I need help arguing against a common argument on power and corruption

Economics Economics Questions
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The below is a thread of emails where “Ron” who believes in the evils of zero tolerance laws but cannot link that we are granting the power to the gov’t, no matter who is in charge, to “punish” us. a rational person becomes irrational according to someone. any help or reference materials from a knowledgeable source would be great.

I strongly agree with the old saying “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, but power is a fact. In the real world there is no getting around it, but it has to be dealt with by limiting it in a rational way. Societies that do this successfully are to be admired, but it is a constant battle. A rational balance has to be found to limit power and provide for the common good. If government is too weak, it opens the door for the abuse of power by private persons and institutions, which can be just as tyrannical as an all powerful government. In fact, the rise of strong central governments grew out of a popular reaction against powerful local individuals (nobles) who were exploiting the middle and working classes. If we weakened the role of government excessively, it would not end our problems. We would have to worry about the abuse of power from other sources (e.g. large corporations, powerful individuals, etc.) At least, with a representative and democratically chosen government, we have a chance to reform things from below, if we choose to. The enemy is not government per se, it is the abuse of power by the ambitious.

ron

Wow. Just when I thought you were hopeless, you come up with the zero-tolerance. What you fail to recognize, is that increased government control of any industry is giving everyone in power Mohr power. I guess I just believe that there is no way to get a rational person in a position of power you can have a leader just don’t give him power.

Frank

This is another example of how the “0 tolerance” mentality has warped our sense of justice in this country. People seem to think that the only way to deal with a societal problem is to take a tough no tolerance stand and abandon any sense of proportion. It is much easier to take this approach than to use reason. We have a friend whose brother was slammed for supposedly not making his child support payments in Butler Country, Ohio. I’m sure the country justice department and courts want to be known for their tough policies. It is something that can be bragged about at election time, and that voters like to see. Reacting is better than thinking. In response to your subject heading; no, I don’t want to give these kind of people more power. I want to give authority to rational people.
Ron

http://reason.com/archives/2012/08/06/how-a-single-oxycontin-pill-nearly-ruine

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“A rational balance has to be found to limit power and provide for the common good.”

But don’t people have different perspectives on how this balance is to be achieved? How can this balance be found? What if different balances are better for different people?

“If government is too weak, it opens the door for the abuse of power by private persons and institutions, which can be just as tyrannical as an all powerful government.”

Why do we need a tyrannical government to protect us from other people who will form the equivelent of tyrannical governments if they are unchecked? Why aren’t there any other solutions to this dilemma?

“In fact, the rise of strong central governments grew out of a popular reaction against powerful local individuals (nobles) who were exploiting the middle and working classes.”

How did you come to this conclusion? How were the middle and working classes being “exploited”? Aren’t these local individuals governments?

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be right with you

5

Off bat I’m going to let you know that 98% of the people here are anarchists and don’t believe in a limited government. Since it seems your’re discussing the production of security I’m going to suggest an essay by the same name, authored by Gustav de Molinari. To paraphrase Hans Hoppe:

There are 2 propositions held true by economists and political scientists. That is: 1. A state is defined as a territorial monopoly on the production of law and security and 2. From the view point of the consumer, a monopoly is bad as there is no incentive to keep prices down and quality up.

The contradiction should be apparent. What sets law and security apart from all other goods on the market? I will tell you I don’t have the answer as I don’t understand enough about legal theory, but I just wanted to give you something to ponder.

6

Welcome to the Mises Forum, Drillbit.

I think it would help if you could explain who said what in your OP - it’s not entirely clear to me. But I’ll assume that the second paragraph is from “Ron”.

By “power” does he mean just force? Surely he can distinguish between force that he thinks is legitimate and force that he thinks is illegitimate, can’t he? If so, then I think the issue is really about how to minimize illegitimate force.

On the other hand, would he entrust someone else with the right to hurt him in any way, at any time, and for any reason? That’s basically what one does when he entrusts someone else to judge the legitimacy of everyone’s actions, including the actions of the one being so entrusted. In the limit, that would involve ceasing all moral reasoning and simply going along with whatever the entrusted person says - also known as blind obedience.

I think what Ron is really saying is that private persons and institutions will threaten and/or use force in illegitimate ways (in his opinion) unless stopped. While it may sound like a “no-brainer” on first glance, this is really a multi-faceted issue. For one thing, it implies that people don’t have consciences or inner moral compasses. If that were really the case, however, then no government would be able to stop illegitimate threats and uses of force. There are always more individuals outside of the government than there are within it.

For another thing, why do the means with which to stop illegitimate threats and uses of force have to be monopolized? If there’s broad agreement over which threats and uses of force are illegitimate (and I believe there is), then it would seem to me that a monopoly over the means with which to stop them is unnecessary. What a monopoly in that realm allows is for a double standard to emerge whereby some threats and/or uses of force are legitimate when undertaken by people within the monopoly but illegitimate otherwise. That would at least tend to benefit those within the monopoly at everyone else’s expense, which is a big part of why such monopolies persist.

That’s actually not true. The absolute monarchies that arose during the Late Middle Ages and through the Renaissance were actually the result of monarchs restraining the nobles under them, because the nobles were resisting the monarchs’ increasing demands.

As I see it, “zero-tolerance” is just an expression of power, or at least an attempt at expressing it. It’s also pretty cost-effective in the context of a purported monopoly over law and order. Instead of expending resources to build more courts and/or angering all sorts of special interests by removing the laws and regulations which benefit them at the expense of everyone else, just make bigger threats against people who do things the monopoly and its buddies don’t like. This all starts to make a lot more sense when you realize that such an approach seems geared much more toward maintaining faith in the system than toward any other purpose.

7

QFT.

The zero-tolerance policy is not for the benefit of the parties involved but for the policy maker, as you pointed out. If only people would pause and reflect upon this. If the policy maker actually cared about justice, he would never make a blanket rule to apply to everyone without exception.

8

“If government is too weak, it opens the door for the abuse of power by private persons and institutions, which can be just as tyrannical as an all powerful government.”

I wanted to respond to this point specifically, and reduce it slightly.

In this case let’s replace government with monopoly on justice and force.

“If is too weak,…”

In other words if that monopoly is held in check in some non-specific way that prevents it from doing some non-specific thing that I want it to.

“… it opens the door for the <use, good or bad> of power by …” , in other words other organizations might claim the right to use force? so instead of 1 use of power, we have 1+N organizations that might use power. But isn’t that true right now? Any government agency or agent can perform any action (legal or not) that they wish to, if they think they can get away with it without being removed from the government structure, and thus treated like a normal citizen.

“… which can be just as tyrannical as an all powerful government.”

Well it’s already all powerful right, it just isn’t using all it’s powers… In the US, the Whiskey Rebellion established the right to tax (steal), next the Civil War established the right of the Federal Government to overrule State Governments, Eminent Domain established the prior right of ownership of the Federal Government to the land. Income Tax establishes the prior right of ownership to your rewards for your labor, Social Services means the government owns your child. So it’s got all the rights, the question is simply a matter of scale. At what point do you consider it’s interference tyrannical?

So, it’s already able to be tyrannical, or in fact already is. The next question I have is “Would the presence of competing providers of justice and security, increase or decrease the likelihood of an all-powerful tyrannical government?” Obviously I’d assume unlikely. No single security or jurisprudence organization can outnumber the quantity of citizens who are employed by others, or are themselves employed by a similar organization. So, my guess is that the likelihood of a tyrannical organization taking (let alone holding) power is reduced. Which means that it’s already less likely than it is in the current environment. Currently there’s 100% chance of encountering or being under an all-powerful government…

Just some thoughts.