Brute Force

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul
In black and white
They really, really ought to know
--Tears for Fears

It is often assumed that liberty and democracy are strongly linked. However, this linkage breaks down if a democratically elected government fails to uphold property rights. Consider, for example, the situation where a democracy votes to collect taxes from the citizenry. If the issue becomes law, then tax collection is the legalized, coercive appropriation of property. Tax collection is clearly a restriction of liberty as it reduces an individual's capacity to live freely.

Such legalized robbery is exacerbated due to the phenomenon of unequal distribution of wealth. Since Pareto's observation hundreds of years ago, we know that a large portion of society's wealth rests with a subset of the population.

It should come as no surprise that democratic votes on issues designed to redistribute wealth away from rich minorities towards poor majorities (or other influential special interest groups) tend to carry the day.

Once democratic governments operate to redistribute, rather than to protect, individuals' property, then it is easy to see how democratic states can morph into nothing more than greedy mobs having their way over individuals who are incapable of defending themselves.