Human beings can be evil, whether intentionally or accidentally. Historically, the most evil has been done when individuals associate (voluntarily or otherwise) and aggregate into groups having some form of coercive power over others*. So the fundamental burden for humanity is to figure out how to limit the amount of power that is available for people to wield.
(* to me, such a group fits the most general definition of a government)
Such a philosophical perspective naturally leads to two conclusions:
(1) Big government and activist government is bad, simply because it necessarily allows those in government to wield a huge amount of power. That is, it is fundamentally stupid for the people to willingly yield their rights over to a coercive entity, when the fundamental burden of humanity is to try to figure out how to stay out from under that yoke.
(2) In order to prevent any group from eventually wielding coercive power over others, there must be some agent to provide for compensation and punishment when that coercive power is wielded (and hopefully to serve as a deterrent). That is, government is unfortunately necessary in order to prevent other (more despicable and despotic) governments from forming.
(1) & (2) obviously conflict. The question is where is the balance struck? In my view it's exactly where government does nothing more than impartially adjudicate and enforce a legal code that protects individual rights. Granted, impartiality is probably a difficult target to attain given that politics is involved, but it sets the target right, and is -- I would argue -- a much more realistic goal than anarchist Utopia, communist Utopia, or anywhere else in between.
No comments:
Post a Comment