As I understand it, an Objectivist government would consist of a policing division, a military division, and a judiciary system.
These are my questions:
Who will be in command of the military (ie. when we are attacked, who will have the power to declare war)?
Who will and how will members of the judiciary system (namely judges and lawmakers) come to positions of power (will they be elected / appointed and by who)?
Thanks,
Casey
As I understand it, an Objectivist government would consist of a policing division, a military division, and a judiciary system.
Not quite. What you’ve identified are the 3 proper roles of the government - the police, the military and the courts. That does not mean the government is divided into, and consists of, only those things akin to the current “division of powers.”
The United States, as it is structured, can be an “Objectivist government” if it refined and limited its powers according to the principles Rand gave.
These are my questions:
- Who will be in command of the military (ie. when we are attacked, who will have the power to declare war)?
Whichever person, or group of persons, the constitution gives this power to, idealy a civilian.
- Who will and how will members of the judiciary system (namely judges and lawmakers)
Legislators are a distinct class from judges, at least in America and a divided-power system.
come to positions of power (will they be elected / appointed and by who)?
Some positions will be appointed, some elected. Again, that depends on the Constitution in place.
Objectivism doesn’t address these precise points.
As it happens, I heard Dr Brook answer this exact question at a public talk. He said it would be the President, with the consent of Congress. (pretty much the same as what is supposed to be the case now.) The President would not be able to take unilateral action (to prevent arbitrary abuses of power) except in emergencies eg sudden attack.
Most likely, legislators would be elected and judges would be appointed by and with the consent of legislators. (again similar to now)
Actually, Objectivism doesn’t have anything to say on this subject, other than defining the proper purpose of government, as Captain Nate illustrated.
I imagine there might be any number of ways of doing the job: what’s important is that individual rights are secured.
I guess I’m a bit late joining this conversation now that its 2025 (chuckle), but I once heard a debate between Objectivist defender, John Ridpath (rest in peace), and a democratic socialist and politician, Bob Ray. Ridpath had made it clear that according to Objectivism, all government taxation is evil, and later in the debate, he went on to point out that the proper purpose of a laissez-faire capitalist government is the protection of the rights of the ‘individual’ through the police, the courts, and the military. Bob Ray’s response was “Well how are you going to pay for the courts, police and military if not through some process of taxation?” I began thinking to myself: “Wow! This debate is really cookin’ now,” but to my great disappointment, Mr. Ridpath was totally silent on this significant point made by Rae. I think Ray was pretty sharp on his feet and kind of won the debate based on this very “reasonable” question to which Ridpath backed down from. Objectivism sounded grand with its claim of absolute knowledge through its use of logic and reason, which seamlessly makes its way through metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, but it seemed to me that Objectivism may possibly have its head in the clouds with an excessive optimism about an Objectivist utopia they see as the only true and practical way to save humanity from, as they see it, an evil, altruistic and irrational world. But hey, if someone can step into Ridpath’s shoes from the past and give a good, reasoned, practical answer to Rae’s question, I’m all ears.
On 3/29/2025 at 1:52 PM, Aristophanes Junior said:
I guess I’m a bit late joining this conversation now that its 2025 (chuckle), but I once heard a debate between Objectivist defender, John Ridpath (rest in peace), and a democratic socialist and politician, Bob Ray. Ridpath had made it clear that according to Objectivism, all government taxation is evil, and later in the debate, he went on to point out that the proper purpose of a laissez-faire capitalist government is the protection of the rights of the ‘individual’ through the police, the courts, and the military. Bob Ray’s response was “Well how are you going to pay for the courts, police and military if not through some process of taxation?” I began thinking to myself: “Wow! This debate is really cookin’ now,” but to my great disappointment, Mr. Ridpath was totally silent on this significant point made by Rae. I think Ray was pretty sharp on his feet and kind of won the debate based on this very “reasonable” question to which Ridpath backed down from. Objectivism sounded grand with its claim of absolute knowledge through its use of logic and reason, which seamlessly makes its way through metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and politics, but it seemed to me that Objectivism may possibly have its head in the clouds with an excessive optimism about an Objectivist utopia they see as the only true and practical way to save humanity from, as they see it, an evil, altruistic and irrational world. But hey, if someone can step into Ridpath’s shoes from the past and give a good, reasoned, practical answer to Rae’s question, I’m all ears.
