Spot The Difference

[NARCISSUS]

Here is a little riddile, or game of intelligence and awareness for everyone it's called can you spot the diffrence.

An average citizen let's call him Joe walks into a shop and demands that the owner pays him a certain amount of money each week to protect his buisness from local "thugs" and Joe tells the owner if he doesnt pay he would make his(the owner's) life difficult threatening him with violence both to the owner's person and the shop, so the owner pays out the money. A group of beaurocrats tells the citizens as a whole in order to protect their wellbeing and such they must pay out a certain amount of money to them each week and if they dont these beaurocrats threaten the citizens with a particular form of punishment, so the citizens pay out that amount to those beaurocrats.

Now, can you spot the diffrence within those two scenarios?

[Jonathon W]

i don't like riddles.

[NARCISSUS]

Did you think about it tho?

[SugaCubez 352]

Lol... that's a good one. Ok, if I were a mundane and I answered you like this --->

Well that's easy, the thug is a criminal and as a citizen I would like to know that I and my family are safe from such people. Criminals like this hypothetical thug don't have the right to take what belongs to me, such as my money, if I were the person who got robbed. I have a right to be safe.

The beaurocrats are politicians and they help run the state, and even tho they may demand me to pay my taxes, that tax money goes to pay the police to keep thugs off the street which makes me safe in turn, so, it's worth the money. And besides, without tax money, there would be no freeways, so how would I get to work to feed my family?

<--- How would you respond :)~ ? Is my method of reasoning faulty?

[Mister_Six]

It's funny you say this, so let me illustrate a point.

In Arizona, the crime rate was soooo bad that they passed a law saying anyone could and should carry a side arm. So we had every day citizens toting pistols, and going about their business. Lo and Behold, the un-evolved scum that was infesting Arizona no longer saw their fellow americans as "marks", because it all came down to the quickest shot in the west. A business man carrying a glock is not someone to be taken lightly, and the criminals suffered from it. Then crime drastically reduced. Go figure right? I have news for criminals, you expect to rob anyone of my friends when they're in the house, you can expect a bullet between the eyes.

And honestly I don't have much faith in politics either. This will all crumble when people get desperate enough.

[Wickedpa]

I don't see a whole lot of difference as I consider most politicians Crooks anyway.

[NARCISSUS]

Why would it have to be a law that's passed for everyday citizens to carry firearms inorder to protect themselves, they had to have permission to ensure their personal safety? That's stupid, if I feel my life/wellbeing is threatened everytime I walk out the door I'm not going to wait till some law gives me permission to protect myself. Daddy I gotta go potty. Just like a baby that needs their hands held being led around and coddled is the same as your average everyday citizen.

Yea, but you didnt give an answer. sthilly goosthe. lol

[NARCISSUS]

It depends on who's doing the reasoning. If it were a mundane that reasoning wouldnt be faulty. What you said is the diffrence a mundane would definetly see, but sadly it's not it. I'll give the answer to this down the very bottom.

[NARCISSUS]

Well, wickedpa, you've gotten part of the answer, but the one I was trying to see if people got was 1.Those scenarios both portray extortion and 2. Just as the "law" would concider what joe had done in the first scenario as a terroistic threat as the threat of violence to the owner and his shop caused terror, or freight within the owner, so too does the threat of punitive punishment cause terror, or freight in the average citizens.
Out of terror do the shop owner and the citizens give up their earnings to the respective threateners. The diffrence is there is none. The point is the things that those who societies call "criminals"do are commited by the very ones who pass the "laws", but those societal leaders tell the mundanes there's a diffrence when in reality it's the same thing. They reavel their acts as criminal by their very own set standards and passing/creating 'laws'.

[Aye Maung]

Yes. The difference is called social contract. =P

[NARCISSUS]

You know. Right.