h ttp://www.libertylounge.net/forums/37709-how-government-authority-legitimate-11.html
"In a thief situation, you haven't chosen to participate in the encounter. The thief makes that decision entirely on his own. By contrast, again, you have chosen to participate in the representative government by retaining citizenship, buying property, etc, while being well aware of the laws."
For background on it, he is in essence arguing that since you do not move, you consent to being governed. I compared that to a thief telling you that he was going to rob you, and that since you do not move, when he does, the theft is legitimate, using his logic.
At most, 5% of the population would need to stop complying to bring down the government.
It's a tricky argument. I recommend Lysander Spooner's "No Treason".
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
You could also use his own argument to say that, in a thief situation you could also make the decision not to give him your money (or whatever his trying to steal from you), but it is in your best interest to give him what he wants just like it is in your best interest to buy property from the state.But both decision are made under the threat of coercion.
Mises said in Human Action (p.197 Scholar's Ed.):
The power that calls into life and animates any social body is alwaysideological might, and the fact that makes an individual a memberof any social compound is always his own conduct. This is noless valid with regard to a hegemonic societal bond. It is true, peopleare as a rule born into the most important hegemonic bonds, intothe family and into the state, and this was also the case with thehegemonic bonds of older days, slavery and serfdom, which disappearedin the realm of Western civilization. But no physical violenceand compulsion can possibly force a man against his wiII to remainin the status of the ward of a hegemonic order. What violence or thethreat of violcnce brings about is a state of affairs in which subjectionas a rule is considered more desirable than rebelIion. Faced with thechoice between the consequences of obedience and of disobedience,the ward prefers the former and thus integrates himself into thehegemonic bond. Every new command places this choice before himagain. In yielding again and again he himself contributes his share tothe continuous existence of the hegemonic societal body. Even as award in such a system he is an acting human being, i.e., a being notsimply yielding to blind impulses, but using his reason in choosing betweenalternatives.
It's also comparable to a black in the southern US way back when consenting to be lynched and/or treated like a second class citizen due to Jim Crow.
Or a jew consenting to be gassed in a concentration camp because the jew didn't leave Germany or any other Nazi-occupied area sooner.
So this guy should also conclude that there is no such thing as voluntary or involuntary contract. Since technically any contract a man enters can freely be terminated. Even under the most often immoral and draconian contracts, slavery, can be called voluntary...since a slave is 'free to leave' this contract. The slave can always kill himself, an even better alternative to running away
do we get free cheezeburger in socielism?
As Roderick Long wrote:
Now, one objection that’s sometimes raised isn’t so much an objection to anarchism as an objection to the moral argument for anarchism: well, look, it’s not really a coercive monopoly. It’s not as though people haven’t consented to this because there’s a certain sense in which people have consented to the existing system – by living within the borders of a particular territory, by accepting the benefits the government offers, and so forth, they have, in effect, consented. Just as if you walk into a restaurant and sit down and say, "I’ll have a steak," you don’t have to explicitly mention that you are agreeing to pay for it; it’s just sort of understood. By sitting down in the restaurant and asking for the steak, you are agreeing to pay for it. Likewise, the argument goes, if you sit down in the territory of this given state, and you accept benefits of police protection or something, then you’ve implicitly agreed to abide by its requirements. Now, notice that even if this argument works, it doesn’t settle the pragmatic question of whether this is the best working system.
But I think there is something dubious about this argument. It’s certainly true that if I go onto someone else’s property, then it seems like there’s an expectation that as long as I’m on their property I have to do as they say. I have to follow their rules. If I don’t want to follow their rules, then I’ve got to leave. So, I invite you over to my house, and when you come in I say, "You have to wear the funny hat." And you say, "What’s this?" And I say, "Well, that’s the way it works in my house. Everyone has to wear the funny hat. Those are my rules." Well, you can’t say, "I won’t wear the hat but I’m staying anyway." These are my rules – they may be dumb rules, but I can do it.
Now suppose that you’re at home having dinner, and I’m your next-door-neighbor, and I come and knock on your door. You open the door, and I come in and I say, "You have to wear the funny hat." And you say, "Why is this?" And I say, "Well, you moved in next door to me, didn’t you? By doing that, you sort of agreed." And you say, "Well, wait a second! When did I agree to this?"
