I feel bad for minarchists / delusional limited government lovers / constitutionalists / whatever you want to call them. Because when you don’t apply first principles fully and to their logical conclusions, you are forced to bite many bullets — bullets that an intelligent leftist can easily exploit.
Let me give you a simple example. You’ll often hear folks in the “tea party” crowd protest the impending government takeover of health care. Among the reasons for being against socialized medicine, the inconsistent tea partier will invoke morality. Which is indicative of the tea party mentality — morality when convenient.
A popular line of thinking goes like this: “I should not be forced to buy politically controlled health insurance simply because I’m alive and breathing.” Another goes this way, “How come Nancy Pelosi is allowed to point a gun at me and force me to buy a product from her, but I can’t point a gun in my neighbor’s face and force him to buy a product from me?”
Truth be told, both arguments are valid. And if made from someone who was actually consistent, they’d have merit. However, coming from the mouths of limited government (a.k.a. central planning and taxation only for things they like) tea party people, it’s rubbish. If I were an intelligent leftist, I would easily point out the inconsistency in a conversation that would go like this:
Tea Partier (TP): Obama care is immoral because Nancy Pelosi and friends are forcing us to buy politically controlled health insurance just because we’re alive.
Intelligent Leftist (IL): You believe it is immoral for Congress to pass a law forcing every American to buy whatever Congress considers to be health insurance? I don’t understand.
TP: Yeah. How come the stupid liberals in Congress are allowed to stick guns in our faces and force us to buy a product from them when I can’t stick a gun in my neighbor’s face and force him to buy a product from me? Where do they get off with this type of power? It is SOOO unconstitutional!! And besides, I’m a man. I shouldn’t be forced to pay for a woman’s c-section or birth control! And she shouldn’t be forced to pay for my Extenze! It’s unfair!
IL: No, it is absolutely fair! You are better off if you buy health insurance. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to force that on you? Besides, there are plenty of things that you are forced to purchase under threat of jail that you tea partiers don’t seem to mind.
TP: No way! We don’t believe in that type of governmental power… it’s UNCONSTITUTIONAL!!!
IL: What’s the difference between you being forced to purchase health insurance for your own good and you being forced to purchase roads and road repair for your own good? You don’t seem to mind that Governor Bill Ritter has what you call a gun to your head, forcing you to buy road construction from him. You also don’t seem to mind that the local police chief forces you to buy his services. How do you explain that?
TP: Well, that’s all okay. We don’t mind paying for those vital services, we need those things.
IL: So you don’t mind being forced to buy things against your will, as long as they are services you like? That’s convenient. I happen to approve of forcing everyone to buy health care. Surely you wouldn’t also reject forcing everyone in a school district to buy the services of their local schools would you?
TP: Well, that’s different! Kids need to be educated!
IL: I don’t see how that’s any different than health care. Roads, police, fire, schools, health care and the like are all things that benefit everyone. We are all better off if we are forced to buy them. You can’t be a freeloader!
TP: But….. but….
IL: It’s pretty obvious that you would like to just pick and choose what you are paying for. You can’t have it both ways, it doesn’t work like that.
….This is when a consistent person steps in and says, “Yes, we all would prefer to pay only for those goods and services we found worthy of our hard earned money. And no that’s not possible with government. But I’ll give you a hint as to what institution allows for everyone to purchase only what they want, and to never be stolen from, no matter the pretense….”
MARKETS YOU FOOLS!
I am a 27 year old voluntaryist living in beautiful Colorado. For fun, I snowboard and race road bikes in addition to my economics obsession. I love the Austrian school in general and Murray Rothbard in particular. 
Hehe, very nice. Minarchists poison the well for us market anarchists. It’s very destructive and frustrating.
Except that if the tea partier was smart, they would answer,” I am not forced to pay for things like roads, because I am willing to pay the government for roads. That is the problem with your hypothetical, you don’t have to force people to pay for things they like.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of markets. This is just a little constructive criticism.
He may be willing, but he is not free to change his mind. He also participates in the system that forces me to help pay for his roads.
