“I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.” – Dennis the peasant
When I started to dabble in writing about politics and philosophy, there was a lot of government this and government that. But one needs, first and foremost, to clarify what exactly government is. No matter what size of government one supports, loads, little, none at all, one must clearly understand what government is. So here are my STD 0.02.
I guess there are many different definitions one gives government. Some are so stupid one is at risk of losing brain cells just by reading them. Government is a word for the things we do together. Now, don’t you feel dumber already?
Good old Wikipedia starts with A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. Wow… No Shit ... We can talk about administration, laws, policy in general, but the essence of government is enforcing all this. So I generally tend to consider government a monopolistic concentration of force.
Due to the coercive characteristics of government and the intention of maintaining rules and, for lack of a better word, order in a society, some German sociologist called Weber used the term a monopoly on legal violence . This is to say that violence not committed by government is generally not seen as acceptable, while violence committed by government is sometimes acceptable.
This violence is needed by government to impose its rules and regulation and to punish or deter those who would break them – after all regulations without the threat of violence behind them are mere suggestions. It is crucial to keep this in mind, as when it comes to violence one must be very careful how and when to use it.
Most people generally considered better to punish crime with violence in an organised and clear fashion.. Although this may have some positive consequences, some negative, not going to go into it now, it must be remembered that the possibility of government power to grow or of government leaders to overstep the bounds, which coupled with the monopoly on violence and willingness to use it, can lead to dire consequences.
Also we must keep in mind the difference between initiating and responding to violence. Just because government can be considered a tool of society and uses authority in this way, it must not automatically be accepted that the use is legitimate in any and every case, as bureaucrats often exceed their authority.
Now, anarchists believe no such monopolistic concentration is needed and is quite damaging if it exists, so a debate between an anarchist and a non-anarchist is rather clear – no government versus any government at all.
Flavors of non-anarchism range from minarchist to socialist. And the main issue is how much, when and how the government should use force. When does legitimate government use of force become illegitimate? To rephrase, the issue of where the line is drawn. Now irrespective of what amount of government you want, you have to keep in mind that overall the line we draw will be mostly arbitrary.
Regulation is, by all means, force, if people acted willingly in the way government wants, there would be no need for regulations, and regulations must be enforced to change human behavior.
The most basic idea of government is that humans can possess the right and moral authority to use violence against in self-defense, and can delegate that power to the state do it in a more organised fashion and the understanding is that people will accept the results. Bastiat called the law as organizing the individual right of self-defense in his definitions of legitimate government, in his highly-recommended work, conveniently called The Law, and considered this the only legitimate use of force is to protect life, liberty, property. From here on more and more is added to government, sky's the limit really.
Lovers (and Sons) of big government, who like to talk about externalities in market forces, as if this is some unassailable argument, rarely acknowledge the existence of externalities to government programs. There are externalities to the housing market, you see, but no externalities whatsoever to vesting massive power to a collection of unelected bureaucrats who will be given control over the housing market.
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” Daniel Webster
How is this manifested in reality? Because, make no mistake, the government is not some mystical entity in itself. It is a term that generally describes a collection of bureaucrats, and some property attached to those bureaucrats, eventually led by some politicians or aristocrats or oligarchs, with the power of law behind them. It is not and cannot be anything more than that. Trying to make more of government is a dangerous delusion. So let’s remember, that from now on, the term government is actually just shorthand for “a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats.”
The short and long of it is this. Government means putting a gun to someone’s head in order to make him act in other ways than he would. If you are OK with this, you have to ask: in which situations I can go to my neighbor and use a gun to change the way he acts? How does the situation change if I simply call an agent of the state with a badge and a gun for this purpose? Just because it is more organized and delegated, does not change the gun. Violence may be sometimes justified, but you have to be very very careful as to when. As yourself: do you oppose violence, or, as with the economy, you just like your violence centrally planned?
“Law professors and lawyers instinctively shy away from considering the problem of law’s violence. Every law is violent. We try not to think about this, but we should. On the first day of law school, I tell my Contracts students never to argue for invoking the power of law except in a cause for which they are willing to kill. They are suitably astonished, and often annoyed. But I point out that even a breach of contract requires a judicial remedy; and if the breacher will not pay damages, the sheriff will sequester his house and goods; and if he resists the forced sale of his property, the sheriff might have to shoot him.
It is an argument for a degree of humility as we choose which of the many things we may not like to make illegal. Behind every exercise of law stands the sheriff – or the SWAT team – or if necessary the National Guard. Is this an exaggeration? Ask the family of Eric Garner, who died as a result of a decision to crack down on the sale of untaxed cigarettes. That’s the crime for which he was being arrested. Yes, yes, the police were the proximate cause of his death, but the crackdown was a political decree.” - Stephen L. Carter