State abuse of power harms everyone’s freedom more than private abuse does

Evidence

By virtue of its treatment of the dangerous and the vulnerable, the government establishes itself—or the majority establishes itself—as a collective agent which has the capacity to interfere arbitrarily in the affairs of any individual. It establishes itself as a dominating presence which dramatically reduces the freedom as non-domination of everyone in the society. The public abuse of imperium implicit in such an initiative does far more damage to the case of non-domination than the private abuse of dominium that it is designed to reduce. There is little prospect that the positive differences made by the measures of selective internment and underprotection will be enough to compensate for the loss to non-domination on the other side. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 536

Categorization

• SHARE: For a republican government/PPE theorist: the public-abuse-of-imperium-outweighs-private-abuse-of-dominium result is a clean, counterintuitive mechanism worth passing along.
• XREF: connects to: Systemic legal oppression can be harder to bear than arbitrary personal tyranny — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1140

Broader Connections

• Systemic legal oppression can be harder to bear than arbitrary personal tyranny #corroborates (0.85) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1140