Because you afford them this privilege I guess?
Who is ‘you’ here? I don’t believe in those two things so they don’t have any privilege to me.
So if you reject (at least) one of both, do you reject that it’s morally permissible for the state agent to assault the person not filing taxes or do you reject that it’s morally wrong for the average individual to assault the person?
It depends on the circumstances. The person committing the assault may deem it morally permissionable as they believe in the law and are duty bound (morally) to adhere to it. This may not be the case in every circumstance for the very same individual.
The plural ‘you’.
Maybe I am unintentionally derailing this thread. I just find it hard to grasp what is meant by privilege and where such privileges end and to what sort of agent they apply. Maybe this is not really of direct interest to you here.
Oh, but they do. They’re so powerful and above you, and have been for so long, you simply cannot see them. But they provide everything you know, everything you have, and as a result everything you are. If they were to disappear, you would be at the mercy of any person larger, more powerful, or simply more cunning who would seek to have what you have. Or perhaps just to get rid of you for the sheer fun of the act itself. Provided you have anything of value, of course. Perhaps you do not. I suppose you would get by relatively unnoticed.
Society provides an invisible yet omnipresent blanket of things that those before you who fought innumerable battles and shed unfathomable amounts of blood lived and died each day without. Things like predictability, stability, consistency. Peace. Ability to reasonably plan ahead for more than a few days or weeks at a time. Quite, simply, the ability to dream while awake without it being foolish. Quiet. Boredom? Hm. Yes, that is what a child would reduce all these gifts to. Boredom. Nothingness. As if he and he himself brought all of it about. Ha. Imagine that. A joke so rich the gods unite in a thunderous roar of laughter.
Surely you cannot be this naive to think it is you and you alone that has kept you alive for so long? This is the mindset of a child. The man who calls himself an island yet barely has the stability of a piece of driftwood. No. Don’t let this be you. For you are far greater than that. I recall your self-made YouTube videos. I haven’t seen them in a while. You should really consider making more.
I have no innate rights. No one does. That is what I meant.
If you believe you are born with rights I would be interested to hear what they are. Maybe DM to avoid going off-track in this thread?
It depends on the circumstances
What circumstances? I thought the scenario was clear enough.
The person committing the assault may deem it morally permissionable as they believe in the law and are duty bound (morally) to adhere to it.
If you are talking about the average individual case, then yeah they believe it is morally permissible for them to assault the person. They don’t believe in the same law as the state agent but their own law they wrote which is similar to the state law. I don’t know if they are duty bound to adhere to it.
I just find it hard to grasp what is meant by privilege and where such privileges end and to what sort of agent they apply
I used the word privilege to mean a specific thing here. If you believe there are cases where the state agent doing something is morally permissible and the average individual doing a similar thing is not then you believe in some state privileges. That’s it.
An example–using physical force without a legitimate reason. An example of a legitimate reason–to stop someone from attacking a child. An example of an illegitimate reason–because they were rude. Now you give some examples.
The state has the authority to impose taxes. If that authority is legitimate, that is acceptable. Normally, an individual does not have such authority. That doesn’t mean it’s immoral. It’s just illegal.
Now you give some examples.
Well there is the tax filing example above.
The state has the authority to impose taxes. If that authority is legitimate, that is acceptable. Normally, an individual does not have such authority. That doesn’t mean it’s immoral. It’s just illegal.
Right, that doesn’t mean it’s immoral but do you believe it is immoral? If yes, then the difference is essentially this “legitimate authority”, my question is: where does it come from? What makes them legitimate?
“Immoral” is not a term I use. I try to act from my heart, what Taoists call “Te,” my intrinsic virtuosities. I judge other people‘s behavior based on whether it is unnecessarily harmful.
replace it with unacceptable or wrong or whatever equivalent you use.
You and I see this issue from entirely different perspectives. I don’t think it’s very productive to continue.
Yeah I don’t understand your perspective. All I know is you find some stuff acceptable and others unacceptable depending on the situation but I am not sure how this clashes with what I am presenting.
And on the other hand, I don’t think my perspective has been understood too.
No, I don’t understand your perspective. If you’re talking about the evils of the government, then why not just say so and explain why police actions, for example, are morally wrong. Are they all morally wrong? As in preserving peace or protecting children?
I am writing this as simple as I can because I have not understood well what are the privileges of the state and what conditions should exist before the state can do its job.
