Much as we may dislike the state when it regulates us, taxes us, conscripts us into its service,and impinges on our lives in many other ways, we could not live well without it.
The real choice is not whether to have political authority or not, but what kind of authority to have, and what its limits should be.
These are the subjects of the following chapters. But we have not yet quite finished with authority itself.
There is still one crucial question that needs to be answered: why should I obey it, when it tells me to do things that I dislike or disapprove of? Political philosophers call this 'the problem of political obligation'.