Governments Monopoly on force Contradictory?

[Jake_Ellison]

And how is that working in real life, anyway? The US has the largest prison population in the world. Guess there's no more crime, huh?

It's working well. Crime in the US has been steadily declining for decades.

[Regi F.]

Rights are inalienable. Self defense is a right, and when it is delegated to the government it is not also alienated from the individual but remains with him.

Thank you for the comments. They are thoughtful and I mostly agree. I especially agree, of course that nothing takes away an individual's right to self defense. Just out of curiosity, when did you delegate your right of self defense to the government? I've been around here for 70 years, and no one has asked me yet if I'd like to delegate mine to the government. If they asked, I wouldn't.

[Regi F.]

Should justice be retributive or restorative? addresses that issue in depth.

Thank you for the the link to that interesting thread.

[Regi F.]

It's working well. Crime in the US has been steadily declining for decades.

Not sure where you are getting your statistics.

Mine are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

These are for violent crimes. Almost no change over last 20 years.

These are for property crimes. Up almost every year since 1960

Thanks for the comment.

Sorry, the DOJ links do not work. But you can find them yourself on the page the links go to.

Edited October 18, 2010 by Regi F.

[Brian9]

It looks like he's equating private action with governmental action. As he put it "citizens" vs "government actors".

From The Nature of Government:

"Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally

forbidden

; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally

permitted

."

-Ayn Rand

I don't understand this quote. Okay, so, the government official may do nothing except what the law permits. It is the same thing. If the law doesn't forbid it to the private individual, then logically it it is permitted to the official. I think its a matter of emphasis. I'd just simply say that the private individual pays the salary of the government employee. Individuals determine what the law should or should not allow, and individuals hold their public servants accountable for their actions in office. We are all individuals. (I'm not! )

Edited October 18, 2010 by Brian9

[ZSorenson]

The issue with Libertarianism is, again, deeper than the mere political or even ethical.

Why is Libertarianism 'right'? I couldn't exactly articulate their most common philosophies, but on the face of it this fellow's argument is rather pragmatist. If the principle is liberty for liberty's sake, then any people or group of people have to be thought of as equally free without taking into context the actual essential content of their identities.

That's the flaw here, a refusal to even identify the groups or their nature, a philosophical commitment to not identify them. I can't say why they do this, but I'd bet it is tied to their metaphysics on down [Edit - I figured it out a bit better lower down].

Nevertheless, a simple argument will refute this. Just say that the government holds a commission, granted by all people in the society, to enforce the laws. Democracy is the vehicle for establishing common consent. So the government is acting equally with others because it is fundamentally composed of others - it is the agent of all.

In other words, government is granted unanimous permission to enforce the laws achieved by vote. For a constitutional republic, restrictions are put on what the vote outcome can be, but the format is basically a social contract like a pure democracy. Those restrictions grant greater legitimacy to outcomes that some might disagree with. They pay for the right to vote and live in the system by putting up with the outcomes of that system. Thus, participation in the system does not mean that a person gives consent to never commit crimes, but rather that they give consent to the enforcement of justice. This is the difference between trying to commit a crime and escape justice, and rebellion against the system of justice to overthrow it (the two can concur, but are very different, as some criminals use the law when they decided it's to their advantage). In fact, this nuance is the justification for retributive law. The idea is that society does not consent to uphold the law, they consent to its enforcement. It is therefore dependent on the enforcer to execute the laws and punishments in order for them to be of effect. There's a reason why this nuance exists as part of the construction of the social contract, which I will mention shortly.

Now, the 'social contract' concept may or may not be Objectivist (at this point in my discussion), but it is the justification included in our actual legal philosophy of the USA.

So the only variable remaining is the question of secession. If you encounter anyone else's property, public or private, you are subject to their rules and therefore their 'social contract'. What if you don't want to live under 'their' rules, and will not ever cross over to 'their' property?

