Brilliant example! I agree, real world stories of the harm of the state are indeed important. Pathos is a technique of persuasion I have not mastered yet.
As for me, I think I've always felt at some level that if I chose to become savvy at that system, I'd be embracing my slavery to an extent I simply wasn't comfortable with. At that point I would be choosing to develop myself within and through that system because it is the 'safe' choice. I instead chose to pay the higher extortion rates on ignorance of that system and that pain motivated me to end my enslavement sooner rather than later. I now have detached myself from it and consent to it no longer.
So I have few stories of mishaps with the state. I have, for the most part, left it behind me now.