If you do a search there is discussion in other threads from around the time of this one on that exact subject here. Mainly the answer is that the government should be funded primarily via private donation and that individuals will pay for the proper functions of government in that manner, and also contract fees and things of that sort.
For example, businesses or wealthier homeowners will donate for police and military protection. There will still be, especially near the beginning of a fully Capitalist system where all prosperity is still rising, where there would be “free riders” but that is fine, and one has to also remember how much cheaper it would be to run a proper government that is limited to its only function of protecting individual rights only instead of the countless ways that they currently waste money both explicitly and implicitly while currently doing things that proper governments are barred from engaging in.
On 3/29/2025 at 1:52 PM, Aristophanes Junior said:
But hey, if someone can step into Ridpath’s shoes from the past and give a good, reasoned, practical answer to Rae’s question, I’m all ears.
You might like to look at my proposal on how the main government should be funded and the rational for that method, which is here: 1 2.
“…made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Adams on the Constitution., maybe not the fault of the government and its institutions or at least equally shared with an irreligious people.
Dang rabble.
On 3/29/2025 at 7:52 PM, Aristophanes Junior said:
But hey, if someone can step into Ridpath’s shoes from the past and give a good, reasoned, practical answer to Rae’s question, I’m all ears.
Okay, so, to begin with, we must make a clear distinction between two ways someone can break the tax laws, today: one is through tax resistance (simply sending a letter to the IRS, telling them you’re refusing to pay your taxes), the other is tax evasion (lying to the IRS about how much you owe).
Now imagine a system in which everything stays the same, except:
Taxes are much lower, and much more popular, because the money isn’t being wasted
Tax resistance is not punishable by law … it is instead punishable only through social pressure. Like how being openly racist to your neighbors isn’t punishable by law, and yet, the social consequences are so grave that almost no one does it. Or how, in a religious community, giving to the Church isn’t mandatory, but everyone does it because saying no would mean being excluded from the community.
Everything else is the same: Congress sets a tax rate (a reasonable, flat tax, which covers the military/police/judiciary expenses, and that’s it), and people opt in or out. If you opt out, you’re screwed, almost no one buys your stuff, almost no one gives you a job, etc. Except when your government starts an unpopular war, then it becomes socially acceptable to opt out … which means the government isn’t going to invade Iraq or Vietnam anytime soon.
And tax evasion (lying about how much you owe, if you opted in) is still the same criminal act. That’s not initiation of force by the government, you’re being punished for fraud.
Oh, and finally, if it doesn’t work (which it will, it’s very obvious that it will, the US spent decades without punishing anyone for tax resistance, and it worked just fine, but if), well then the worst thing that happens is that the country goes back to mandatory taxation. It’s not like you have to let the whole country collapse, in the name of an idea. Capitalists aren’t socialists … we don’t think that way. We course correct in the face of failure. That’s the whole point of capitalism.
And this “no forced taxation” idea is a very minor point. It’s the logically consistent thing to do, but, beyond that, it’s of no consequence whether tax resistance is legal or not. Objectivists do believe in paying for the things we get, including government services. We’re not advocating letting people get away with mooching off of others, or starving the government of funding. We want a strong government.
It’s even possible that the guy you’re talking about simply didn’t think it was worth discussing at length, and that’s why he didn’t say much about it. Ayn Rand never went into it in detail either. And she definitely would’ve been capable of explaining what I just did, if she wanted to.
