An invoice to be paid
A proposed law
You receive a bill. You pass a bill. In both cases, something is being demanded of you — money in one reading, compliance in the other.
Both meanings involve obligation and power arranged vertically. Someone at the top issues a bill. Someone at the bottom receives it and is expected to pay or obey. The word quietly equates financial extraction with legislative control — two of history’s favorite tools for maintaining hierarchy — and makes them sound like the same ordinary transaction.
The bill arrives. It does not ask. It informs you of what you owe. Whether this is printed on restaurant stationery or published in the federal register, the grammatical structure is identical: you are the object of the sentence. The bill is the subject. The relationship is not negotiable.
Somewhere a man named Bill is deeply confused about why his name is also a verb meaning to charge someone money. He should not be confused. He should read more history.
“Two favorite tools of maintaining hierarchy, compressed into four letters.”