"Consent of the governed" and "Sanction of the victim"

Comparing the concepts of "Consent of the governed" and "Sanction of the victim" and explaining why the former is logically inconsistent.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• consent
• governed
• sanction
• victim
• ayn
• rand
• objectivism
• market
• anarchism
• anarchy
• declaration
• independence

[leongash]

Derivitingo

[dbmcmillan]

It's just that people who do follow it, follow it because they want their lives protected. Therefore, they consent. Those who assert some latent authority over others do not care about the harmony that is naturally formed so they break their obligations to it. That does not mean they don't consent. It means they don't care about their consent and their life enough to live together with others beyond a primal state of nature. 'Consent' to certain principles is an empirical observation.

[dbmcmillan]

Laws can be just when they, because of reason, attract the universal consent of the governed. We can have a state of chaos where everyone fights against everyone, but the first step out of it is for each individual to recognize that his own sovereignty ends with himself. It is a natural harmony that takes place between free people, a state that is destroyed when one individual breaks his obligation to it. In that sense we consent. Not that we have to follow it.

[XOmniverse]

The laws of physics do not demand consent to anything. That's the very kind of deontological thinking that Rand rejected.

I agree with the idea that initiation of force is bad for very logical reasons, but thats not the same as claiming that initiating force is somehow violating a physical law.

I also reject the idea that a monopoly is necessary in order to prevent the initiation of force.

[dbmcmillan]

If you can prove that reason demands consent to certain laws they are fundamental facts. Murder for example. As long as you want your life protected, you have to consent not to murder others. If you kill or try to kill someone, you really forfeit your own life because that person, in their freedom, can defend themselves. Those who don't consent, because they don't mind to die, wouldn't under any circumstance, so their consent doesn't matter at all. Very simplified example though.

[XOmniverse]

I don't identify as an Objectivist anymore.

I don't consent to natural laws so much as they are there and cannot be disobeyed at all. Ideas about how social systems should be organized are not themselves fundamental physical laws even if some theories are grounded in facts.

[dbmcmillan]

It's interesting that you're an objectivist and you don't believe there can be consent of the governed. By being alive you consent to natural laws that exist in the universe because you have no choice - whether you like it or not you are governed by the law of gravity, for instance. Principles of government can be derived through objective reason. The fact that some people disagree, out of stubbornness, to principles that are objective and undeniable, is totally irrelevant.

[dv8xtc]

you could withold your vote and go find a farmer willing to trade.

if the killers don't allow this do not corrupt the meaning of trade to deal with exceedingly problematic circumstances.

...otherwise you go from being a victim to a participant engaging in rationalized self delusion. [which makes you worse than the killers]

...kinda the world we are in, huh?

[dv8xtc]

if the only place you can get your food is from killers then it is not a trade. killers do not produce food.

your vote is a sanction making the killers your only source of food.

[XOmniverse]

A version of #3 is my goal. Though it will be out in the open; get a sizable percentage of the population to abandon the state altogether and just start living anarchistically.