There are plenty of countries that don’t have a functioning government. Somalia doesn’t have one (the only threat of violence you’ll get is from your neighbors). Most of Alaska is no-man’s land as far as government goes. For that matter, there is nothing forcing you to pay taxes in the US- plenty of people don’t make enough money to do so, the freegans live outside the capitalist system nearly completely, and there are people who voluntarily make less than the amount that tax. They don’t get a gun to the head from the government.

You don’t like civilization? Fine. I have to admit, when I pay taxes I think about roads in schools. In the same way, I often times do what my neighbor asks if they ask a favor and not because I’m afraid of their firearms, but if you can’t get over that the government has a threat of violence, go to a place with no government.

You have to live under a country somewhere, and what ever country you live in there will be threat of violence.

If you were in a jail, but you were told you could move between cells freely, no one was forcing you to stay in any cell, but no matter which cell you went to, someone there demanded you give them your cigarettes, would you say that you were “free,” let alone to “leave?”

Free doesn’t mean you get to choose your cell.

The state wants money for public school, they increase taxes. This alone does not make you pay these taxes. If you don’t want to, what makes you? The threat of a fine perhaps? Again, what makes you pay that fine? The threat of jail perhaps? Well, what makes you go o the jail? The state doesn’t have magical words that will force you into a cell, does it?
No, it does not. What it does have is guns, and brute force. You don’t go with them to your cell when they ask, you don’t DO anything, you just sit still, they will physically force you to go with them.
Why can they do this to you, but you can’t do this to your neighbour if they don’t give you money? Right, the state has guns, and is ALLOWED to use them. You could have a gun with you and try to get money from your neighbour, but then you would be the one in the wrong. When the state does it to you, you are still the one in the wrong for not giving them your money.

Most muggings go down without the “use” of a gun. But the reason they do is because the gun is there, and the person being mugged does not want the gun to be “used.” This doesn’t mean that the gun wasn’t what “allowed” the mugger to successfully mug. Ok, technically it was the victim’s fear of the gun.

So, the ultimate trump car is the threat of the gun, or just physical force, picking you up and carrying you to your cell. If you don’t go willingly, they make you. If you don’t pay taxes, they ask again, you still don’t, they ask for more, you still don’t they ask you to go to your cell, you don’t do that, they try to force you to, often with guns drawn, just in case you fight back.

So, what allows the government to fund public schools? The threat of force and guns.
Just because most people hand over the taxes with out a fuss does not make the gun disappear, and even if it did, it does not validate the process.
Just because a person hands over their money to a mugger does not negate that they were mugged.

The state, as we know it, ultimately has only one tool for controlling behavior, it can legitimately kill individual people. All other punishments are premised on this power.

Oh, bullshit. We’re social creatures, there exists a social fabric between us, and the state can exert an influence on that.

I’m all for calling out state violence, but do you really think that, say, public education either (1) has no effect on society at all, or (2) only has an effect on society to the degree that schools use violence to further the state’s ends?

Or take courts ruling in favor of allowing gay marriage. I know that various church leaders are fond of saying that these rulings mean that gay marriage is being forced down their throats—at gunpoint! But those are, y’know, paranoid delusions. (Or, more likely, they’re a calculated message designed to produce an irrational response, since their actual fear—legalized gay marriage will lead to the propagation of socially accepted and positively-aligned queer images, and further social recognition and normalization of gay people and our relationships—doesn’t sound particularly terrifying. Which would be another instance of the state affecting behaviour through policy.)

The position is that the state doesn’t need to use violence but could be reconstituted in such a way that it is a voluntary organization.

What, were you talking to the ghost of Robert Nozick? It sounds nice. Sure, the state could be reconstituted as a voluntary organization. And then it could give out hot and cold running pot and puppies. Without addressing the how of it, it’s no more than a vacuous suggestion.

In addition to which, after the initial high passes, a voluntary state may stop looking like such a shiny thing. For example, the U.S. currently sports a completely voluntary health insurance system! To a first approximation, nobody thinks this was a good idea.

@Antigone: No one is forced to stay in a city, state, or country by law or by threat of violence (though, I am sympathetic to the idea that financial constraints do come to bear).

Iran: love it or leave it.

And, I think the state is voluntary. If you don’t like living in a country, you can move to another one (or a place that is only a “country” in the loosest of terms). No one is forced to stay in a city, state, or country by law or by threat of violence (though, I am sympathetic to the idea that financial constraints do come to bear).