Consent of the Governed & the Legitimacy of Government

Paul McKeever denies that the legitimacy of government depends upon the governed consenting to being governed. Consent, McKeever argues, is needed to determine who is authorized to fulfil the role of government, but not to justify government itself.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• consent
• governed
• anarchist
• ayn
• rand
• sanction
• victim

[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.

[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?

[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]

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.

[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]

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]

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]

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]

see watch?v=R2zNn6p2r68 for my response.