We are discussing Huemer’s argument against
political authority, where political authority is the special right of
government to command and coerce what other agent’s may not and the special
duty to obey what government commands. A number of commentators here have
responded to earlier parts of Huemer’s argument against political authority by
citing benefits of government. Heumer calls this kind of defence
consequentialist, not because it requires a commitment to consequentialism
(that the rightness of an act is determined solely by its consequences), but
just because it is offering a justification of political authority on the basis
of good consequences. The essential difficulty for this defence is that political
authority is supposed to be content-independent,
comprehensive and supreme, but neither consequences alone, nor consequences
combined with fairness, can justify such authority.
The kind of example that consequentialist
defenders appeal to are where a certain good we share in requires obedience to
a law and thereby justifies command and coercion. The problem here is that most such cases do not require universal obedience so the good consequence alone
cannot explain either obedience or coercion of any particular individual in a
content-independent way.
The claim that each individual should obey
because if everyone disobeys there would be no good also fails. It is not
generally true that just because it would be bad if everyone did something you
shouldn’t do it (for example, it would be bad if everyone drove down my road,
but they don’t, so it’s fine that I do). When we try to fix the problems with that
principle we end up with provisos along the lines of ‘provided not too many
people… you may X, but otherwise you
may not X’ or ‘provided enough
people…you need not X, but otherwise
you must X’. There is no principled
way of applying these provisos that can’t be extended to the case of laws in
general and hence the thought that you should obey because it would be bad if
everyone disobeyed won’t get a content-independent requirement to obey out of
the consequences.
It is natural at this point to appeal to
fairness to explain the obligation, that it would be unfair not to obey when
other people are: you share in the benefit that thereby obtains and although
your obedience is not necessary it would be causally contributory to bringing
about that benefit. This kind of defence is no longer purely consequentialist,
but is based on a combination of good consequence and taking a fair share in
the real cost of that benefit. An example Heumer considers is where you are in
a lifeboat which is being bailed out. Although your help is not needed (there
are enough others bailing already), you should join in because it would be
unfair not to.
The problem here is once again that this will
fail to justify the content-independence of political authority. To illustrate
it Heumer considers a lifeboat situation in which a majority that does not
include you ‘want Bob to devise a solution’. Bob promulgates a plan: everyone
shall bail, pray to Poseidon for mercy, flagellate themselves to prove they are
serious, give £50 to Sally ‘who helped get Bob elected’. Huemer’s point here is
that if political authority is content-independent then disobeying the last
three parts of this plan should be unfair, but obviously it is not unfair at
all.
A further problem with adding fairness is that
it cannot explain any obligation to obey for dissenters who reject the alleged
good, such as pacifists paying for the military, or who are prepared to forego the
benefit.
The comprehensiveness of political authority
introduces its own problems for this justification. The good consequences of
government that are persuasive are when laws protect people’s rights, such as
laws against murder and theft, or create public goods such as military defence
and environmental protection (public goods are those that are non-rivalrous—my
consumption doesn’t diminish yours— and non-exclusionary—the benefit can’t be
confined to those who pay). But governments are involved in a far wider range
of law making. To pick just three out of seven types Heumer considers,
paternalistic laws such as drug laws, moralistic laws such as laws against
prostitution and gambling and rent-seeking policies such as subsidies to
politically influential businesses and monopoly creating policies such as professional licensing (‘rent-seeking policies’
is economist’s jargon for policies that award economic advantages to some at
the expense of others that they would not have if freely competing). It is
quite clear that these laws don’t fit the consequence + fairness justification.
As an example, Heumer contrasts taking out your
gun to coerce lazy people in the lifeboat to bail water with taking it out to
coerce other things. The former seems reasonable and let us suppose the boat is
now safe. You then use your gun to stop someone eating crisps for the sake of
their heart, some other people from playing poker for money, and you force some
others to hand over stuff that you’ve decided would make a nice sculpture when
assembled. This is indefensible just because coercing any benefits here (whether there are any net
benefits is itself disputable) is not justified.
The final problem is the supremacy of
government authority: that only the state may coerce. Benefits only obtainable
by coercion do not justify only one agent having the right to coerce. Taking
the lifeboat case again, supposing there are two armed passengers, either may
be justified in coercing bailing and just because one did it once does not now
mean that only he may coerce bailing from now on. The source of the problem
here is that the goodness of the consequence does not depend on who does the coercing necessary for its
obtaining, but only that someone does
it. For that reason no justification of political authority that depends on
consequence can pick out the state as the unique possessor of the right to
coerce.
Heumer concludes ‘Consequentialist and fairness
based arguments come closest to justifying political authority. Nevertheless,
they cannot ground content-independent, comprehensive or supreme authority for
the state. The state has the right, at most, to coercively impose correct and
just policies to prevent very serious harms’.
Originally at http://blog. practicalethics.ox.ac.uk
Originally at http://blog.
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