in front of their eyes and still miss it. Government is a coercive institution. It may feel better to you if you consent - but you really have no choice in the matter, do you? In reality, you either comply with authorities or go to jail. Read that again. According to FUNKTIONARY:

citizens - those who instinctively seek permission or ask themselves whether or not they are allowed to do anything before they act. Citizens (serfs, subjects or slaves), possess a "ruled" mind-virus mentality (See: Citizenship & Slavery). FUNKTIONARY further states:

“A citizen is one whose second nature is to do whatever might please his or her master without question in order to avoid disapproval and/or punishment. Citizens show-up, shut-up, and pay-up—extorted tribute and fines." 

coercion - external authority or any sort of compelled act based on the threat of violence, ostracism or peonage. Once a man has said “yes” under “coercion,”once a man has yielded because he was forced to yield, you have destroyed his capacity to say “yes” spontaneously forever. He will say yes only when he is coerced. (See: violence, power, authority, Will & Force).

cell phones - communication devices that inmates use to talk to one another and to those out in the bigger prison. [MORE]

Michael Huemer explains

“Generally speaking, when the state makes a law, the law carries with it a punishment to be imposed upon violators. It is possible to have a law with no specified punishment for violation, but all actual governments attach punishments to nearly all laws.  Not everyone who breaks the law will in fact be punished, but the state will generally make a reasonable effort at punishing violators and will generally punish a fair number of them, typically with fines or imprisonment. These punishments are intended to harm lawbreakers, and they generally succeed in doing so.

     Direct physical violence is rarely used as a punishment. Nevertheless, violence plays a crucial role in the system, because without the threat of violence, lawbreakers could simply choose not to suffer punishment. For example, the government commands that drivers stop before all red lights. If you violate this rule, you might be punished with a $200 fine. But this is simply another command. If you didn’t obey the command to stop before all red lights, why would you obey the command to pay $200 to the government? Perhaps the second command will be enforced by a third command: the government may threaten to revoke your driver’s license if you do not pay the fine. In other words, they may command you to stop driving. But if you violated the first two commands, why would you follow the third? Well, the command to stop driving may be enforced by a threat of imprisonment if you continue to drive without a license. As these examples illustrate, commands are often enforced with threats to issue further commands, yet that cannot be all there is to it. At the end of the chain must come a threat that the violator literally cannot defy. The system as a whole must be anchored by a non-voluntary intervention, a harm that the state can impose regardless of the individual’s choices.

     That anchor is provided by physical force. Even the threat of imprisonment requires enforcement: how can the state ensure that the criminal goes to the prison? The answer lies in coercion, involving actual or threatened bodily injury, or at a minimum, physical pushing or pulling of the individual’s body to the location of imprisonment. This is the final intervention that the individual cannot choose to defy. One can choose not to pay a fine, one can choose to drive without a license, and one can even choose not to walk to a police car to be taken away. But one cannot choose not to be subjected to physical force if the agents of the state decide to impose it.

     Thus, the legal system is founded on intentional, harmful coercion. To justify a law, one must justify imposition of that law on the population through a threat of harm, including the coercive imposition of actual harm on those who are caught violating the law. In common sense morality, the threat or actual coercive imposition of harm is normally wrong. This is not to say that it cannot be justified; it is only to say that coercion requires a justification. This may be because of the way in which coercion disrespects persons, seeking to bypass their reason and manipulate them through fear, or the way in which it seems to deny the autonomy and equality of other persons.” [MORE]