Actually, that's sort of the idea (according to non-Leftist understandings of it). Keep in mind, though, that if your property contains some justifiable claim by the part of someone else's 'social contract', they might apply their law to you. This is actually what the laws of war and diplomacy are all about. And in the international realm you do have a sort of perfection of the libertarian-anarchist world view. Different actors work out their differences according to established norms in an anarcho-libertarian framework.

But again, what if you don't like that, and want to move to Wyoming where nobody lives? Sorry, what if the USA explored, claimed, defended with their Army, and oversaw assignment of deed, or organized the future assignment of deed for those who sought it from within their system for that land? You would not have a right to it, they most certainly would.

So, the anarcho-libertarian argument fails on logical grounds for the same reasons it fails pragmatically. Pragmatically, anarchy WOULD lead to competing warlords and mafias (I know libertarians would contest this, so lets just assume it might be true for now, with evidence to believe it possibly could be). Why? Because when people are forced to adopt a new set of rules of behavior for each and every person they meet - given the lack of any standard - the laws of chaos mathematics favor the emergence of sources of order or common law. Libertarians might agree, saying that that's the point. The problem is that these sources of order will naturally emerge along lines of material resources, not people's abstract preferences. So, force and resource distribution will guide the emergence of order, not whether or not people are satisfied with these arrangements personally. More likely than not, the strong will get more.

It's a flaw of analysis, frankly, and is therefore sort of pathetic. The world began in a state of anarchy - the libertarian dream world. Our governments of today are directly evolved from that - hence the nuance - our governments are natural constructs more so than deliberate - they are evolving to be more deliberate though. You don't evolve into anarchy, you evolve out of it. But their bizarre commitment to liberty for liberty's sake as some metaphysical primary is probably the cause of this mistake.

This mistake is to treat all identities as equal, with non-identification as a necessary precondition for this treatment.

Now, as for the Objectivist view, human identity is well established. Humans exist and therefore have rights intrinsic to them. These rights are based on what actions and activities are intrinsic to humanity. Those rights are infringed only by other humans. Therefore it is right for human, sustaining the actions and activities intrinsic to them, to act against the actions, activities, and therefore actors that interefere with those actions and activities.

Libertarianism, as a primary, refuses to identify what is 'right' for human beings to do. That is the basis of Libertarianism - now that I think of it - to prevent any defintion of man's nature from being established. To preserve to man a non-identity. This way he's 'free' to 'be whatever he wants'.

Tyranny is the result of society letting man 'be whatever he wants', or basically refusing to identify man's nature. The enlightenment (and Greco-Roman, Chinese, etc. political philosophy) was all about identifying man and establishing systems to create order for him. The alternative is barbarism and warlords. They knew that, which is why they were okay with tyranny. The medieval serfs put up with kings because they brought more liberty than the marauding Goth armies. Libertarian, I guess, equate identifying man's nature with tyranny, because they look at systems of government as tyrannical. Again, a failure of analysis, anarchy is a source of much greater tyranny.

Let me say it: the Soviet Union was better than ancient Mongolia (unless you were a strong warrior, in which case you might carve a niche in some cave). The Soviet Union had industry, despite its terrible flaws and death camps. It parrotted most of its technology, but did develop some. And at least it had infrastructure for distributing and implementing that technology. Wait, would I prefer the Soviet Union to ancient Mongolia. Only the romantic individualist in me says no. The reasonable man realizes - holy crap - that yes I would. That is, of course with a direct choice. If ancient Mongolia were populated with reasonable Westerners that might establish free civilization, with a %10 chance, over the decades, I would choose ancient Mongolia.

The last question now is: how would a pure Objectivist government differ from a very limited Constitutional Republic? Actually, I think even Ayn Rand would say not by necessarily that much.

But for the hell of it, what would a pure Objectivist government look like in contrast?

Well, rights are essential to man's nature, not his specific activities. So laws would differ depending on impact. For example, someone could pollute a river if nobody fished from it. But if someone did, the polluter could have a legal requirement placed on him that would cost him economically. Therefore, there MUST be a mechanism for creating laws that is representative of the people currently under the scope of a government. Two tablet style 'objective law' won't cut it.

