War, taxation, and ultimately government itself will eventually go the same way as slavery and human sacrifice

Would you have condemned the violent practices of the past?

If we had been alive in times past, we say, we would have condemned human sacrifice, the torturing of criminal suspects, the slaying of religious heretics, and so on. How - we ask in disbelief - could anyone have endorsed these practices? This attitude of superiority blinds us to the real complexity of the evolution that operates against force-based institutions. When a coercive practice is ascendant, it is not condemned. To the contrary, it is seen as essential for the health of civilization. It is endorsed by the best citizens, and its critics, if it has any, tend to be society's deviants and outsiders.

The quote is from the book A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem by James L. Payne which was published some seven years earlier than Steven Pinker’s impressive treatise The Better Angels of our Nature. Both books demonstrate that there is a broad historical trend against physical force. Pinker quotes and refers to Payne's book on numerous occasions and rightly calls A History of Force an insightful book.

Payne discusses human sacrifice, genocide, war, revolution, criminal punishment, terrorism, street violence, slavery, and more. All of these forms of violence have declined and some have even disappeared altogether. He makes the following general comments concerning those uses of force that have been abandoned:

At first, people believed that life couldn't go on without these violent practices, that civilization would "collapse" if they were set aside. Yet history did set them aside - and life went on, indeed somewhat better than before because human beings have the ingenuity to devise noncoercive approaches.

In their heyday, [these uses of force] are thought to be inevitable, something no one can do anything about. Nevertheless, generations later, they have disappeared. It is likely that the same pattern still applies, and that uses of force that today seem ingrained and even essential are also destined to disappear.

Which practices of today will be condemned tomorrow?

Payne believes that war and taxation will eventually go the same way as slavery and human sacrifice.

[T]axation gives a fair picture of how a force-based practice looks in its heyday. On the one hand, the practice provokes a great deal of dissatisfaction and a pervasive feeling that something is wrong and needs to be fixed. But, on the other hand, there is a virtually universal belief that the practice is inevitable and necessary.

The author traces taxation to its historical origin and notes that it is almost as old as war and closely bound up with war. He comments that it is paradoxical that a practice with such a disreputable background has become the foundation of the modern welfare state: "It is rather like finding a day care center set up in a medieval torture chamber". Payne claims to detect a growing tension between taxation and our sensitive modern values. He thinks that the ancient technology of extracting funds through force and the threat of force fits increasingly badly with modern ethical, cultural, and political values.

In another book of his, Payne invites the reader to ask friends and neighbours if government is based on force. Many people will flatly say "No", others will exhibit evasion, confusion, or even embarrassment, and yet others will say that government's use of force - armies, police, prisons, etc. - is not "really" force. "They see some special character about government that transmutes its violence into something else, something nicer that they can approve of." Payne illustrates this phenomenon with his friend Nancy. When he asked her "Is government based on force?" she replied "Well, it shouldn't be" and added "I suppose that's dodging the question". Payne's analysis:

She knows in one corner of her mind that government is based on force, which she deplores. Yet she looks to government to fix society's problems. She feels that Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, public education, and so on, are desirable programs. Hence, she is conflicted. She doesn't want to disparage the big government she likes by recognizing its distasteful foundation in brute physical force.

Nancy and many with her may be suffering from cognitive dissonance.

Is the future voluntary?

Payne points out that force isn't the only way to get people to do things and that force-based methods are very often counterproductive. He concludes that the evolution away from force and towards voluntary alternatives is slow and uneven, but that those who associate themselves with voluntary efforts are on a "more secure path to progress".