Why would someone be willing to pay an aggressive monopoly for *anything*?
That’s easy. Because they think the aggressive monopoly is the only way to provide the service, it has always been that way and it seems to be working out so far (regardless of whether it really is), my parents raised me to respect authority, or how about they are terrified of the uncertainty associated with change. I’m not saying those are compelling arguments but rationalizations come easily to humans.
I thought about this more on my way to work. I think it could most easily be determined by whether you think people are inherently good or inherently bad. If you think people are inherently good as I do, you want people to be left to their own devices and probably don’t want to pay the aggressive monopoly. If you think people are inherently bad than you need top down coercion to keep them in line and maintain the social order. You may be willing to pay an aggressive monopoly whatever is necessary to maintain that social order.
Why do people pay our current aggressive monopoly?
Because force (or rather, pressure) gets things done, whether you choose to believe in it or not.
How can one tell if someone is willing to pay for roads? The gasoline tax, for example, is uniformly enforced at all gas pumps. It allegedly pays for roads, through state and federal portions of the tax.
Now, I can assure you that there are people who are not willing to pay for roads, because they avoid the tax using farm diesel. And from time to time get caught doing so because in rural counties the pigs often check for the colored dye added to farm diesel. I can assure you that there are people who avoid toll roads and toll bridges.
But I’m not confident that there are people who want to pay for anything they are coerced to pay for. Who are these people? How would you know?
Moreover, suppose we found one, named SKR. Then what? Would SKR refuse to travel on a free market road and insist on traveling on a government funded road? This seems odd.
Admittedly, there are wicked authoritarians everywhere. No end to the variety.
The simple fact is that government may fund, but private contractors build, all the roads there are. It is possible to build a road entirely in the private sector. I’ve not only planned such roads, but financed them. I’ve even seen some built, on a small scale, in a housing development in Texas that I was involved with planning and implementing.
If you don’t have to force people to pay for things they like, why do you? I wish you’d stop.
I have a friend, E, who claims he is happy to fund the police under the current system because someone, SOMEONE, must bust up the crack houses. No amount of reason could get him to see that the police state caused the crack house to be such a problem in the first place, among other things.
How would we know if someone is willing to pay for something provided by the government? Well the way they vote would probably be one way. If they vote for a tax increase for a project that will cost them personally, or for the politician that will do the same in those places without voter initiatives, they have demonstrated their willingness to pay.
You seem to have a charming belief that the votes are actually counted. Since we have a system of secret ballots, we cannot know if how someone voted is consistent with what he has said about how he voted. Since we have untrustworthy people in government, we cannot know that the votes are counted at all.
And, of course, we know that only about 130 million people voted in the last presidential election. Whereas there are 307.5 million persons in the USA. So…what about the 177.5 million who didn’t, or weren’t allowed, to vote? What can we know about them?
We also know from the IRS that about 130 million or so (120 million in one recent page I saw) filed personal income tax returns. Which means most people didn’t pay taxes, either.
Since the majority doesn’t want your system, doesn’t vote, doesn’t pay taxes, your system is immoral to most people. I think you should stop brutally imposing your will on other people.
First of it’s not my system so keep your vitriol for someone else. I do find it interesting that while you are more than willing to discuss ideal circumstances with regards to your ideology you aren’t willing to extend that same courtesy to other ideologies. I was simply saying that a vote could be considered a willingness to accept the terms. This would seem to coincide with the argument against voting being that voting grants legitimacy to the status quo. Which is why I think it would be nice to be able to record a vote of “none of the above” or no confidence.
Oh, dear, you’ve mistaken me for an idealist. How droll.
I believe Lysander Spooner thoroughly demolished the argument that voting, which may be used as a form of self-defense by some, should be considered as any sort of consent to be governed. What is the property owner to do if a new tax on his property is up for referendum?
Voting for candidates is initiating force by delegation. The many arguments against voting are widely published, but you can find five of my own at indomitus dot net under “Voting is Madness” from roughly 2005.
