Now, if you own a house, you can demand that other people obey you or leave your house. But the state does not own the country; no one does.
By what authority does such ownership exist? Because at some point, we're arguing over which social structures (ownership, government, negative rights) are good or bad, and I don't see much justification to draw the line where you choose to.
I think there are two main appeals to libertarianism. One "practical libertarianism" is based on a belief that on current margins moving towards less government would be beneficial. I'm sympathetic to this position and I think one can hold it for purely consequentialist reasons.
The above argument is "philosophical libertarianism". I'm not so convinced by these arguments.
On these theories, for example, you wouldn’t be justified in stealing a loaf of bread even to save a starving person’s life.
I think the reason a lot of libertarian theories bite this bullet is that failing to do so seems to be abandoning the alleged reasons for libertarianism. For example, the article argues that one of the common sense reasons why other concepts of government fail is that they seem to imply the government can do things that normal people can't do, like take people's property. But we have now just said that actually, it is allowed for normal people, not just governments, to take people's property if their is a good reason. We could go through an entire sequence of hypotheticals, like can you take money from someone to buy bread if you're starving? If you aren't starving but someone else is, can you take money from someone else to buy bread to give it to the starving person? The upshot of that sequence is that if you don't bite the bullet, then there's no limiting principle. You're basically saying redistribution is in fact allowed.
Likewise for the lifeboat example. I don't see how any principled approach to libertarianism can give the answer that you can threaten the rest of the passengers. That's literal coercion! If you then engage in the insane terminological gerrymandering where that counts as "self-defense" then so does so much other stuff. Is it "self-defense" if you force a doctor to give you a surgery you can't afford? None of the desired libertarian conclusions would follow. Especially given that libertarianism also needs to justify why private property is a thing, and most justification I have seen go back to freedom of a person's labor by way of homesteading. Giving the answer the author seems to give for the lifeboat hypo seems like a massive problem for libertarianism.
This doesn’t support a content-independent entitlement to enforce the state’s rules, nor a content-independent obligation to obey.
I'm not sure why there is a requirement that a theory of government be content-independent. This seems like an arbitrary requirement the author has imposed on theories they don't favor. Kind of by definition, a consequentialism wouldn't support a "content-independent" position? But they could still support government based on an expectation about the distribution of government actions they expect to actually be realized. They could also support something like an-cap, for a consequentialist it seems like a modeling/empirical question (and kind of collapse back to practical libertarianism potentially).
I think there is essentially a moral hypothetical no-free-lunch theorem. No principled moral theory can exist that matches "common sense" intuitions on all hypotheticals. Although I'm open to practical libertarianism, nothing here seems convincing that philosophical libertarianism is the "least bad" option.
Executive summary: In this crossposted introduction to his longstanding argument against political authority, Michael Huemer contends—through accessible moral reasoning rather than complex theory—that no state has a justified, content-independent right to rule, and that belief in such authority is based on weak or incoherent arguments like the social contract, democracy, or utilitarian necessity; instead, he proposes that common-sense morality applied consistently leads to a broadly libertarian skepticism of state coercion.
Key points:
The core problem of political philosophy is authority, not policy—specifically, whether any person or institution has the moral right to coerce others in ways that would be impermissible for individuals.
The concept of political authority combines two controversial ideas: that the state has moral legitimacy to rule (even when wrong) and that citizens are morally obligated to obey its commands, neither of which Huemer finds defensible.
Huemer critiques common justifications for state authority:
Social contract theory is factually false (no real or implicit contract exists) and conceptually flawed.
Democracy does not legitimize coercion by majority vote, since majority power does not override individual rights.
Utilitarian arguments may justify specific coercive actions (e.g. emergency rule to avoid chaos) but not general, content-independent authority.
Denying authority does not require full anarchism, but it does mean state power should be treated like any private coercion: only justified when strictly necessary, such as to prevent harm.