And speaking of consent, this is an old adage to say that not everyone consented to the laws of our society. So, why are people obligated to follow the laws. Because babies and children are not old enough to give consent, they are under the parental care and the parents are responsible for them. So, then when they grow up, they are now at the age that they can decide to leave their country if their reasoning is that they never gave consent to anything that the state does. Where are they going to go that has no laws yet so that they can give consent from the beginning?
No one has been born into a plot of vacant land without laws.
I don’t understand this kind of objection. Someone who objects to state laws because they didn’t give consent continues to enjoy living in that state. The water, the utilities, housing, food, safety, roads, schools, supermarkets.
You’re close but I am not making an argument for why police actions are morally wrong. I am asking those who believe it isn’t, why they think it’s not wrong basically.
I have not understood well what are the privileges of the state and what conditions should exist before the state can do its job
The privileges are about states being morally allowed (having legitimacy) to do things others are not allowed to do, at least that’s what some people believe. I am simply asking why: what gives them those special rights or privileges? So, I am not stating conditions that should exist; I am asking people what conditions they believe states fulfill that give them those privileges.
Because babies and children are not old enough to give consent, they are under the parental care and the parents are responsible for them
That’s not really because they can’t give consent, it’s probably because they can’t take care of themselves alone.
Where are they going to go that has no laws yet so that they can give consent from the beginning?
Well they don’t have to go anywhere.
Someone who objects to state laws because they didn’t give consent continues to enjoy living in that state. The water, the utilities, housing, food, safety, roads, schools, supermarkets.
Some of those have little to do with the state. But even then I am not sure the point you are making. I guess you are saying it’s fine that some didn’t consent to state laws. That’s not an uncommon position but it doesn’t say why states are morally allowed to coerce and assault when the average individual isn’t. Which is the whole point of the challenge.
If you think of it, it’s not odd that no one can answer this simple question. Statism is a deep-seated ideology. To answer the question honestly is to face some troubling implications, namely, that the state is the monopoly on crime, the state is a criminal organization, taxes is theft and forced labor, and the majority of our living situations is immoral. Statism is to accept one’s slave status, and to enjoy it.
Great post; thanks.
The main problem I see with your formulation is that your “ground-level principle” has basically rigged the game. You’ve ruled out in advance exactly the kind of vocabulary needed to describe institutional realities — and then declared victory when no one can describe them. Thats not a discovery, its a consequence of your setup.
Think about it this way. You say we should avoid terms like “fair justice system” or “democracy” and be more descriptive. But what does “more descriptive” look like for an institution? Institutions aren’t just aggregates of individual actions — they’re structured patterns of cooperation that have properties the parts don’t have. A court isn’t just some people sitting in a room; a legislature isn’t just folks raising their hands. If you force me to describe everything at the level of individual bodily movements and individual-to-individual moral relations, then of course nothing will look like legitimate authority, because you’ve eliminated the level of description at which authority operates.
Its like demanding someone justify why a surgeon can cut you open, but stipulating they can’t use medical terminology or reference the institution of medicine. “Describe the ground-level conditions!” Well… a person with a sharp object approaches an unconscious person and slices them open. Sounds criminal, right? But the whole point is that the institutional context — training, consent procedures, professional accountability structures — is what makes the act intelligible as surgery rather than assault. Strip that context away and you haven’t gotten more precise, you’ve just lost information.
Your relevance principle has a similar issue. “Imagine a non-state agent fulfilling the conditions” — but some conditions are constitutively institutional. There’s no non-state agent that fulfills the condition of “being embedded in a functioning system of publicly contestable rules with procedural accountability,” because that condition just is what it means to be a political institution. The test misfires for the same reason “imagine a non-surgeon fulfilling the conditions of being a surgeon” misfires.
None of this implies that states should just get a free pass. They shouldn’t. But the question of which states are legitimate and why is a real question that your framework has made unanswerable by design.
Well, usually there are attempts at answering, from social contracts to consequentialist arguments. But here, I have received mostly confused reactions, so my presentation of the problem might be too unorthodox or unclear. I think I will try to restate it and present more common responses so it can be better understood.
No, I don’t think I am being too demanding. You can still describe institutional realities. I agree it’s ambiguous but it’s something we can discuss if we have a proposal.
