Earlier I wrote about my general approach to government. Here I hope to address two related topics. First, to explain how the rules all build upon one another, resulting in rules which rarely, if ever, will conflict with one another. Second, to apply those rules to a specific example which arose in the comments to one of my posts.

So, how do the rules relate to one another? Or, more importantly, how did I arrive at the rules at all?

The rules do not come about in the sequence in which I listed them. The first rule is inalienability, as my starting premise is that individuals are endowed naturally with certain rights and that they cannot alienate those rights without doing themselves and their state irreparable harm. Any healthy state has to recognize that individuals retain their basic rights, life, liberty and property, regardless of what they do. Once we stop recognizing absolute individual rights¹ in this regard, the state becomes oppressive and all citizens suffer.

From this basic premise, I operate on the same assumption as Locke, that states exist to allow for the collective exercise of defensive rights, and to allow for the orderly enforcement of agreements between individuals, without the need of recourse to force by individuals. From that come the principle of delegation. As individuals grant their rights to the state, the state cannot have any rights an individual does not, as simply being in a group grants no additional rights². The one way in which I differ from some newer interpretations of Locke is that I don't see citizens giving the government rights, but rather they deputize the state. The problem with the idea of "giving" is that it implies the citizen no longer retains the rights, and, as my principle of inalienability states, rights cannot be alienated. The government may be acting as our deputy in enforcing our right to self-defense, but we still retain the right to defend ourselves as well. It is important to recall that difference.

From this foundation, all of the other rules flow. Universality is simple. My rights do not depend on the type of property, the type of individual, and so on, and so enforcement must recognize only absolutely essential distinctions. For example, it is legal to note sex when dealing with procreation, but not when talking about employment.

The remaining three rules exist because government is not only a mutual defense pact, but the tool of last resort for collective action. While utterly orthodox libertarians want to limit government to a very few functions, I allow that there may be some few instances where collective action is needed, yet cannot be carried out outside of government. Emergency public health measures, some emergency response, flood abatement, and maybe a few other measures, if not adequately met by private action, may need to be addressed by government³.

However, if we are going to grant the government powers beyond defending citizens and settling disputes, we need to make sure that the powers we grant to the state are limited. They need to be only the powers appropriate to the goal and no more. And they need to be granted to only those organs of government which need them. To do otherwise is to risk giving government powers that could violate the rights of individuals. As the government is acting in these unusual cases as basically a cooperative of citizens, but is also granted the power of using physical force against citizens, we need to make sure we sharply delineate the two spheres, the protective/enforcement sphere and the cooperative sphere. Allowing those two to combine is where many of our present problems arise⁴.

Privacy exists for a similar reason. Were we to limit the state to traditional libertarian roles, there would be little need for the principle of privacy. If the state is just a criminal police force, an army and civil courts, there is very little it can do to be intrusive. I suppose we would still want privacy as a constraint on criminal laws, but the definition of the rights the laws protect should do that adequately. No, privacy exists solely as a limit on the use of government for collective action. If we allow collective action through the state in dire emergencies, then we do need privacy, as it ensures that we will not begin to use the government to resolve all problems. Thanks to privacy, we limit the government to the solution of last resort, using it only when there is no other solution.

And finally, we come to proximity. This is not so much there to protect the citizens from government excess, though it does that as well, but to make sure government is responsive to citizens. Even without collective action, if we consider just criminal law and civil courts, there is still room for variation in governance. Is the proper punishment for felony theft 10 years or 15? What misdemeanors are worth enforcing, and which can be ignored? Or even simple things such as procedural questions, or the question of how much we want to spend on law enforcement or courts.

As there is so much variation, it is obvious that no one answer will satisfy all people. So the principle of proximity is introduced. Government should operate on as small a scale as possible. Police should be local, not national, for example. Laws should be limited to states, or even localities, with compacts between states or localities to allow for cooperation. In this way, each choice represents a smaller number of citizens, and is more likely to represent their views. For example, if policing is statewide, all citizens of the state are to be represented by a single solution. If we break it down into a dozen or more counties and cities, there are a dozen or more answers, and the citizen has both more say int eh local decision, and the option of moving to a locality whose policies more closely mirror his own. By keeping things local, the government better represents the choices of individual citizens.

And that is it. I could probably go on at much greater length, but I think that gives a pretty good picture of how my principles relate to one another. And it also helps to show why there is little room for them to contradict one another. Granted, by deviating form doctrinaire libertarianism and allowing some collective action, I do introduce the possibility of contradiction if someone distorts the principle of common good. However, that cannot be avoided. There are some matters, such as mass inoculation, where government may be the only solution, and orthodox libertarianism will lead to extensive harm. So it is a risk we must allow, and hope that a proper understanding of rights prevents people from straying too far from the proper track.

I know I promised at the start to apply these rules to a specific example, and I will, but this has run a bit longer than expected. So, I will write about the specific example in a later post. For now, I will simply post this part. Hopefully this has helped to explain why I see government the way I do.

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1. Yes, I said the rights are absolute. And I mean it literally. I know the famous axiom about not having a right to cry fire in a crowded theater, but I would argue that is not true. You have every right to cry "fire", you simply have to suffer the consequences for exercising that right, both civil and criminal. It is similar to the way that your right to property is not reduced by your inability to retain stolen goods. I think the view that this "fire" example is a limitation on a right, and not simply a consequence of a right being exercised has led to harmful decisions. But that distinction is something to argue at another time.

2. It is not a part of this rule, but the principle behind delegation does make nanny state laws sound a bit absurd. If I grant the government powers to protect me from harm and fraud, then does it make sense for that government to tell me what to eat or drink? Is that not, in essence, the same as me using force against myself to prevent me form doing what I want to do? The logic of nanny state laws falls apart when we view the government as our agent.

3. The one caveat I would add to this deviation from orthodox libertarian theory is that we should look to the government as the provider of last resort. Where we currently turn to the government first for many things, perhaps most, I would ask that we instead ask whether private solutions are adequately providing the solution we need, or even if they are likely to do so in a reasonable time, before even considering a government solution. The state should be the final recourse when everything else fails.

4. For example, unions are essentially cooperative organizations. But they have been granted in some states the ability to use the law, that is physical force, to prevent non-union members from working. That is the sort of harm that can come from mixing cooperative action and enforcement powers.