Libertarianism follows from three claims: coercion is generally wrong, government operates coercively, and governments have no special moral status exempting them from ordinary moral rules.
The 'skepticism of authority' approach is rhetorically powerful because it aligns with ordinary moral intuitions and shifts the burden of proof to statists, avoiding the need for extreme rights theories or technical economics.
This comment was auto-generated by the EA Forum Team. Feel free to point out issues with this summary by replying to the comment, and contact us if you have feedback.
Does all this entail anarchism? Not quite. The above arguments support that no one has a content-independent right to rule over society. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the state should completely stop operating and disband. They shouldn’t do that unless we have some alternative available that would also provide social order and prevent widespread violence.
I just finished reading a rather detailed book about the famous "Amish" and was surprised to realize that they are complete anarcho-pacifists... to the point that neither private property nor economic inequality pose any problem for them when it comes to self-government without coercive authority (and they never resort to litigation in state courts). Their fundamentalist Christian religious beliefs, moreover, don't seem very different from those of other churches.
The book, unfortunately, doesn't delve into the possible psychological conditions that allow them to achieve this feat. But their economic system is certainly based more on mutual altruism than on "common sense." They don't mind that some have more money than others, but at the same time, they don't tolerate poverty or precariousness.
It seems you have assumed the existence of some rules that don't necessarily exist in absence of a state to uphold them, such as property or contract law. You can't use rules that depend on some unspoken authority, to argue against the existence of all authority.
This is the third in a sequence of posts taken from my recent report: Why Did Environmentalism Become Partisan?
Summary
Rising partisanship did not make environmentalism more popular or politically effective. Instead, it saw flat or falling overall public opinion, fewer major legislative achievements, and fluctuating executive actions.
Public Opinion...
I think right now EAs might be making a significant mistake by paying insufficient attention to the political realm. As EAs we tend to figure out what’s most impactful for us to work on and focus hard. That’s great! But there are various actions that are ‘non-delegatable’ - the extent to which an individual can do the action is limited (like voting, going to a protest, making hard money contributions to particular campaigns). It might be useful if we were all more in the habit of doing variou...
New Video from AI in Context: The Fall and Rise of Sam Altman
If you want to skip straight to the video, here it is!
AI in Context is excited to be back with our fourth video! For those just hearing from us, we make videos for 80,000 Hours, telling stories about transformative AI...
I became L-famous (famous in the libertarian world) for The Problem of Political Authority (2013), which argues that no state has genuine authority. Libertarians go crazy for this, because it basically captures the core of libertarianism. Then people kept inviting me to give talks or write things about the same issue, as happens in academia. So now I have multiple overlapping writings and videos.
This is one of those. Here, I introduce the problem of political authority.*
[ *Based on: “An Introduction to the Problem of Authority,” Procesos de Mercado: Revista Europea de Economia Politica 16 (2019): 13-29. ]
1. The Foundational Problem of Political Philosophy
The most fundamental issue of political philosophy isn’t what sort of state we should have or what policies it should adopt. The fundamental question is why, if at all, anyone should be entitled to rule over anyone else. Why do 535 clowns in Washington get to tell everyone else what to do?
This arises because governments regularly do things that would be wrong for anyone else to do. E.g., if you decide to start “taxing” people, you will be called a thief and an extortionist; if you initiate a “national service” program, you’ll be called a slave-master; if you initiate a “war”, you’ll be called a terrorist and a mass murderer. Yet when government does these things, most people have very different attitudes. Most people think:
The government is entitled to rule over the society, including doing things that would normally (if someone else did them) be considered rights-violations. This is called political legitimacy.
The rest of us are obligated to obey the government’s commands simply because they come from the government. This is called political obligation.
Political authority is the combination of political legitimacy and political obligation. Notes:
The state’s authority is generally thought to be (by definition) to some degree content-independent. This means they don’t just have authority when they are making the objectively correct rules; they also have some entitlement to enforce their rules, and people have some obligation to obey the rules, even when the rules are not objectively correct, just because they’re the government. That’s what “authority” means.