I think that the person who makes this argument is already assuming that the government has some legitimate jurisdiction over this territory. And then they say, well, now, anyone who is in the territory is therefore agreeing to the prevailing rules. But they’re assuming the very thing they’re trying to prove – namely that this jurisdiction over the territory is legitimate. If it’s not, then the government is just one more group of people living in this broad general geographical territory. But I’ve got my property, and exactly what their arrangements are I don’t know, but here I am in my property and they don’t own it – at least they haven’t given me any argument that they do – and so, the fact that I am living in "this country" means I am living in a certain geographical region that they have certain pretensions over – but the question is whether those pretensions are legitimate. You can’t assume it as a means to proving it.
LibertarianAnarchy.com - Government is immoral, unnecessary, and doesn't work!
Where would you even go? All government is bad government, and so far as i know, everywhere on earth has government.
Spideynw: h ttp://www.libertylounge.net/forums/37709-how-government-authority-legitimate-11.html "In a thief situation, you haven't chosen to participate in the encounter. The thief makes that decision entirely on his own. By contrast, again, you have chosen to participate in the representative government by retaining citizenship, buying property, etc, while being well aware of the laws." For background on it, he is in essence arguing that since you do not move, you consent to being governed. I compared that to a thief telling you that he was going to rob you, and that since you do not move, when he does, the theft is legitimate, using his logic.
If the country was run the way it was set up to run, this would be a valid point, since you could move from state to state within the United States. As it is currently set up, moving to a different country is almost completely out of the question. Just because the current government decided to take away our right to freedoms does not mean we should hate our country, because to a lot of us this is the greatest country ever and our families have made many great sacrifices for it. Staying in America is not a reasonable "choice" for many people since there generally is no where for us to move that is even possible.
If each state had the powers afforded them and chose what the laws were, there would be a great disparity among states. If then, you wanted to have different rules to follow, it would be incredibly easy for you to move to whichever state embodied them.
Jonathan:Just because the current government decided to take away our right to freedoms does not mean we should hate our country, because to a lot of us this is the greatest country ever and our families have made many great sacrifices for it.
It's a myth that it is only the current government my friend. All governments everywhere are looking to grow and reduce liberty. It is the way of government and the only way they reform is collapse or revolution.
liberty student: Jonathan:Just because the current government decided to take away our right to freedoms does not mean we should hate our country, because to a lot of us this is the greatest country ever and our families have made many great sacrifices for it. It's a myth that it is only the current government my friend. All governments everywhere are looking to grow and reduce liberty. It is the way of government and the only way they reform is collapse or revolution.
Reading my comment would enlighten you to the fact that I was trying to say that in spite of our current situation many of us still love our country dearly.
Jonathan:Reading my comment would enlighten you to the fact that I was trying to say that in spite of our current situation many of us still love our country dearly.
Yeah, I ignored that part. I didn't feel like criticizing your feelings. It wasn't going to lead anywhere positive.
The argument that you have chosen to be under the state's authority because you're not leaving the national territory, and what-not, is at the basis of the idea of social contract defended by theoricians not willing to bite the bullet, that states are irreconciliable with classical liberal premisses. They thereby assume your consent, and hence the legitimity of the powers that be. Now, from an analytical perspective, this theory is deeply fraud because tacit or hypothetical contract is no contract at all, as the defining feature of contract is actual expressed consent.
liberty student: Jonathan:Reading my comment would enlighten you to the fact that I was trying to say that in spite of our current situation many of us still love our country dearly. Yeah, I ignored that part. I didn't feel like criticizing your feelings. It wasn't going to lead anywhere positive.
Unbelievable, why dont you leave?
Jonathan: Unbelievable, why dont you leave?
Leave what?
Yeah, I know it is the "social contract" argument. However, they do not really believe it is a "social contract", because they say that if you leave you are no longer bound to the "contract". If it really were a "social contract", then moving would not invalidate it. Given their premise of a "social contract", if you move, you should still be subject to the previous rulers as well as the new ones.
Sure, if you had actually signed such a contract, leaving wouldn't invalidate it unless the said contract foresaw this type of exit clause... But the issue here is that you never were asked to sign anything in the first place; hence, there is no effective contract binding you and the point of your leaving the country (or not) becomes completely irrelevant.
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