However, the rights of lawmaking are not retained by the people. The rights are intrinsic to humanity and Objective. This could mean that lawmaking would be arbitrative almost. You have to argue why a law is necessary to uphold your rights in order for it to be passed. A sort of due process on the law making side. WOW! Would that change our country today (think anti-trust).

Judicial systems are today objective enough. The executive is also uncontroversial beyond the taxation issue (which is non-essential to form of government).

Objectivist government would reject the 'pay to play' theory of the social contract (evolved from a state of anarchy). This is what I mentioned whereby you pay for legal protection by agreeing to honor the outcome of democracy. By rejecting this, you have serious concerns about political legitimacy. Let's say legislation is passed arbitratively, but you don't like it conceptually. In a social contract, you are inherently 'okay' with laws you disagree with, because you acknowledge that's part of the deal. In an Objectivist government, in theory, every rational person would agree with every law. Law enforcement would cover failures of self-regulation, or impact the few criminals who are alien to reason and therefore their own human nature.

Nevertheless, and again I think Ayn Rand agrees here, part of human nature is that even rational people can exist at different levels of understanding. She would say 'let reality judge'. What if reality can't judge whether similar inventions invented around the same time should be intellectually protected or not? How do you fit this into a concept of government that is nonetheless more than a pragmatic consensus? How do you accept the objective legitimacy of a government that allows for a plurality of knowledge (as opposed to opinion, which often differs basically because of the former issue)? There's a practical answer, which is a limited Constitutional Republic. But is there a solid philosophical answer?

Thinking...

Okay, the answer lies with the answer to the question: Why are humans the only ones who can infringe other humans' rights? Can't nature kill and destroy the rational efforts of men? Yes, but humans can use reason to destroy reason. They can employ a rational process to justify, say, theft. "If I let him produce, I can then come and steal from him." Man responds to nature with reason: plan for contingency, build dam, make spear to fight bear. Criminals who act as criminals fall into a state of nature, something to contend with rather than to reason with. So again, why would humans uniquely be the infringers on other humans?

Consent. Think Atlas Shrugged. Think egoistically. A thief whom you permit to come and take from you is created by you. You have refused to place the theif with the rest of nature and treat him as such. You are granting him the status of a rational being by allowing his continually theivery. He is not to be contended with, but rather, reasoned with. You beg to have less stolen next time. You plead for more merciful treatment.

So, laws enacted that you disagree with are legitimate so long as the process to create them is rational, based on rational principles, by men worthy to be considered rational. So the process and government is therefore legitimate so long as it only makes room for reason. This is why legislation must be arbitrative, because there must be rational just cause for any law that must be rationally defended before enactment.

A legislature cannot be judge and jury here, as recent history has proven. Those who decide the rationality of a law cannot also decide the standard for its rationality. Seperating the two preserves the process against human barbarism, because a dedicated step is built into the law.

Also, representation cannot be considered purely legitimate. There is enough evidence that a mass population does not have the requisite knowledge to rationally decide on each and every issue. But you have to protect against the elites who would use their position of power vis-a-vis information to pull one over on the rest of society.

Thus, the legislative process would have to include stakeholders, just like the judicial process. If your state doesn't have border problems (simply: smuggling of stolen goods), you shouldn't vote on the procedure for dealing with the issue of crime related to the smuggling unless there's a justifiable relationship between these efforts and your stolen goods. You'd have to give weight to different stakeholders depending.

This implies a compartamentalization of law, which already basically exists in any federal system. You could have a 'tribune' to represent the whole society marginally in any given case, on the assumption that the system of law is common, and so even the most marginal issue might affect everybody.

I'm just speculating now. Long story short: Objectivism requires a government monopoly on force, because the legitimacy of force is subject to reason, and reason can only be established between men by an established, rigid, transparent, universal and common process.