Caveat: This need not be absolute; you might think there are some special cases in which the government has gone too far and it’s permissible to disobey.
It also need not be universal. Most people think that some governments (perhaps the undemocratic ones?) are “illegitimate” and lack authority. But anyone who believes in authority thinks that some governments are legitimate in the sense described above.
Don’t confuse authority with power. Obviously the state has power (the ability to impose its will on society). The question is whether it has a moral right to impose its will on society.
Q: Why does anyone have political authority?
A: There is no good reason for this; no one has that kind of authority.
2. Theories of Authority
2.1. Social Contract Theory
A popular theory (which philosophers invented, then somehow managed to convince ordinary people of, so that it gets taught to high school students in America) is that there is a kind of contract between the states and the citizens, whereby the state agrees to provide protection in exchange for some money and obedience on the part of the citizens.
Problem: No, there isn’t. No one ever signed such a contract. Duh.
Reply: Oh, you don’t understand. It’s an implicit contract. You accepted it through your behavior, not your words.
Q: How did I do that?
Reply: By remaining in the government’s territory. If you don’t want to accept government, all you have to do is leave all territory controlled by a government.
Problem: You can’t just demand that other people agree to obey your will in all things or leave their own homes and move to Antarctica. Now, if you own a house, you can demand that other people obey you or leave your house. But the state does not own the country; no one does. So they cannot unilaterally demand that everyone obey them or leave the entire country, any more than I can demand that.
Reply: Okay, maybe you agreed by accepting government benefits.
Problem: (a) The government coercively prevents people from obtaining government-like services from anyone else (e.g., they stop anyone else from setting up a competing police force or court system). This means the government is obligated to provide those services, whether or not we agree to their terms.
(b) If you don’t take government services, the government will still impose exactly the same laws on you.
Added problem: Normally, a contract requires both parties to agree to do something for the other. Little-known fact: the government actually recognizes no duty to do anything for you. This has come out in numerous court cases in which someone tried to sue the government for negligent failure to protect them. The courts consistently rule that you can’t sue for that, because the government has no obligation to protect you.
Maybe the government has authority because we elected its members to rule over us.
Problem: A majority does not have a moral entitlement to violate the rights of a minority. E.g., if there’s a group of 5 people, and 3 of them vote to take away money from the other 2, that is still theft, and it’s still wrong, despite that the 3 are a larger group than the 2.
Some people argue that democracy is the only kind of government that treats everyone as equals, by giving everyone one vote.
However, the value of equality does not in general suspend or outweigh people’s rights. In the above example, each of the 5 people got one vote, so in that sense they were treated equally. That still doesn’t mean that it’s legitimate to steal their money. This shows that procedural equality doesn’t override property rights.
2.3. Utilitarianism
Some people would simply argue that we need government to provide certain large benefits, and in order for it to work, most people have to believe that it has authority.
Example: you’re on a lifeboat with many other people. The boat is taking on water and needs to be bailed, but there aren’t enough people willing to do it voluntarily. In this situation, it would be justified to take out your gun and order the other passengers to bail the boat. This is analogous to the situation with government (the person with the gun is like the government; bailing water is like obeying the laws; the threat of the boat sinking is like the threat of a descent into chaos and violence in society).
Problem: This doesn’t support a content-independent entitlement to enforce the state’s rules, nor a content-independent obligation to obey. In the example, you can force people to bail water because this is necessary to save it from sinking. You can’t then go on to rule over the passengers in general; you can’t force them to obey rules that are harmful, or useless, or just not necessary to prevent some very serious harm. Nor would they be obligated to obey you if you make such rules. E.g., you wouldn’t be entitled to take money away from some passengers and give it to others, just because you prevented the boat from sinking.
