Hi,
I’m writing this because I’m finding it difficult to come up with a bulletproof argument against the government’s legitimacy. That is, I could always come up with some ways of countering these arguments to a lesser or greater extent.
Let’s see how an usual argument goes. Say the government is illegitimate because it arises as a form of coercion. There’s no point of contention in this: aggression pointed towards people in a given area should not be a means to claim sovereignty (which after all is a misleading concept) or even property. Since they’re being aggressed upon on grounds of arbitrary rules and might, the victims could rightfully defend themselves by whatever means.
However, let’s stop for a minute and think how this applies to non-governmental entities, within an anarchic society. It would be natural to assume private courts and PDAs would be subject to the same priniciple. That means that such an entity should restrict its actions to what is agreed upon by the parties involved in a litigation. Moreover, it should accept that every such agreement must be continuously consented upon, otherwise we must agree on the possibility of someone entrusting an entity with discretionary, unrevokable power in a given matter. Therefore, no force should be used to enforce contracts or undo wrongs, except in direct defense of one’s own self or property. Such entities should only help to marginalize those who do not obey contracts or do wrong things. For example, a murder happening somewhere should not be punishable through aggression. Otherwise, anyone may claim he has been aggressed upon, may deny the legitimacy of the aggressor and could equate the punishment with an arbitrary rule.
Getting back to the state’s legitimacy, the last paragraph tells us we can’t take action against any government as long as we’re not doing it in self-defense. Nobody can take action against goverment by simply stating that it’s illegitimate. Descendents of those who have lost their freedom to the state, as well as immigrants, would have no business trying to fight the established sovereignty through violence or breaking rules, especially since the alleged initial victims are probably long gone.
Similarly, if the government happens to be overthrown and its properties become up for grabs, the new owners would not be legitimate regardless of the new political situation, anarchy or not. Stealing from a thief does not constitute rightful ownership. Only if the goverment was to fall without being aggressed upon we could conclude that those new owners (in fact, homesteaders) would be legitimate.
But it’s very difficult to define exactly what government is and what constitutes aggression against it. Is it a corporation? Is sovereignty essentially property? If this is true, the government must properly state who is a “stockholder”, how much everybody owns and just what kinds of decisions can be taken.
Still, a land owner is a land owner, and he isn’t required to have written rules or agreements in order to decide when to kick trespassers out.
Is it possible to counter this counter-argument? Or should we just conclude government is simply undesirable?
(By “illegitimate” in the title I mean illegitimate with respect to us right now. Sure, legitimacy isn’t such a relative aspect, but in other words “are our hands tied or not?”.)