Your reasoning might be that self-defense might have been justified: "Grandma digging in my trash had to be blasted to hell!", but grandma might beg to differ despite her trespass. Law allows knowledge between men to be integrated by applying conceptual common denominators despite differences in total knowledge or perception. A law is an open-ended concept, that applies to many specific situations, but outside of those situations is nevertheless understood. That 'outside-ness' is what makes it common, because it applies not to men but to their objective acts. Ha, Objectivist epistemology is the only good explanation for civilization's form of law. Ayn Rand $trike$ again b$$che$!!

An Objectivist government would require these processes sufficiently insulated from human subjectivity, for the purpose of identifying which actions constitute the infringement of rational rights, followed by a process to reconcile the issue proportionate to the infringement. The form of government is constrained to strictly fulfill that purpose.

Mind you that a man does not consign himself to non-humanity through one illegal act, only that in that act he acted barbarically, and so the punishment must be proportional. Mass murder is inhuman, so the man may ethically deserve execution.

As for form of government, hell, you could have a 20 councils at each level of government. It would be practically inefficient if philosophically sound. So the trick is finding the optimal balance. I'd say a system of judges that pass up-down choices to a legislature that acts quite like a jury, while also passing enforcement authority to an actual executive.

[Brian9]

"Objectivism requires a government monopoly on force, because the legitimacy of force is subject to reason, and reason can only be established between men by an established, rigid, transparent, universal and common process."

Reason is not established between men by any political process. Men already posses the faculty of reason. One has to let them use it. That is the meaning of liberty.

But I will say that we do need objective laws. I'm just eager to admit the fact that it is individuals who freely join together who create those laws, individuals create the various ways and means by which they rule over themselves. So, saying government has a monopoly on retaliatory force is true, but only in an abstract sense. Concretely, all conflicts are conflicts between individuals. I pay someone to govern over the society I keep with other individuals. I pay someone to retaliate for me. So, the sense in which there is a monopoly on retaliatory force is abstract, complicated, and I would go so far as to say, counter-intuitive.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Brian9

[Dante]

"Objectivism requires a government monopoly on force, because the legitimacy of force is subject to reason, and reason can only be established between men by an established, rigid, transparent, universal and common process."

Reason is not established between men by any political process. Men already posses the faculty of reason. One has to let them use it. That is the meaning of liberty.

I believe that quote is referring to establishing reason as the primary means of resolving conflicts in a society. Reason exists in a state of anarchy, but it is not institutionalized as the method for resolving disputes. It is under an objective monopoly of force.

[ZSorenson]

Yes, it is necessary to use force against men who deal in force. While men have reason, different men have different levels of knowledge. Normally, reality is the arbiter, but when force is involved, it cannot be.

So, an institutional application, an establishment of reason over the use of force.

[Brian9]

I believe that quote is referring to establishing reason as the primary means of resolving conflicts in a society. Reason exists in a state of anarchy, but it is not institutionalized as the method for resolving disputes. It is under an objective monopoly of force.

Dante, would you please address something I have written in this thread? I'd like some feedback on the points I have been making. I have been trying to examine what the concept of monopoly of (retaliatory)force refers to in reality, but I'm encountering resistance.

I'd be grateful for any feedback from anyone.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Brian9

[Brian9]

Double Post

Is it not true, for instance, that I pay the wages of the public servants? That policemen have been payed by me, as well as other individuals, to retaliate in force on our behalf? That, were they to do not do their job to my satisfaction, I might cease payment, fill their offices with servants more to my liking or possibly go so far as to change my residence to find better public servants? Am I not, even in society with public institutions of order which uphold objective law, an direct agent of moral force exercised in my own self-defense, defense of my neighbor, as well as an employer of hired gunmen who will retaliate on my behalf, according to objective law? If the above is true, is it not possible to understand the difficulty in reconciling it with the proposition that it is the government which maintains an exclusive power to use of physical force? Is not the reconciliation made by admitting that it is the common citizen, who is an agent of moral force in his own defense and in his neighbors, and who, along with his neighbors, creates the public institutions of objective law and assigns to the public servants the task of retaliating on his behalf, that is the primary constituent of government? That it is the common citizen, who is the primary constituent of government, that as an individual human being that it is only metaphysically real entity? Is this not the meaning of self-governance? A government for and by the people, as opposed to one created by a noble class, a divine king, a philosopher king, or an educated elite?

