Brunswick on Nostr: # Why Governments Don’t Respect Their Citizens — and Why Bitcoin Changes the ...

# Why Governments Don’t Respect Their Citizens — and Why Bitcoin Changes the Equation

Many liberty-minded people sense this intuitively:
as government power expands, respect for the populace evaporates.

This is not a moral failure.
It is a structural law.

## Respect Is Not a Virtue — It’s a Signal

Respect is not kindness, civility, or rhetoric.
Respect is the recognition that another party remains a **source of constraint** on your will.

You respect what you cannot fully:
- dominate
- replace
- extract from
- ignore

Respect tracks **irreducible agency**, not good intentions.

## Power Concentration Destroys Respect

When a government gains power while the people lose options:

- Exit becomes costly or illegal
- Refusal becomes symbolic
- Noncompliance becomes punishable
- Dependence becomes engineered

The populace ceases to be a counterparty and becomes an **input**.

At that point, respect is no longer rational.

Not because rulers become wicked, but because **they no longer have to ask**.

## Why Democratic Rituals Feel Hollow

When real constraint disappears, governments simulate respect:

- Elections without exit
- “Public comment” without veto
- Managed dissent
- Narrative flattery (“the will of the people”)

These are not expressions of deference.
They are signs that deference is no longer structurally required.

Consent becomes theater once refusal has no teeth.

## Taxation as a Diagnostic

Voluntary payment implies respect.
Forced extraction implies ownership.

When taxation is unavoidable, unescapable, and non-negotiable, the relationship has already shifted:

From partner → resource
From citizen → yield

The moral language may intensify, but respect is already gone.

## Governments Respect What Can Leave

States do not fear:
- atomized individuals
- captive labor
- compliant populations

They fear:
- capital flight
- skilled exit
- parallel systems
- jurisdictional arbitrage

Respect follows leverage, not legitimacy claims.

## Bitcoin Reintroduces Constraint

Bitcoin is not moral reform.
It is **structural resistance**.

It restores:
- exit without permission
- refusal without violence
- value storage without capture
- coordination without central approval

This is why it provokes hostility rather than debate.

Bitcoin doesn’t ask the state to be virtuous.
It makes the populace optional again.

## Why Deference Will Never Be Granted Voluntarily

No centralized power gives up leverage out of enlightenment.
It gives it up only when constraint reappears.

Bitcoin does not overthrow governments.
It **forces negotiation** back into a relationship that had become unilateral.

## Final Compression

Governments don’t disrespect citizens because they hate them.
They disrespect them because they don’t need them.

Respect only exists where power must still ask.

Bitcoin doesn’t demand respect.
It makes disrespect expensive.