Saturday, May 07, 2005
Barnett link and Positive Liberty link dialog about how and when governments become legitimate if at all.
My thoughts, as expressed in the comments section:
Good post.
I haven't read Barnett's book - I live in the post-scarcity world of only reading things that are free online.
My thoughts here are largely in response to Barnett's response to you - you have comments, he doesn't.
Spooner is right, but since some find him dated, let me also point to Robert Paul Wolff's "philosophical anarchism."
In that book, he argued government is an illusion, it lacks legitimacy; we are ruled, but not governed.
Government is the long con. It is men with guns and good PR, what the marxists call false consciousness.
Minor quibble for Barnett: schools are bad example of consent, given compulsory education for kids and the two milion adults involuntarily attending crime colleges.
Major quibble: In paragraph seven of his response, he says a law is legitimate if it respects your rights, even if it fails to respect the rights of others. I think this is plain error.
To have any shot at legitimacy, a law must respect the rights of all, not just a privileged class.
I'm somewhat agnostic about his claim that a government that respects rights is legitimate. At that point, it may be hard to sort out legitimacy from aquiescence.
When someone tries to rule me, do i, should i, flee, fight, or submit?
A ruler who respects my rights and the rights of others is one that I don't need to flee or fight.
Rulers respects the rights of the people out of self-interest; rights exist to protect the government from the people.
When governments lose sight of this and engage in actrocities, people fight or flee. hessian mercenaries in 1776, turks in saudi arabia in 1917,
hitler, stalin, idi amin, my local zoning department - failure to respect rights tends to lead to regime change.
Rule which is habitually rights-respecting has memetic fitness and a shot at long term sustainability. Over time people forget they merely aquiesce, and treat the rulers as having legitimacy, as though it were government.
This, wolff shows, is illusion.
arbitraryaardvark | Homepage | 05.07.05 - 1:19 pm | #
My thoughts, as expressed in the comments section:
Good post.
I haven't read Barnett's book - I live in the post-scarcity world of only reading things that are free online.
My thoughts here are largely in response to Barnett's response to you - you have comments, he doesn't.
Spooner is right, but since some find him dated, let me also point to Robert Paul Wolff's "philosophical anarchism."
In that book, he argued government is an illusion, it lacks legitimacy; we are ruled, but not governed.
Government is the long con. It is men with guns and good PR, what the marxists call false consciousness.
Minor quibble for Barnett: schools are bad example of consent, given compulsory education for kids and the two milion adults involuntarily attending crime colleges.
Major quibble: In paragraph seven of his response, he says a law is legitimate if it respects your rights, even if it fails to respect the rights of others. I think this is plain error.
To have any shot at legitimacy, a law must respect the rights of all, not just a privileged class.
I'm somewhat agnostic about his claim that a government that respects rights is legitimate. At that point, it may be hard to sort out legitimacy from aquiescence.
When someone tries to rule me, do i, should i, flee, fight, or submit?
A ruler who respects my rights and the rights of others is one that I don't need to flee or fight.
Rulers respects the rights of the people out of self-interest; rights exist to protect the government from the people.
When governments lose sight of this and engage in actrocities, people fight or flee. hessian mercenaries in 1776, turks in saudi arabia in 1917,
hitler, stalin, idi amin, my local zoning department - failure to respect rights tends to lead to regime change.
Rule which is habitually rights-respecting has memetic fitness and a shot at long term sustainability. Over time people forget they merely aquiesce, and treat the rulers as having legitimacy, as though it were government.
This, wolff shows, is illusion.
arbitraryaardvark | Homepage | 05.07.05 - 1:19 pm | #
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