“It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government." This idea that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power, is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. (October 27, 1964)” -Ronald Reagan

That is what I mean. The monopoly of (retaliatory) force has to reside with every responsible individual - every man or woman who exercises self government.

Edited October 19, 2010 by Brian9

[Jake_Ellison]

Not sure where you are getting your statistics.

Mine are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

These are for violent crimes. Almost no change over last 20 years.

These are for property crimes. Up almost every year since 1960

Thanks for the comment.

Sorry, the DOJ links do not work. But you can find them yourself on the page the links go to.

According to BoJ Statistics and the FBI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States), violent crime rates in the US peaked at 758 (/ 100.000 residents), in 1991, and have been steadily declining every year, to 454 in 2008.

Property crimes peaked in 1981, at 5.264/100.000 residents, and have since declined to 3,213 (in 2008).

Maybe you ignored population growth to get a different result, from the same source? Or you began looking at the statistics too early, before some of the policies that led to both the increase in prison population and the decrease in crime have begun to be implemented (policies like harsher sentences, "three strike" laws).

Edited October 19, 2010 by Jake_Ellison

[dreadrocksean]

There is something very wrong here. Defensive force and retaliatory force are NOT the same thing. If my neighbor comes to my home to rob me, and confronts me with a gun threatening to kill me, and I am armed and shoot the neighbor that is defensive force. If my neighbor breaks into my home and robs me while I'm not present and I subsequently discover some of my stolen good in his house and shoot him, that is retaliatory force.

Certainly an individual has a right to use force to defend himself and his property. But "retaliation" means "revenge," not "defense." If defense works, there is no need for retaliation. Where does the right to revenge come from? How does someone allocate that to the government?

You said, "the government stops people from initiating force." The fact is, it doesn't, and it only comes in to "retaliate" after someone has already used force. If the government really prevented people from using force, there would be no need to retaliate.

These are very good points. But the original question dealt with the 'right' of the government to own a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force. Here, you question the owning of that particular individual right to begin with. So the problem you voiced is the delegation of a right, not already owned, to a government. I completely understand. But in order to continue, we would have to assume that we do own the right to the retaliatory use of force and save that debate for later purely for the sake of clarity of this discussion.

A government monopoly on the retaliatory use of force really implies its right to initiate force on any individual who attempts to compete with them. In other words, anyone in the business of protecting individual rights by way of objective legal services and retaliatory force contained under the laws enforced by its legal services. This is where I find the contradiction.

The common Objectivist argument against competing governments is the example of the selective recognition of the authority of the 'red' police and 'blue' police. But it does nothing to alleviate the above contradiction and I have been at odds with the Objectivist community simply because of their inability to provide rational proof against my assertion to the right to compete.

However, a much less common argument has completely stumped me. Though my original contradiction still exists, I simultaneously recognize this new argument's clear rational proof against competition. Hence, I have not yet converted to Anarchism. Following is the argument:

Governmental competition (an oxymoron really) is the subjecting of individual rights protection services to the Free Market. But a Free Market does not exist until individual rights are protected and thus creates a circular argument, must be declared a contradiction and thus be recognized as false.

But my argument still stands. Should a 'lesser' person, also qualified in such legal matters, be attacked as a criminal merely because he's honestly trying to make a living by supplying a clear human need? Who has that mysterious superior right to be the final arbiter necessary to objective law? And who chooses him? The only answer would be the majority. And I am sure that none of us would agree to the morality of might.

And so, I am stuck. Is the most moral solution to a rational animal the one with the least contradictions in the end? In our case, that particular ONE? As opposed to the MANY that plague other philosophies?