Michael Huemer: 'For What Reason are Acts that would be Considered Unjust when Done by Nongovernmental Agents Considered Perfectly All Right, even Praiseworthy when Performed by Government agents?'

1.1 A political parable

From [HERE] Let us begin with a short political story. You live in a small village with a crime problem. Vandals roam the village, stealing and destroying people’s property. No one seems to be doing anything about it. So one day, you and your family decide to put a stop to it. You take your guns and go looking for vandals. Periodically, you catch one, take him back to your house at gunpoint, and lock him in the basement. You provide the prisoners with food so they don’t starve, but you plan to keep them locked in the basement for a few years to teach them a lesson.

After operating in this way for a few weeks, you decide to make the rounds of the neighborhood, starting with your next door neighbor. As he answers the door, you ask, ‘Have you noticed the reduction in crime in the last few weeks?’ He nods. ‘Well, that is thanks to me.’ You explain your anticrime program. Noting the wary look on your neighbor’s face, you continue. ‘Anyway, I’m here because it’s time to collect your contribution to the crime prevention fund. Your bill for the month is $100.’

As your neighbor stares at you, making no apparent move to hand over the money, you patiently explain that, should he refuse to make the required payment, you will unfortunately have to label him a criminal, at which point he will be subject to long-term confinement in your basement, along with the aforementioned vandals. Indicating the pistol at your hip, you note that you are prepared to take him by force if necessary.

Supposing you take this tack with all of your neighbors, what sort of reception could you expect? Would most cheerfully give over their assigned share of the costs of crime prevention?

Not likely. In all probability, you would observe the following. First, almost none would agree that they owe you anything. While some might pay up for fear of imprisonment in your basement and a few might pay up out of hostility toward the vandals, almost none would consider themselves duty bound to do so. Those who refused to pay would more likely be praised than condemned for standing up to you.

Second, most would consider your actions outrageous. Your demands for payment would be condemned as naked extortion, and your confinement of those who refused to pay as kidnapping. The very outrageousness of your conduct, combined with your deluded presumption that the rest of the village would recognize an obligation to support you, would cause many to question your sanity.

What does this story have to do with political philosophy? In the story, you behaved like a rudimentary government. Though you did not take on all the functions of a typical, modern state, you assumed two of its most central roles: you punished people who violated others’ rights or disobeyed your commands, and you collected nonvoluntary contributions to finance your activities. In the case of the government, these activities are referred to as the criminal justice system and the tax system. In your case, they are referred to as kidnapping and extortion.

On the face of it, your activities are of the same kind as those of a government. Yet most people’s evaluations of the government are far more lenient than their evaluations of you in the story. Most people support the state’s imprisonment of criminals, feel obligated to pay their taxes, and consider punishment of tax evaders both desirable and within the rights of the state.

This illustrates a general feature of our attitudes toward government. Governments are considered ethically permitted to do things that no nongovernmental person or organization may do. At the same time, individuals are thought to have obligations to their governments that they would owe toward no nongovernmental person or organization, even if nongovernmental agents behaved similarly to a government. This is not simply a point about the law, nor is it about what sorts of actions one can get away with. The point is that our ethical judgments differentiate sharply between governmental and nongovernmental actions. Acts that would be considered unjust or morally unacceptable when performed by nongovernmental agents will often be considered perfectly all right, even praiseworthy, when performed by government agents. Hereafter, I shall use ‘obligation’ to refer to ethical obligations rather than mere legal obligations; similarly for ‘rights’.[1]

Why do we accord this special moral status to government, and are we justified in so doing? This is the problem of political authority.

1.2 The concept of authority: a first pass

What is it in ordinary moral thinking that differentiates your actions in the above story from the actions of a government? Broadly speaking, two sorts of explanations could be given. One type of explanation is that, despite appearances, the two behaviors are different, that the government is not really doing the same thing as the vigilante. For instance, suppose one thought the crucial difference was that the vigilante (you in the story) does not give the vandals fair jury trials, as the government (in some countries) does to those it seeks to punish. That could explain why the vigilante’s behavior is less legitimate than that of the government.

The other type of explanation is that the two agents are different.[2] That is, the government may be doing the same things as the vigilante, but who is doing it makes all the difference. You are to be condemned in the story, not because you are not faithfully imitating the government, but because you are acting like a government, though you’re not the government.

It is this second type of explanation that I characterize as an invocation of political authority. Political authority (hereafter, just ‘authority’) is the hypothesized moral property in virtue of which governments may coerce people in certain ways not permitted to anyone else and in virtue of which citizens must obey governments in situations in which they would not be obligated to obey anyone else. Authority, then, has two aspects:

1. Political legitimacy: the right, on the part of a government, to make certain sorts of laws and enforce them by coercion against the members of its society – in short, the right to rule.[3]

2. Political obligation: the obligation on the part of citizens to obey their government, even in circumstances in which one would not be obligated to obey similar commands issued by a nongovernmental agent.

If a government has ‘authority’, then both (i) and (ii) exist: the government has the right to rule, and the citizens have the obligation to obey.

The having of political obligations does not mean merely that one must do the things that the law or other governmental commands require.[4] For example, the law prohibits murder, and we have a moral duty not to murder. But this does not suffice to establish that we have ‘political obligations’, because we would be morally obligated not to murder even if there were no law against it. But there are other cases in which, according to popular opinion, we are obligated to do things precisely because the law commands them, and we would not be obligated to do those things if they were not legally required. For instance, most believe that we are obligated to pay taxes on our income in countries that legally require this and that we are obligated to pay the specific amount required by the tax code. Those who think taxes are too high do not feel entitled to evade a portion of their taxes. Those who think taxes are too low do not feel obligated to send extra money to the government. And if the law changed so that income tax was not legally required, then one would no longer be obliged to pay the government this portion of one’s income. So, in the popular mind, the obligation to pay income tax is a political obligation.[5]

Those who believe in political authority need not hold that political authority is unconditional or absolute, nor need they hold that all governments have it. One could hold, for instance, that the state’s authority is contingent on its respecting basic human rights and allowing citizens a certain level of political participation; thus, tyrannical governments lack authority. One might also hold that even a legitimate government may not command a person, for example, to commit murder, nor would a citizen be obligated to obey such a command. A believer in authority may thus believe only that certain governments have a certain limited sphere of authority.

Despite these limitations, the authority ascribed to some governments is an impressive moral property. As we saw in Section 1.1, this authority would explain an entitlement to perform actions of kinds that would be considered very wrong and unjust for any nonauthoritative agent. [MORE]