A Free Country

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I've been speaking with my roommates about government financing in LFC system and he mainly argued that it is impossible to finance a government with donations (which I called voluntary taxes), govt. lottery and fees for protecting the contracts.

When I mentioned that the proper government consists of the army, the police and the courts, he laughed and said that such a system wouldn't work because there are two problems with it:

1. There is nobody to control the army, its generals, soldiers, etc. Same problem is with police and the courts: he claimed somebody has to control and replace sargeants as necessary. Also, there would be no way of finding and replacing corrupt people in the government.

2. He said that nobody would recognize such a country because it doesn't have an institution which defines this country's borders.

I argued the following:

1. The army, police and the courts can have autocontrol, i.e. they can control themselves (people in the army can give ranks to other people in the army, and similar for the courts and the police). Moreover, should there be any irregularities, they should be settled at court, or at a higher ranking officer.

2. I still have nothing to say to this, and I'd really appreciate if someone could clear this up for me.

My questions are:

In regard to controlling the government, is autocontrol enough, or are there other ways to perserve order in LFC government?

I'm still completely blank when I try to think of a proper response to the second argument. Does anyone have an idea what the proper response is?

[Captain Nate]

You seem to have confused the functions of government with the structure of government. Broadly speaking, government has 3 functions/roles: police, military & courts.

Its structure can take different forms. The police would not exist as an independent entity, they might be answerable to the executive branch as they are now.

The U.S. government as it is structured now, in regards to its division of powers, could be used as a structure for an Objectivist LFC government if it limited its actions to the proper government functions. Objectivism itself lays out very few, if any, demands on how governments should be designed. All that is important is that it protects individual rights, and I think it ideally has some form of representation.

See this thread:

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...wtopic=6216&hl=

[source]

Its structure can take different forms. The police would not exist as an independent entity, they might be answerable to the executive branch as they are now.

Aha! I see now! Objectivism merely answers WHAT a government should do. HOW it should do it is a technical matter, not to be discussed philosophically.

Thus in constructing an efficient government, we are to take its purpose and principles from philosophy, and then construct it in the best possible way, so that it fulfills such a purpose and works on these principles.

Am I correct?

[dark_unicorn]

Aha! I see now! Objectivism merely answers WHAT a government should do. HOW it should do it is a technical matter, not to be discussed philosophically.

Thus in constructing an efficient government, we are to take its purpose and principles from philosophy, and then construct it in the best possible way, so that it fulfills such a purpose and works on these principles.

Am I correct?

Basically it's closer to the correct answer. Although a more objectivist form of government would obviously not involve all the contradictory functions which a statist government would, it is still a fairly complex theory and requires a bit more detail than you gave. I think that the 3 branches of government that we've had since the beginning work just fine, the problem is that our constitution had some flaws in it and those have been exploited in order to undermine the spirit of both individual rights and capitalism. They include some of the following.

1. The Interstate Commerce Clause

2. Eminent Domain

3. The lack of full acknowledgement of the rights of all individuals (granted, the US corrected this before any other nation considered it, so we must keep our perspective)

4. The capability of levying an income tax (it should have been outlawed by the constitution)

[Qwertz]

4. The capability of levying an income tax (it should have been outlawed by the constitution)

It was. The 16th Amendment changed that, though.

-Q

[dark_unicorn]

It was. The 16th Amendment changed that, though.

-Q

Hmmm, I need to reread my history books a bit, but this is very interesting, because technically all that would be required to eliminate the right to free speech is a large enough vote of both houses of congress. As Aristotle put it so eloquently "Republics fall into democracies, and democracies deteriorate into despotism".

[Rationalis]

"technically all that would be required to eliminate the right to free speech is a large enough vote of both houses of congress."

I completely agree with this statement and would like to add some thoughts of my own. The fundamental problem I see with our society today and a potential problem in any "free" country of the future, is that for any"right" to be enforced it must rely on the cooperation of a dominant controlling party(whether numerically or technologically) and a culture that supports the upholding of that right in a society to be applicable in a pragmatic sense. For example, despite the fact that a document written hundreds of years ago stated explicitly that freedom of speech was a right not to be abridged by the government, a ruling majority elected by "the people" in our legislature could vote to amend said freedom in a way, oh, I don't know that would ensure "responsibility of the press" as lauded by our appeasing political leaders. To clarify, what is moral and what happens can be two entirely divorced things, just because an individual posesses a right in a moral sense does not mean that they will be allowed by the rest of society to enjoy that right. To create and maintain a truly "free country" the predominant culture in a society must be one that values said individual rights so that those freedoms will never "come down to a vote."

[Qwertz]

Well, technically the Constitution forbade unapportioned direct taxes. Taxes on wages were considered indirect, and so they existed before 1913, but taxes on property or the transfer of it, or on capital gains were forbidden. The 16th Amendment gave Congress enormous power to levy taxes against all forms of income.

And it is true that all it would take to eradicate free speech would be approval by 2/3 the House and Senate and ratification (by majority vote, in most cases) of 3/4 of State legislatures. Unlike most other constitutions, however, the original language of the First Amendment would remain in place - the Constitution provides no recourse for expunging amended text.

The alternative would be to make portions of the Constitution beyond amendment, but of course that too would be subject to voting, and probably to political appeasement as well. But if the First Amendment were to ever be amended, it would be the moral right of every citizen to rise up and overthrow the oppressive government to replace it with something better.

-Q

[Rationalis]

"But if the First Amendment were to ever be amended, it would be the moral right of every citizen to rise up and overthrow the oppressive government to replace it with something better."

Of course, hoping that they value those rights enough to do so.

[DavidOdden]

But if the First Amendment were to ever be amended, it would be the moral right of every citizen to rise up and overthrow the oppressive government to replace it with something better.

That's a bit harsh. I'd like them to revise the First Amendment to say "Congress shall make no law encouraging or discouraging any religion, or religion in general; or restricting the freedom of expression". This could be preceded by a statement analogous to that in the 21st amemdment, "The vague wording of the first article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed".

[D'kian]

That's a bit harsh. I'd like them to revise the First Amendment to say "Congress shall make no law encouraging or discouraging any religion, or religion in general; or restricting the freedom of expression". This could be preceded by a statement analogous to that in the 21st amemdment, "The vague wording of the first article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed".

What I'd like to do is add to the preamble: "The government has only the powers ennumerated in this Consititution and not one iota more."

Then I'd get rid of the Bill Of Rights. Well, most of it. Some parts of it, like the 4th ammendment, delineate the limits of government power. The rest places precious rights on jeopardy. Why prohibit the government from making laws against freedom of the press, instead of simply never giving the government such powers in the first place?

Also, the modern "originalists," most of them right-wing, will have one think the only real rights possesed by the people are those ennumerated in the Bill Of Rights. This view, qutie naturally, completely ignore the Ninth Ammendment, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people," and the Tenth, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

[DavidOdden]

What I'd like to do is add to the preamble: "The government has only the powers ennumerated in this Consititution and not one iota more."

Then I'd get rid of the Bill Of Rights. Well, most of it.

You'd leave Art. 1 sect. 8 alone, eh? Leaving Congress with the power to provide for the general welfare; to regulate commerce between the US and other nations and between states; to establish post offices and roads. The Commerce clause and Welfare clause have been the root of much evil. Besides, if we want a free country, you have to constrain the otherwise unbridled power of the individual states. Otherwise, you can end up with 50 despotic dictatorships united under one common fairly free central government.