The thing about most modern governments is that taxes are levied by those around you - aka society.
No, taxes are levied by an incredibly small minority of society. The vast majority of society doesn't much care about taxes one way or another as long as they are hidden from view. "Society" does not want to govern. They have a dream of governance, and as long as they are allowed to dream that dream they are content to remain ignorant of the nightmare lurking beneath the dome.
The governments do it in order to benefit society, on the whole, not to enrich a select group of people.
I find it baffling to think that you don't actually realize that you are reciting mythology as fact.
The reality is that corruption can have that exact effect, but blaming it on the governments itself is like blaming psychopaths on the fact they that they are human.
I wasn't laying blame. I was simply observing the structure for what it is.
The thing I don't get is why people who argue like you do treat governments as if they are a separate entity from the people?
I don't. Governments, like all religions,
are the people. (No Moonbeam, I don't mean this in quite the same sense that you say it... ) Religion is what people do whenever they invent an abstracted reason to enforce their will on their neighbors. Whether that reason is a fairy tale in a book a couple millennia old, or a fairy tale on a parchment a couple centuries old doesn't make much difference to me. The premise for collectivized mandatory authority is an abstraction - a myth - promulgated by a clergy caste. How it is that people insist the specific form of the myth makes one form of this virtually universal institution somehow above the religious fray is beyond me. In fact, I quite firmly believe that those who claim the existence of a secular state to be the most devoutly religious of all. It takes a good deal of faith in one's convictions to believe away the fact that those convictions require faith in the first place. At least the openly religious statists maintain a tiny shred of self-awareness!
Well, no. The Military is composed of the people. The police is composed of the people. All of those people have civilian familes and friends, and those same families and friends also make up the civilian branches of government.
The government is, and should be, a reflection of the makeup of the people. And one with higher/elite qualifications than the regular joe plumber at that, for very good reasons.
I think that treating governments as representative of religions is reflective of the person indeed - a distrust of those around you that lies deep within the psyche. Whether this lack of "faith" is warranted or not, really, I think depends on the quality of makeup of a society indeed.
I don't understand why you think I am arguing against government. I am only arguing against an almost universal misconception of the nature of government. I happen to believe that certain of the ridiculous fairy tales we tell ourselves are actually useful - as aspirational values. The Rule of Law is a wonderful fairy tale. We would do well to continue to pursue it. Of course we don't have it as long as mass murderers like Don Blankenship are able to buy state supreme court justices but, as Miley Cyrus says, "It's the climb." I feel similarly about many of the founding values of the USA. I do not surrender my faculties to them by "believing" in them. They do not "exist".
I think part of the problem with what you are reading into my posts (quite reasonably I might add) is that the tone of the OP is representative of many atheists: that anything "religious" is inferior. I don't share that vanity. Humans are religious, and use this religious belief in the need for centralized authority to organize themselves. I see (limited) use in that structure. However I also see it for what it is. I don't feel the need to deny the obvious just to preserve some ridiculous vanity about being "above" religion. I reject those religious structures I find distasteful without apology, and I retain those religious structures I find useful without apology.
I generally approach life as a grand farce full of cockamamie bullshit which people praise as gems and gems treated as shit. I look around a library and see a lot of kindling. I aspire to burn every idea I come across to see what's left. Usually there isn't much but ashes and smoke, but occasionally there is a moment of clarity. Take a modern theologian's meaning of "myth", take a historical long view of the relationship between political and religious power (no, not just in the west as you accused me of being too narrowly focused on, but in the tribal depths of the Amazon, Africa, Asia, and everywhere else), toss in the hilarious parallels between the Bush/Gore lawsuits and the tussles over papal succession, and the comical religiosity with which the various state liturgies are performed (ZOMG! Justice Roberts might have stumbled over the sacred incantation! We must pronounce the words of power before the
church government will function!), light a match, and an interesting gem is left in the ashes. Government is a religion - just as it always has been. Yes, it has changed - evolved even, but it is not suddenly irreligious simply because it ejected the more elaborate superstitions from its purview.