Nigerian Scams and Taxation

I have recently gotten one of those "Nigerian Scam Letters" in my email. You know the ones. These scammers have a lot in common with government. The scammers offer you something (a lot of money) if you will trust them with your bank account information. A tempting offer to many people. If you give your information to them, you get your account cleaned out. If they trick you into actually traveling to Africa to meet them, you may just vanish along with your money. These people have no illusions. They know what they are doing is stealing. On the other hand, governments pretend that they are our benefactors when they steal our money through taxes. They promise to give it back through "benefits", programs, or "entitlements" that only drain our life-blood in the long run. The main difference that I see is that the scammers depend on our greed or gullibility to rob or kill their victims, while government orders our compliance through threats and much bigger guns. Go along with their scam or die. So even though we recognize taxiation for the scam it is, most Americans comply through fear of imprisonment or death.