The above are the three most common things you hear about why the state should have authority. I can’t discuss every theory someone could give. But in general, I think they are all similar to the above in being very lame attempts to rationalize deference to the status quo and the powerful.
So I think there is no political authority, because no one seems to be able to give a defensible reason for it.
3. Consequences of Non-Authority
Does all this entail anarchism? Not quite. The above arguments support that no one has a content-independent right to rule over society. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the state should completely stop operating and disband. They shouldn’t do that unless we have some alternative available that would also provide social order and prevent widespread violence.
Note: That alternative might be anarcho-capitalism. But we don’t have time to discuss that here. If anarcho-capitalism works, then we should replace government with an-cap. But many people think it could not work, in which case we need a state to provide order.
Think about the lifeboat analogy above. If you can peacefully persuade people to bail water, you should do that. But if threatening them with the gun is the only way to make them bail the water, then that’s what you have to do. However, that still doesn’t mean that you get to do whatever you want; you can’t go around taking people’s money to give it to other people, you can’t tell them what they’re allowed to eat or not eat, you can’t throw some people overboard, etc. You can only use the least coercion you need to to save the boat from sinking.
This isn’t a claim to authority, because you’re not claiming a content-independent right to rule, nor are you special; anyone would be entitled to force other passengers to bail water.
What does result from the skepticism about authority is a general libertarianism. Libertarian political philosophy basically rests on three premises:
The Presumption Against Coercion: It is generally wrong to take people’s property, harm them physically, or threaten to do these things, except in a narrow range of special circumstances, such as for purposes of self-defense, defense of innocent third parties, or where the use of force has been consented to.
The Coercive Nature of Government: Nearly all laws and government policies are implemented through the above tactics.
Skepticism of Authority: The same moral standards that apply to private agents apply to governments; governments have no special entitlement to coerce.
Almost everyone agrees with #1 when we’re talking about individuals. E.g., neither Democrats nor Republicans generally think that it would be okay for me to go around “taxing”, “making war”, or otherwise forcibly imposing my will on others. #2 is also virtually universally recognized.
Where libertarians differ from almost everyone else, then, is in #3: Most people think the state falls under different moral norms from other agents, such that it’s okay for the state to coerce people in a much wider range of circumstances, for a much wider range of reasons, than would be okay for any other agent.
In other words, the things that libertarians don’t want the government to do are basically the things that we all agree that no one other than the government should do. Libertarians just apply common sense morality to the state. That is, libertarians are skeptical of authority, while partisans of other ideologies accept the state’s authority.
4. Reasoning About Political Philosophy
Most libertarians are, to my mind, bad advocates for the view. Some focus on defending very strong versions of (1), like theories of absolute negative rights. (I’m looking at you, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, and Robert Nozick.) On these theories, for example, you wouldn’t be justified in stealing a loaf of bread even to save a starving person’s life.
Others focus on abstruse theories in economics, like the Austrian theory of the business cycle. In fairness, some just focus on mainstream economic theories, which ordinary people still find hard to grasp or accept. In any case, most people still feel as if there is something morally suspect about capitalism, even if it is efficient.
By contrast, the skepticism-of-authority approach speaks to people’s moral values, it’s not hard to understand, and it does not require any extreme moral theories. It only requires common sense morality. It doesn’t require the libertarian to defend any grand theories, whether of ethics or economics. Rather, it puts the statist on the defensive from the start, as they should be: they have to explain what makes the state special. What places those 535 people in Washington above the rest of us?
Virtually no one thinks they have a convincing answer to that. Virtually everyone can see the lameness of the standard answers. Even your standard statist Democrat is going to have a hard time pretending to believe the social contract theory after it has been thoroughly rebutted.
So that is the best way of making the case for libertarianism.
By what authority does such ownership exist? Because at some point, we're arguing over which social structures (ownership, government, negative rights) are good or bad, and I don't see much justification to draw the line where you choose to.