Consent of the Governed & the Legitimacy of Government

[lgarvey]

This argument is painfully flawed, unless you are talking an idealistic government. Your ideas are not compatible with American or British governments, for instance.

On all levels you see rampant corruption in governments. Indeed, a number of British MPs are recently been imprisoned for expense fraud, and that's a relative misdemeanor compared to some of the atrocities that are initiated by governments.

Are we all irrational that without government we'd descend into chaos?

[Vinifera7]

I doubt people have such an intimate relationship with the government as a couple would. I don't think that analogy applies in this case.

[PaulMcKeever]

I wasn't using the example of a romantically interested couple. Rather, of two individuals.

[Rothgar12]

If that third person was a government then he would have shot both people and seized the island.

[kylben]

My consent is not required for you to defend my rights, nor to defend your rights or the rights of others against me. My consent is absolutely required for you to receive payment from me for either having done so, or promising to do so in the future.

[PaulMcKeever]

see watch?v=R2zNn6p2r68 for my response.

[kylben]

If not, you can't really argue against anarcho-capitalism. It is true that some kind of governance is rationally required, along with the division of labor that makes things work efficiently. It's not true to say that *who* is part of that government, or even what form it takes, is not subject to your consent. Food also preserves a condition necessary to live rationally, does that imply that anyone can claim the right to be my food supplier?

[PaulMcKeever]

That's what I say starting at about the midpoint of the video: governance itself does not require the consent of the governed to be legitimate, but consent is required to select the people who will perform governmental roles.

[kylben]

I'll watch the next video soon. But you can't equate voting with consent. I don't consent to one single person among those currently "governing" me - even aside from taxation. Consent cannot be collective. In terms of who I will pay to defend me, consent means I get to pick who to delegate my right of defense to (from among *all* of those willing), and that my choice is the sole determinant.

[PaulMcKeever]

It's fair to debate whether the process of selecting legislators does or should involve consent. The reason I spoke of the selection of legislators at all was merely to say: the legitimacy of government does not hinge on the selection of legislators and, if that even if selection involves "consent" of some sort, it does NOT involve "consent to government".

[kylben]

OK, fair enough. I don't think that voting is any kind of consent (see Spooner). I agree that consent is not required to be governed in the abstract, but as soon as it is concretized into *which* government, consent is required. No one will altruistically protect my rights without compensation, and so to assure my rights are protected, I must choose someone to do so.

[PaulMcKeever]

Well, someone must do the job and be paid, that is certain. However, it is not enough that they do the job: they need also to do it dispassionately, absent any conflict of interest. Enter, the problem of he who pays the piper calls the tune...and the answer that pooling payments eliminates that problem.

[kylben]

So it's a consequentialist argument? I thought the moral was the practical, not the other way around.

The thing that strikes me is the distrust of rational agents A and B to defend themselves properly, in voluntary exchange with others, and including protecting themselves against each other's potential overreaching, along with the trust for agent C to remain rational when given monopoly power to decide how much of A's and B's resources he can take in order to protect them.

[kylben]

You're right about one thing: it's philosophy that matters. No system will bring rational governance to irrational people. But in a society of rational people, more of your objections to market governments go away than do my objections to monopoly governments. Power corrupts even rational people, and the best check on power is not to concentrate it.

[kylben]

Your island examples are fine, as far as they go. But try a third scenario: there are three people on the island. The first two don't point their guns at each other. The third person demands "Give me 1 of every 4 coconuts you pick, and I'll make sure neither of you shoot each other." Does that require your consent? If you decline to consent, does the third guy have the right to force it on you anyway?

[PaulMcKeever]

You are addressing the issue of taxation, which I deal with separately in this video:

watch?v=R2zNn6p2r68

[XOmniverse]

I approved this response, I'll watch and comment later this evening.