# 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.