"There has to be a way to dissent that does not require you to forfeit something to which the other party has no right...When people stay in a country, that doesn’t prove their implicit consent to Political Authority because the government has no presupposed rights to force them to leave or follow their laws."
I found this to be the most interesting insight here! I've always felt a bit iffy about some of the arguments made in favor of the social contract, and I think you've articulated the key counter-argument really well here. Many pro-social contract arguments beg the question in a way, by starting from their conclusion! If dissenting to a claim of authority is met with retribution (that would only be justified if the claimant already has just authority), there is no consent in its true form of the word.
I've been thinking about this for a long time, and have never been able to *fully* defend the implicit social contract theory, while I do think -- supported anecdotally, and perhaps empirically as well -- that many people in the U.S. would agree with the idea of government authority if asked (possibly because of the education system's emphasis on the social contract, which is a funny cycle of sorts).
So maybe the only real conclusion here is that government does have *some* justified authority, but descriptively, always asserts authority beyond that which it is justified to have. And then from there it might be more intellectually fruitful to analyze descriptively why such a system is able to maintain itself for centuries.
Microeconomic analyses might illuminate how the individual, cost-benefit analysis for each agent (conform to a partially unjust system vs. resist it) converge to lock such a system in place; a sociological framework might instead emphasize the broader levers of power and change within society, such as how hierarchy, institutions, and civic society come together to maintain the system. A sort of Taleb-inspired insight might be that societies in which governments assert authority beyond their logically/ethically-justified scope tend to outlast those which don't, which seems intuitive as well.
I realize that this may be a bit orthogonal to a purely normative debate - however expect a lot of that from me going forward, as I fail to reach any strong conclusions when it comes to normative ethics 🤷♂️
There are lots of philosophical takes on where government derives its authority. In fact, the majority of political philosophers do not buy the social contract. There are utilitarian, Kantian, hypothetical contractarian, and many other justifications out there.
I am going to do posts on democracy and utilitarianism/consequentialism as well.
Could a kantian even support a government though? I feel like they lie and kill all the time and thats not at all cool under any circumstances with kantians.
"There has to be a way to dissent that does not require you to forfeit something to which the other party has no right...When people stay in a country, that doesn’t prove their implicit consent to Political Authority because the government has no presupposed rights to force them to leave or follow their laws."
I found this to be the most interesting insight here! I've always felt a bit iffy about some of the arguments made in favor of the social contract, and I think you've articulated the key counter-argument really well here. Many pro-social contract arguments beg the question in a way, by starting from their conclusion! If dissenting to a claim of authority is met with retribution (that would only be justified if the claimant already has just authority), there is no consent in its true form of the word.
So where does government derive its authority? Unless the implication is that it has none?
I've been thinking about this for a long time, and have never been able to *fully* defend the implicit social contract theory, while I do think -- supported anecdotally, and perhaps empirically as well -- that many people in the U.S. would agree with the idea of government authority if asked (possibly because of the education system's emphasis on the social contract, which is a funny cycle of sorts).
So maybe the only real conclusion here is that government does have *some* justified authority, but descriptively, always asserts authority beyond that which it is justified to have. And then from there it might be more intellectually fruitful to analyze descriptively why such a system is able to maintain itself for centuries.
Microeconomic analyses might illuminate how the individual, cost-benefit analysis for each agent (conform to a partially unjust system vs. resist it) converge to lock such a system in place; a sociological framework might instead emphasize the broader levers of power and change within society, such as how hierarchy, institutions, and civic society come together to maintain the system. A sort of Taleb-inspired insight might be that societies in which governments assert authority beyond their logically/ethically-justified scope tend to outlast those which don't, which seems intuitive as well.
I realize that this may be a bit orthogonal to a purely normative debate - however expect a lot of that from me going forward, as I fail to reach any strong conclusions when it comes to normative ethics 🤷♂️
There are lots of philosophical takes on where government derives its authority. In fact, the majority of political philosophers do not buy the social contract. There are utilitarian, Kantian, hypothetical contractarian, and many other justifications out there.
I am going to do posts on democracy and utilitarianism/consequentialism as well.
Could a kantian even support a government though? I feel like they lie and kill all the time and thats not at all cool under any circumstances with kantians.
Forgive me, this is well outside of my domain of expertise (assuming I have any)
I will not forgive you