the.com/state power
the only violence with a permit — and a return address.
means the authority a government holds to make and enforce rules, backed by force it alone gets to use legally.
from traced to max weber's definition of the state as the entity claiming a monopoly on legitimate physical force within a territory — everyone else using force is a criminal, the state doing it is policy.
weber's linemonopoly on legitimate violence, coined 1919
scales upfrom parking tickets to nuclear arsenals
needs legitimacywithout consent, it is just force
self-limiting rarepower rarely restrains itself voluntarily