17 hours ago, stansfield123 said:
the US spent decades without punishing anyone for tax resistance, and it worked just fine
Which decades were those? See the links below for some figures I was able to find. If you have other data feel free to provide it.
https://nwtrcc.org/resist/consequences/war-tax-resisters-taken-court/
https://nwtrcc.org/resist/consequences/irs-property-seizures-war-tax-resisters/
Hi, Casey,
Great question. The Founders, also, did not just imbibe the ideas of Locke, Montesquieu, English law, etc. They made a machine out of them.
Yet the machine they made is just one possibility. Form of government must match people, time, place. Some people adore the American system, some don’t. There are good and bad motives on both sides.
The centralized state of the American system consists of delegation of power of force by submission or voting, representation, central bodies, and collective decision making. This strikes me as an inherently collectivist form of government. If so, it is the fatal contradiction getting us down every minute of every day. Independent people do not put their fates in the hands of others like this.
There are a few reasons we do. One is, we are not truly independent. Another is that civilized people of all political persuasions, from monarchists to Republicans to communists to anarchists, have long shared the assumption that a state is centralized, with at least the first and last features just mentioned.
But it is just one possibility.
If it is collectivist in nature, then we need the opposite: an individualist form to match our political vision and way of life. The opposite of a centralized state would be a distributed state. It is, at least, another possibility to entertain.
Ironically, anarcho-capitalists hit on it and described its workings in detail. But they made the fatal error of considering it as not a state, just a bunch of market actors and actions coordinated the way they would, in fact, be coordinated. This, despite its having the same essential functions of a centralized state that you mention: laws, defense, adjudication.
So they cut it off from philosophy, as is their wont, from history, and fromall the knowledge people have about government. They denied the absolute need for a state of some kind. They did this by a definition by non-essentials, considering taxation and monopoly of force the defining characteristics of a state. It is the sort of silly mistake that people cut off from philosophy make.
Anyway, if you like, I wrote a 2000-word overview of an individualist government about the distributed state and a strategy to attain it. It has some unexpected elements to it. But having examined them all closely according to Objectivist principles for decades, I think they hold up. But see what you think.
Cheers,
Andrew
Trippingly, please clarify:
“The Enclosure fraud is finished along with the nation state.”
“We lost most of our living power millennia ago when a global catastrophe caused mass-scale trauma.”
Sounds like Scientology.
Hey, Doug,
Thanks for your request.
Enclosure refers to the Laws of Enclosure, by which connected people could claim ownership of land they didn’t use. Which defies Locke’s common sensical concept of property.
This helped create nation states and the real estate scam of artificial scarcity of land. Imagine if I walked down your street and claimed ownership of all the air there and started charging you rent to breathe.
There was a worldwide catastrophe in geologically recent times, about 13,000 years ago. It wrecked everything and us with it. The nature of the cause of the catastrophe and what followed prevented us from healing slowly, as we would have. See here and here in my book.
Velikovsky reintroduced this traditional idea in the 50s in _Worlds in Collision_ (about comparative mythology) and _Earth in Upheaval_ (about geology). Graham Hancock has updated it with more recent findings.
The ideas in the overview are also developed further in the link at its bottom, individualism.
Cheers,
Andrew
1 hour ago, Jon C said:
Sounds like Scientology.
And?
14 hours ago, trippingly said:
And?
Are you a Scientologist? Or would you describe yourself as one?
4 hours ago, Jon C said:
Are you a Scientologist? Or would you describe yourself as one?
Sounds like psychopathy.
Are you a psychopath? Or would you describe yourself as one?
Nope and nope. Your turn!
I’m unfamiliar with any place other than Scientology that talks about trauma from hundreds or thousands of years in the past influencing current events, which I why I asked.
But what about the rainbow?
And I would be willing to bet Andrew is talking about a change in the most recent glacier epoch or whatever. It is somewhat ‘commonly’ referred to as the Younger Dryas , kind of a catch folder for some separate but somewhat converging hypotheses. Which are really interesting and have a lot of potential of being demonstrated to be based on verifiable empirical data.
I should rather say some interpretations of the empirical data seem to demonstrate potentially valid conclusions.