Article from Reason by J.D. Tuccille.

Do you have permit for that? If you want to keep that permit, you’d better do as you’re told.

Increasingly, that’s the theme of modern America. More and more of what we do is dependent on permission from the government. That permission, unsurprisingly, is contingent on keeping government officials happy. Rub those officials the wrong way and they’ll strip you of permission to travel the roads, leave the country, or even make a living.

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Passport revocation isn’t contingent on criminal conviction, or suspicion of flight. Your travel documents can be yanked just for the outstanding debt—even if you’re already outside the country.

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Not that the right to travel within the borders remains free of government demands. If you take a look at the website for your state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, chances are you’ll find language similar to: “Once the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) is notified by the Attorney General of Texas, or a Texas Court ordering a revocation, DPS will revoke a Texas resident’s driving privilege for failure to pay child support.”

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By xlibber (Another Airplane!) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons