|
|
||
To Alter Or To AbolishChapter 13GovernmentWritten by Darrell Anderson. Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master! George Washington Firmly embedded within the fundamental concepts of protecting the boundaries of other people is the concept of self-control. In all human social systems there is expected by all participants an attempt to self-regulate actions, thereby promoting happiness while minimizing trespass. No group of people can hope to coexist peacefully without such expectations. Every individual must respect the boundaries of other people. Contained within the concept of liberty of action is that each individual must exercise responsibility in making choices by seeking and learning boundaries and accepting limitations.[1] In a world of people promoting mutual survival, the general principle is all people at all times respecting and honoring the boundaries of other people while exercising their own rights and enjoying the peaceful use of their own property. In such a world each individual acknowledges and accepts responsibility for trespasses of boundaries. Established guidelines help people act responsibly.[2] The human concepts of self, property, rights, contracts, and consent provide people the foundations they seek to regulate human actions. These concepts arise because of the desire to control conflict and violence, and a desire to sustain energy flows in a peaceable manner. The innate and inherent instinct for self-preservation and survival is always at tension with the desire to promote mutual survival.[3] Both individual and mutual survival would be difficult without some sense of order, balance, and compromise. This effort or process to peaceably regulate human action and provide for social order is called government. Like other ideas, government is a concept. Government is a process, not a thing or an entity. The word implies a collective voluntary restraint to provide an ordered community with respect to fundamental boundaries.[4] The process of government is a social device and nothing more, and exists in any community of people. All individuals attempt to pursue their own definition of happiness and seek to prevent others from trespassing against that pursuit. All individuals seek both liberty of action and security.[5] Therefore, the concept of government is a natural outgrowth of people forming societies and is a desire to protect person and resources.[6] The process of government is a natural outgrowth of the desire for liberty and security.[7] The process of government is a collective effort of people to defend life, liberty, and property. The process of government exists to protect people from harm, theft, and involuntary servitude.[8] That process also provides avenues of remedy after trespass occurs. Because of the social nature of humans, at no time in history have people operated without some form of government, regardless of the form or structure of that process.[9] This desire for social order arises from several concerns:[10]
The concepts of government and society should not be confused with one another. Whereas society is an abstract concept describing a collection of people cooperating and participating together because of common pursuits and beliefs, the process of government is a natural outgrowth through which those interactions are internally regulated in order to promote individual and mutual happiness and reduce trespass. The word “government” is not used in this specific discussion to discuss the concept of statism or the formal structure of promoting social order. The word is not being used here to provide a theory for the origin of “the state.” As used here, the terms “government,” statism, and “the state” are not synonymous. Few individuals distinguish between government and statism, although some notable authors have done so.[11] The concepts of “the state,” statism, and political systems are discussed in subsequent chapters. Although individual human actions are linear in nature, the actions of two or more individuals produces a non-linear system. Despite a desire for cooperative voluntary exchange, the potential for conflicts and disagreement always will exist because of this non-linear interaction. Humans embrace the concept of government to help resolve those differences. The concept of government exists to protect the boundaries of individuals and, for some people, arguably exists to provide avenues for aggregate protection. History reveals only a few instances of a society of people exercising only self-government. Understandably then, one reason people yield to the concept of a formal structure of government is there always have been individuals, and always will be individuals, who have no regard for the boundaries of other people. Additionally, there always will be accidental trespasses that cause the loss of life, liberty, and property — and providing remedy is sometimes difficult. There also is the never ending tension between self-preservation and mutual survival. Without all people exercising self-government, and without appropriate societal processes to protect boundaries, people would be left with “might makes right.” Indeed, James Madison, fourth President of the United States, described the predicament of human nature:[12] What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. These observations are why many individuals embrace or tolerate a formal process of government.[13] Not because people do not understand the essence of self-government — all mentally sound individuals who understand mutual survival inherently understand that foundation. However, there are always those people who will insist on defying that foundation, and there always will be accidents. People want to avoid a continuing state of war.[14] The Declaration of Independence proclaims that fundamental purpose of the concept of government: We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . .[Emphasis added.] In the United States Supreme Court case of Van Horne’s Lessee v. Dorrance, Judge William Paterson stated:[15] From these passages it is evident; that the right of acquiring and possessing property, and having it protected, is one of the natural, inherent, and unalienable rights of man . . . . [Emphasis added.] In his first presidential inauguration address, Thomas Jefferson affirmed the ideas of the Declaration of Independence by stating that he wanted “. . . a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government . . . .” The concept of government does not necessarily or automatically imply the form or structure of that process. Although the previous quotations were issued under an assumption of social order being provided and secured by a solitary formal collection of people, there is no reason for not reading these same declarations through a multi-layered, horizontal, polycentric focus. Polycentrism is an idea that the process of regulating human action can be provided through multiple layers of protection and enforcement. Observation reveals that humans already widely practices and embraces the idea of polycentrism. People who participate in churches, clubs, associations, sports leagues, and employment contracts all maintain their own set of guidelines for expected actions and interaction. Multiple layers of principles exist because innumerable societies exist and people can be and often are members of many different societies. Is a social system model without such a singular, formal scheme of regulation possible? Although challenging, such a life is possible. Historically, in western civilization, a polycentric system existed for centuries, existing in local customary, ecclesiastic, royal, feudal, manorial, urban, guild, and merchant laws.[16] The jurisdiction of those laws were limited, and an appropriate nexus or connection had to be established before those specific laws applied to any individual. The concept of polycentrism is hardly new or foreign. One of the earliest and popularized non-centralized social systems was provided by the Hebrew leader Moses. Moses never established an executive or legislative “branch” for the process of government. He provided the Hebrews only a set of knowable boundaries and remedies. Although embedded within those boundaries was a presumption of community enforcement and self-government, there never was any formal provision for an entity called “the government.” According to Jewish texts, in later years when the Hebrews demanded a human king, the prophet Samuel urged the people that they did not want a human king.[17] Samuel seemed to understand that the Hebrew social system only advocated and promoted self-government. Any other type of forced or coerced process conflicts with free association and voluntary association. Other examples of previous societies of people living without a formal structure of government include the Eskimos, the early Saracens, medieval Ireland,[18] the Icelandic Free Commonwealth,[19] North American Indian tribes, early western United States settlements and associations,[20] parts of early colonial America, the Amish, and parts of modern Somalia. The Lex Mercatoria, or the Law Merchant, is another example of people cooperating and respecting boundaries without the need for an external system of control. Additional examples include the Lombard League, the Hanse, and the Confederation of the Rhine. The process of government then is not some kind of creature or some ominous beast. At a base level, that process is the local customary guidelines within a community by which people agree to live. The process of government never can be anything more than a cooperative effort to provide a social order that protects boundaries. By helping to maintain an ordered liberty, all people then can exercise their own rights and enjoy their property without fearing intimidation or trespass. Finis. Next: Chapter 14 — Boundaries [1] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 71. [2] Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 76. [3] Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, pp. 4–5. [4] Benson, “Enforcement of Private Property Rights in Primitive Societies: Law Without Government,” pp. 6–7. [5] Nock, Our Enemy The State, p. 36. [6] Spencer, “The Proper Sphere of Government,” The Man Versus The State, pp. 185, 187. [7] De Molinari, The Production of Security, p. 3. [8] Benson, The Proper Role of Government, 1968. [9] Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, p. 4. [10] Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, p. 241. [11] For example, in the 19th century Gustave de Molinari and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, and in the 20th century Albert Jay Nock; Hart, David M., “Gustave de Molinari and the Anti-statist Liberal Tradition,” Part I, Journal of Libertarian Studies, Vol. 5 No. 3; Part II, Vol. 5 No. 4; Part III, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 414–415. [12] The Federalist Papers, No. 51. [13] Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, pp. 5–6. [14] Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Sect. 21. [15] 2 U.S. (Dallas) 304 (1795). [16] Berman, Law and Revolution, p. 10. [17] In the various modern Bibles, the story is written in 1 Samuel 8. [18] Peden, “Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law.” [19] Friedman, “Private Creation And Enforcement Of Law.” [20] Anderson and Hill, “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West.” |
||