An Introduction to the Problem of Authority

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.

There’s much more to say about the social contract, which is among the most ridiculous political theories, but let’s move on. (For more, see this dialogue about the social contract theory.)

2.2. Democracy

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:

1. 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.

2. The Coercive Nature of Government: Nearly all laws and government policies are implemented through the above tactics.

3. 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.