the later inherently implies using violence to suppress people
All laws that you want to be strictly enforced, requires violence. This is why people should ALWAYS remember when making laws: "Is this worth killing for?"
I remember some years ago on HN people discussing about a guy that got killed because he bought a single fake cigarrete. IT goes like this:
You make a law where "x" is forbidden, penalty is a simple fine. Person refuses to pay fine. So you summon that person to court, make threats of bigger fine. Person ends with bigger fine, refuses to pay anything. So you summon that person again, say they will go to jail if they don't pay. They again don't pay, AND flee the police that went to get them. So the cops are in pursuit of the guy, he is a good distance away from the cops for example, then they have the following choice: Let him go, and he won, and broke the law successfully... Or shoot him, the law won, and he is dead.
This chain ALWAYS applies, because otherwise laws are useless. You can't enforce laws without the threat of killing people if they refuse all other punishments.
I don't know if the guy you were discussing with is right or not, if digital era result in the need of "ruling with the iron fist", but make no mistake, there is no "strict law enforcement" that doesn't involve killing people in the end.
Thus you always need to think when making laws: "Is this law worth making someone die because of it?"
Your whole post falls apart right there.
Person 'x' refuses to pay a fine - OK, well there are mechanisms where a fine can be automatically applied in some cases, or taken from their assets by court order, or docked from pay. In some places bailiffs/repo men can be called to take assets after fines have been delinquent for long enough.
Deadly force is not really the backstop position to a fine, even a 'strictly enforced' one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_force_continuum
In countries where we don't have trigger-happy cops, the story continues this way:
* The person commits a crime or tort. Your courts fine the person.
* The person doesn't pay the fine. You extract the fine forcibly from their bank account (or force their employer to dock their wages, or forcibly obtain and auction their assets; let's go with the bank example)
* Why does the bank comply? Because you can revoke the bank's right to trade.
* Why doesn't the bank just trade anyway? Because if they do that, you can enter their buildings and take their equipment, arrest their employees, etc.
* What if the bank tries to stop you doing that? Then you send in armed police.
* What if the bank shoots back? Then you send in the army, and at worst case encircle the bank and lay siege to it.
* What if the bank has their own army which they use to break your siege? Send in your bigger army. Also have laws against private armies, and spend your time detecting private armies and breaking them up before they get bigger than the state's army.
Most people comply with the state at the earlier steps in this chain, and the state runs all the smoother for it. But you can see in failed states, one of the main reasons for the failure is some group (or groups) inside the state have managed to develop a bigger army than the state itself, or parts of the official army break away from the current government or attempt a coup. At that point, it's not the current government's country any more, it's up for grabs. The government (and the entire system of law it represents) has lost the monopoly on violence.
The point of the GP's post is that all laws are ultimately backed by violence. Most rational actors don't let law enforcement reach the explicitly violent part, but it's still there.
To bring it on topic, what this highlights is it is much better to fight against bad laws while they are just proposals, it is much harder to fight against bad laws once enacted.
Or just cut off their power (or network access, or whatever)?
I know "monopoly on violence" is the term in the literature, but I think it's more like monopoly on coercion than monopoly on violence per se. The latter is one way to implement the former, but not the only way.
To give a hypothetical larger-scale example, if the population relies on a dam for water/power, then an implicit threat to destroy the dam could coerce them without any violence.
Both the state or a private entity seem like they could do the dam example.
If you you don't pay your drug dealer, he can't take you to court, because his entire business is illegal. So instead he beats you up to get you to comply with his payment demands. If a policeman catches him doing that, the policeman can legally arrest him for the crime of assault, and can legally use force to stop him beating you up.
I was saying that the government can and does coerce people to do a lot of things without violence. For many laws, just cutting off access to essential goods or services forces compliance without ant violence whatsoever - even if you never comply with anything. Heck, even mere arrest and jail time isn't violent - they can occur pretty darn peacefully.
Of course if you become violent at any stage then that's what you get in response, and the government has a monopoly on doing that legally, but that's not a response to your noncompliance - it's a response to your own violence, which is separate and has nothing to do with the initial law you were actually breaking.
That's still underpinned by violence. Why would the providers of essential goods or services willingly comply with a state's demands to cut off your access? Perhaps they think you're a good guy and the state has the wrong idea. Let's say they refuse the state's demand.
The answer is the state in turn threatens these providers with whatever it needs to to force their compliance. And it threatens any fourth, fifth, sixth etc. parties it needs to. It threatens them with loss of legal status, loss of revenue, loss of property, loss of freedom. And it ultimately has to use violence to uphold these threats, should everyone it asks to carry out these actions refuse.
It all traces back to state violence, it's just convenient for both the state and subject if the state doesn't have to escalate that far. But it always can. If it cannot - if the subject can successfully defend themselves against a state-backed enforcement of its laws - that's a sign of a failed state.
Because their licenses might be revoked and that would affect how others treat them, both domestically and internationally? Because they have respect for the rule of law and want to live in a country where laws are respected? Because they realize they're playing infinite games rather than one-shot games, and that it might actually be better business to comply? I could cite a million reasons, but seriously: not every single compliance is due to indirect threat of violence. We actually have laws with penalties that simply do not escalate that far, and the vast majority of people still comply with them simply because they're the law, and a lot of people have respect for that. Hell, even violence is not enough to prevent the entire population from turning against you, even in the world's most powerful countries. The idea that every single law is ultimately backed by violence or that that's somehow necessary is just silly. Humans are more complex than that.