Legislation is the scheme of regularized loot

When they took up criminality, they invented justice and enacted whole codes of law to preserve it, while for the maintenance of the codes they set up guillotine.
--- Fedor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculuous Man, 1877.

And the real motives and spirit which lie at the foundation of all legislation - notwithstanding all the pretences and disguises by which they attempt to hide themselves - are the same today as they always have been. The whole purpose of this legislation is simply to keep one class of men in subordination and servitude to another.
--- Lysander Spooner, Natural Law, 1882.

When the marines had the situation “well in hand”—signifying that the natives had resigned themselves to their fate—the higher-ups instituted the reliable double-barreled scheme of regularized loot;

first, they levied a tax on production;

next, they fixed up titles to land necessary for production and charged the workers rent for the use of it.

Eventually the taxes and the titles were recorded in leather-bound volumes, which, having been blessed with resounding words by solemn professors, achieved reverential status. Black-robed gentlemen infused “justice” into the adjustment and traditional acquiescence dubbed it “law and order.”

--- Frank Chodorov, A Byzantine Empire of the West?, 1947.