is it neccisarily true that any government eventually turns into tyranny?
What if the federal government was made up of 435 clones of Ron Paul in the congress, 100 clones of Rand Paul in the senate, 9 clones of judge napolitano in the suprme court, and the real Ron Paul as president?
Is the logical conclusion that the government will become tyranical still true?
Technically , government is tyranny.
What’s your definition of “tyranny”?
It sure would be to a monarchists, for one, or whoever didn’t like the current boundaries of US states.
If they instituted a tax, although be it an extremely small one, yes it would be tyranny. Not nearly as bad as anything in today’s world for sure, but it would be a nuisance.
Well it depends on what you mean by tyranny, as has already been stated.
If we go by the dictionary definition here:
“arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; despotic abuseof authority.”
Then the fact is that very few governments ever fit the “unrestrained” section of that, especially ones with constitutions or a well armed populace. You could argue that there were cases where it was “close enough” to be considered tyranny, but even the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany had certain things that they couldn’t get away with.
The despotic abuse of authority depends on two things: What is despotic, and what is an abuse of authority?
Despotism is defined as: the rule of a despot; the exercise of absolute authority.
This can absolutely not be said of a minimal government, so this part of the definition is incorrect.
Abuse of authority is an entirely subjective term. Now I would argue that calling somehting someone’s “property” and still laying claim over it has a sense of absue to it, however at the same time in the real world property rights cannot be unlimited and there will be restrictions put upon property. With this said it is a single agency that has the power of direct taxation will be more abusive than its alternative. So the answer for that part of the definition is : Sort of but not really or particularly
Finally there’s the “arbitrary” in the first definition, defined as: subject to individual will or judgment without restriction;contingent solely upon one’s discretion" Now this cannot be said of the constitutional state, it has strict rules and processes which is must follow, especially if its agencies are strictly controlled. With this being said the actions performed by this state are undoubtedly somewhat arbitrary. With this said, there’s an arbitrary nature to law itself, in the stateless society as well as the statist society.
Now as for the question: “Will it become tyrannical over time” My answer is that there’s no iron law that says that it must, however each group in soiety has an incentive for allowing the government to abuse its power in X number of cases to benefit them. This will be counteracted insofar as publi opinion is driven by libertarian ideals, which cannot be changed. So the answer is that there are certainly factors which will tend towards tyranny, but there is by no means a certainty that it will continue. Nothing ever is in human society.
I think so. Look at the U.S., it was supposed to have the best “protections” ever created with the Constitution, and look where we are. Thinking about that, and realizing that it’s just a natural course for government to start small and keep expanding and expanding made me an Anarchist.
Would slavery be unpleasant if your master was the kindest and most gentle man on the planet who would effectively let you do as you please? Since I’ve called it slavery, can it be anything other than slavery, no matter how unseemly?
No, but you can’t count on that actually happening.
Maybe I could have phrased my OP better and added a couple of contingencies.
Rothbard put forth the idea that the logical conclusion of any state is the leviathan states that cover the globe today. I am questioning whether that is true. If a state started as simply a “nightwatchman” with no direct taxation on income and the politicians were all like Ron Paul it seems to me that it is not inevitable that leviathan will arise…
I think you might be combining 2 different arguments into one. (1) that states tend to grow and fail to restrict their own power. (2) that certain arguments used against minimal states or anarcho-capitalism lead to the logical conclusion of a world government.
It’s not inevitable that a minimal state will grow in size and power, but its likely for a few reasons. Even if the entire government was staffed with libertarians, they would still face reelection, and in the case of president, could only hold the position for 8 years anyway. No matter how good life might be, a politician can always promise to make life better if you just let them pass the right laws. Then you have to account for large corporations and rent seeking behavior. The progressive-left might be the ones making the most noise about minimum wage and labor laws, but big business reaps the benefits in the form of reduced competition.
At the other end of the spectrum though, even when states tend to grow in size and power, its dificult for them to acheive global hegemony. They face competition from other nation-states and have to deal with a huge amount of territory. It is expensive to rule the entire world, and again, the state faces some level (though weak) of domestic accountabilty. Any state that actually managed to “rule the world” would fall apart pretty quickly from uprisings and economic crises.
The second concept that I think you are working into your question (but I’m not sure) isn’t about logical necessity, but about the conclusions that can be drawn from arguments. The argument against government at the individual / family / city / county / state levels is generally that there is no one to resolve conflict between those entities. But the same holds true for government at the national level - there is no overarching authority between nations. Thats where the “logical conclusion” of world government comes into play.
That presumes that a minimal state would necessarily have a legislature that has de facto (if not also de jure) power to pass laws about any and all areas of human life and activity, provided that procedure is followed. I, for one, don’t see that as being very minimal at all. As I see it, a minimal state would necessarily not have a legislature.
I disagree. Regardless of how minimal you believe the United States to have been at its conception, it certainly wasn’t the case that its legislative branch began with either the de facto or de jure power to pass any law it wished. The degree to which laws get enacted and entrenched has much less to do with the rules and procedures of the government, but with the degree to which the laws are supported by the public or are able to get passed without notice.
The OP stipulated that there was a congress. I was answering within that framework.
I was responding to this statement of yours:
Even if a legislature is de facto “constrained” by public support and/or vigilance, that doesn’t mean it has any formal, institutional limits on its power to pass laws. Therefore it’s already a totalitarian dictatorship in an institutional sense.
Furthermore, I think the US Congress had de jure power to pass any law it wished from the very beginning of its institutional existence. Three clauses of the Constitution - the General Welfare Clause, the Elastic Clause (or “Necessary and Proper Clause”), and the Supremacy Clause - when taken together, allow Congress to pass any law it “wishes”.
At the very least, these two sentences of your last post made it unclear to me whether you actually were answering within that framework:
By the phrase “the entire government”, were you referring to “a minimal state” or to the current US government?