Such legacies continue to this day with our modern governments. Though they may not openly murder people for opposing them, our governments pass laws to boost their own popularity after raising taxes for their own purposes. These purpose are many, usually to add to government services, but not always. Governments often embezzle this money, or use it to fund their own elections. Sometimes they even go as far as to sponsor brutal dictatorships and guerrilla armies around the world. The United States does this often. It did this in Afghanistan in the late 1970's and early 1980's by helping train armies and building the very cave complexes which Al Quiada uses to hide in today. Also they did so in the middle east by sponsoring terrorist armies to fight their wars, then abandoning them after their purposes were served.
How is it that laws created by such governments ever benefit the people which they are supposed to serve? The laws which they create become instruments in their hands to be used to chain the people down and attain further power. Take for example the Catholic church. In the middle ages, it was the ultimate form of government because they preached to people that they should forget about the physical world and worry about their eternal souls. Eternity is obviously a lot longer than the measly forty years or so which we live here on earth, so the people decided to follow the Catholics and adhere to their ways in hope of attaining the splendor of heaven. The Catholic church realized that it had a massive amount of power over the people and decided to use that power to attain further control. They did so in three main ways. Firstly they realized that the Feudalistic Pyramid was a powerful tool to keep the few elite on top while the majority of the people was kept trapped in their own ignorance at the bottom. The Catholics decided to support this social structure by creating a set of laws which were named "The Seven Deadly Sins".