Your relevance principle has a similar issue. “Imagine a non-state agent fulfilling the conditions” — but some conditions are constitutively institutional.
I don’t see the issue, you could have a non-state institution fulfilling those institutional conditions.
the condition of “being embedded in a functioning system of publicly contestable rules with procedural accountability,”
This is interesting. There are three notions here: “functioning”, “publicly contestable rules” and “procedural accountability”. I am going to need more clarification on those notions.
Well sure, a non-state institution could fulfill those conditions. But notice what that means: if some organization actually established publicly contestable rules with real procedural accountability over a population, it would just… be a political institution. You’d have re-invented the state. So the relevance test doesn’t show that the conditions are irrelevant to the permissions — it shows they’re the right conditions, because any agent meeting them would plausibly have similar moral standing. Thats the test working, not failing.
On your three questions — I’ll start with the one I think matters most:
“Publicly contestable” doesn’t mean you get to individually opt out of any rule you dislike. It means there are real, functioning mechanisms through which rules can be challenged, revised, or overturned — and that these mechanisms are accessible to those subject to the rules. You’re right that you can’t just refuse to be taxed, and you’re right that you can’t remove a president on a whim. But you can advocate for tax reform, organize politically, vote, litigate, protest. The question isn’t whether every individual preference gets satisfied instantly, its whether the system is responsive over time to serious, sustained objection.
And honestly I think you already implicitly recognise this, because when you say “even if the majority would like a new president, you’d have to wait the normal course of things” — you’re noting a constraint, but its a procedural constraint, not a brick wall. The “normal course of things” is itself part of the contestability structure. Compare that with a regime where there is no normal course of things, where no amount of organizing or objecting changes anything. I suspect you’d grant theres a morally relevant difference there?
if some organization actually established publicly contestable rules with real procedural accountability over a population, it would just… be a political institution. You’d have re-invented the state
political institution is not the same thing as a state but that’s not very important. You are right, I want conditions such that if anyone satisfies them, they get similar moral standing.
It means there are real, functioning mechanisms through which rules can be challenged, revised, or overturned — and that these mechanisms are accessible to those subject to the rules
You haven’t really said much more. what is “functioning”, how accessible? You add:
But you can advocate for tax reform, organize politically, vote, litigate, protest
I can’t meaningfully advocate for the idea that I shouldn’t be taxed at all. I can try to but it would be meaningless and lead nowhere. That would be true even if we were multiple people.
Let’s take the following situation: Bob and his friends go around their neighborhoods telling the people living there that they are now part of their institution. They will be required to give them money under threat of force. The amount can be directly changed by the leaders. The leaders are already chosen now but the next vote is in 2 years. Anyone can advocate for tax reform, organize politically, vote or protest. To change the rule saying that the vote is in 2 years, you’ll have to go through a lengthy process where a lot of people must agree and most of the leaders themselves must agree but it’s totally possible. 2 years after, the leaders changed.
Now under this scenario, does the institution have publicly contestable rules? If yes, are Bob and his friends morally allowed to assault people who would refuse to give money to the institution? If no, what would I need to add to the scenario, so Bob’s institution has publicly contestable rules?
You’re conflating two different things with the tax example. The fact that “I shouldn’t be taxed at all” leads nowhere isn’t a failure of contestability — its that the position isn’t persuasive to most people. Public contestability means your argument gets a hearing, not that it wins. If you and a few others advocate for abolishing taxation and nobody agrees, that’s the system working, not the system being closed. The alternative — where a minority position automatically prevails just because its holders feel strongly — would be far harder to justify morally.
Now, Bob’s scenario. What’s missing isn’t some additional formal mechanism you could bolt on. Its that Bob is imposing the whole apparatus on people who had no prior relationship to it. He just shows up and announces it. Compare that with an institution where the people subject to the rules have actually participated — over time, across generations — in shaping, contesting, and revising those rules. That ongoing participation is what gives the mechanisms their moral weight. Not the mechanisms as a formal blueprint, but the actual lived history of people using them.
I know the obvious objection: “I was born into my state too, I never agreed to it.” True, but there’s a difference between being born into an institution your community has built and maintained over time and some guy knocking on your door Tuesday afternoon declaring you a subject. If you genuinely can’t see a moral difference between those two situations, then I think we just have a fundamental disagreement about whether historical and social context matters for political legitimacy — and I’m not sure further examples will bridge that gap.