Big difference between Nancy Pelosi forcing me to buy healht insurance and Gov. Ritter forcing me to buy roads. The constitution allows for the second, not the first.
The constitution, by allowing the second, inevitably allows for the first as well as a long list of thousands of others. The proof is all around you.
The fact that its happening does not make it constitutional.
Either the constitution permits it or fails to stop it. Either way, it’s FAIL. Why this fetishization of four pieces of parchment?
That parchment allowed the US to become the best country in the world. It is not the constitutions fault that it has been permitted, it is our fault for not following the letter of the law. Lefties are fond of following the letter of the law when its theirs. They dont like the constitution because it tells them what they cannot do. To them it is a charter of negative rights, therefore they say it is a living document. Freedom … that is the crux here. If healthcare passes, we lose it.
“The Constitution has either authorized such a government as we have had or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.” – Lysander Spooner 1867
“It is not the constitutions fault that it has been permitted, it is our fault for not following the letter of the law”
IOW success or failure rides on the actions of people. So why do you assign so much importance to four pieces of parchment?
If the constitution enables people to use it wrongly, how can you say it works?
Reportedly, if healthcare does NOT pass, then the govt will go bankrupt. That sounds like a more pleasant outcome to me than saving this police state. Don’t you agree?
I agree … let the government go bankrupt. Perhaps then and only then will it shrink
Classical liberalism fails. Consent is not now and never was involved, and those who claim it is are kidding themselves (or selling government).
Governments were never instituted to protect life, liberty, and property. They have always been instituted to take property from the unwary for the benefit of those who run the government.
The constitution provides for a power of Congress (article one, section eight) to regulate interstate commerce. It is called “the elastic clause” for a reason. I believe that it isn’t all that elastic. But that is almost certainly the constitutional “authority” for regulating health insurance.
Of course, the several states used to regulate insurance. Like many other things, it used to be regarded as in-state commerce rather than interstate.
Then again, since 1861, and certainly since 2001, the illusion of “these United States” has been replaced with the united state under a unitary executive with dictatorial power. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. George III would be so proud.
Like I said before, I’m not disagreeing about the government coercion or markets solving better. I just think the example is like an infomercial where the spokesperson is trying to cleanup a spill with a paper towel and failing miserably because they are using that towel like a moron and in a manner that no one anywhere would. They then ask whether you have ever had a problem with spills and suggest the shamwow or something. Well sure, if I was retarded then maybe I would be incapable of properly using a paper towel (or chef’s knife or whatever to which they are selling the solution), but I’m not so the spokesperson’s argument seems ridiculous.
So it isn’t all that astonishing to imagine that people are inconsistent or engage in compartmentalization. Personally, I think the best argument against government is direct exposure to it. If more people had to regularly spend time at say the building department their love of government would wane significantly. Although I certainly don’t want to increase the size and scope of government in order to provide them with that exposure. That would just be messed up.
Exposure to government is the cure, yes. Or the vaccination, anyway. That’s why “Touched by government” is such a nifty idea.
Have you ever been arrested? If so, you probably got letters from lawyers and bail bondsmen. How did they get your address? The government sold it to them.
So, we buy those lists, figure out from the offense reports (generally public records, often online) who is doing non-violent non-crimes and getting arrested. Send them a letter inviting them to participate in a freedom group.
Let the state show them how bad the state is, then the recruiting should be easy.
Again, its not incumbent upon the constitution to defend itself. It’s incumbent upon Americans to do so.
The illusion that citizens control government and not the other way around is quite strong. There is no proof anywhere, however, that this is the case.
The Constitution is a document giving power to government, which can always be incrementally increased because the government decides how to interpret the Constitution.
Trying the same thing again will result in the same failure. We should learn from, and not ignore, history. Especially when we are living it.
“The Constitution is a document giving power to government”
I would say it is four pieces of parchment salvaged from a toilet paper factory with no supernatural powers. It is a smoke screen, a hangup, an obstacle and even under the best conditions it was an inside job that illegitimately replaced the articles of confederation.