The same feelings many have for the USPS are the same as what they feel toward the state itself. Without any options to choose from, we reluctantly go along with the scheme, hoping for something better. We grow frustrated with the increasing costs and declining quality—especially while seeing the wonders competition brings to other areas of our life like food production, technology, communications, and more.
What would political governments be like if they were subjected to competition? For starters, you could affiliate with the political government of your choosing. Just as you can pick from different cable companies or fitness centers, you would be able to select which protection services (the basic function of government) you wanted. Of course, some governments might cost more due to offering services beyond protection: trash collection, health insurance, business certification, etc. Without having to uproot your family and move to an unfamiliar location, you could change affiliations—you could dissent by disassociating. And this competition would inevitably increase the quality and decrease the cost of government.
And the cost? Taxation under the state is theft. We begrudge it, even if some of it is going to helpful things, because much of it is not. And as taxes continue to increase, we grow more frustrated in our quiet dissent. (Few of us are willing to protest as Irwin Schiff did.) But under a form of political government that involves consent and competition within the same territory, taxes would change into a mere membership fee. Because you would be explicitly consenting to a government and the services it is offering, you would therefore be agreeing to the terms of that affiliation. Just as you might pay a membership fee for the local fitness center or online education program (each of which has governments, remember), you’d be paying a fee to the political government of your choosing.
No longer would people grumble so much about laws they didn’t like—there would be terms and conditions to which they yielded their mind. And if they didn’t like them, the barrier to disassociation would be convenient and feasible, unlike today where you’d have to uproot your entire life in search for a different state which, let’s be honest, would likely have many of the same problems as the one where you currently live.
Imagine you’re a business owner whose competition is quickly gaining on you. You’re losing customers because of your competitor’s more attractive offerings and better price options. This is a signal—information that helps you refine your approach and hopefully win back some of those lost customers. States don’t receive these signals because it’s extremely unrealistic that many people would either revolt or relocate. And even if they did, as with any monopoly, this information would neither be transmitted to nor welcomed by those in charge. They have no incentive to respond to complaints and concerns. But if it were easy to disassociate from a political government, that valuable information would incentivize the leaders of the abandoned government to improve.
Most importantly, the government would actually have “the consent of the governed” without having to play mind games to justify it. If Barnett’s right, and legitimate government must have unanimous consent to be binding on those it governs, then this structure is the only one I can imagine that will allow everybody to yield their mind as they please; the state must be subject to the same market forces as society. In effect, there can be no more state, since its very nature requires a territorial monopoly. It would have to simply become a political service organization that affects only its members who consent to its governance. What a different world that would be!
Much of the world’s history involves political governments that did not have the consent of their subjects. We’re not used to this idea, and it’s difficult to imagine it working because it seems so… unfamiliar. But whether it’s been tried before or not is beside the point—what matters is finding an arrangement in which the lofty aspiration of the Declaration of Independence is actually realized. We who create organizations also create political governments—just as in our island example. We who comprise society must oppose the existence of the state because it is impossible for a monopoly to have unanimous consent. If we desire a legitimate political government, we should demand nothing less.
NOTES
Brian Rosebury, Tolkien: A Cultural Phenomenon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 178.
Graham Chapman et. al, “Repression is Nine Tenths of the Law?,” Monty Python and the Holy Grail, directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones (Culver City, CA: Columbia Tristar Home Entertainment, 2001).
Bastiat, The Law, 3.
Ross Harrison, “Jeremy Bentham,” in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 85–88.
Jeremy Bentham, An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007), 5.
John Austin, Lectures on Jurisprudence, Or, The Philosophy of Positive Law (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1875), 105.
Frederick Pollock, The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, ed. Frederic William Maitland (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1899), 515-518.
William Blackstone, The Political Text Book; Comprising a View of the Origin and Objects of Government (London: William Strange, 1833), 111.
Hamilton et. al, The Federalist on The New Constitution, 374.
Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: Jonathan Elliot, 1836), 533.
Ibid, 555.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Sever & Francis, 1862), 129.
Ibid, 130.
Murray Rothbard, Anatomy of the State (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2009), 11.
Rothbard, Anatomy of the State, 15.
Bastiat, The Law, 26.
Ibid.
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 134
Webster’s Dictionary, 1829 ed., s.v. “consent,” http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/consent.
Lysander Spooner, No Treason No. II: The Constitution (Boston: Lysander Spooner, 1867), 5-6.
Ibid, 6.
“Death of a Patriot,” Peter Schiff Podcast, October 17, 2015, http://www.schiffradio.com/death-of-a-patriot/.
Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (New York City: Washington Square, 1984),87.
Randy Barnett, Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 21.
Ibid, 11.
“Lysander Spooner and the United States Postal Monopoly,” Digital Journal, April 18, 2009, http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/271139.
“The most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants?”1
Cicero
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
N
Equality 7-2521 is the identity given to the main character in Anthem, a short novel by Ayn Rand. This person, stripped of any individuality, lives in a future dark age where children are raised apart from their families, overseen by the Council of Eugenics. There is no freedom or individual liberty, only “the great WE, One, indivisible and forever.”
The protagonist aspires to science and scholarship, but this hope is in vain; the Council of Vocations chooses each person’s profession. Equality 7-2521 is to be a Street Sweeper. This is how he is expected to contribute to the collective. But he is not prone to obey his masters without questions; Equality 7-2521 is born with what he calls a “curse” of curiosity—he learns quickly and asks questions.
This curiosity is nurtured when, in a tunnel, he finds signs of the distant past—the “Unmentionable Times” from a fallen society when things were different. Equality 7-2521 begins sneaking away to conduct science experiments—an action that is forbidden because it is done without approval. He rediscovers electricity and th
inks his scientific success surely will be well received by the World Council of Scholars. But alas, they criticize him as a “gutter cleaner,” ordering that he be punished and his experiment destroyed, lest its discovery negatively affect the Department of Candles.
Equality 7-2521 defies the Council and flees, learning on his own to rediscover what freedom is. Embracing his newfound individuality, and struggling to understand its implications, he finally realizes that “centuries of chains and lashes will not kill the spirit of man nor the sense of truth within him.”2
Anthem is a work of dystopian fiction—a genre that describes a future time of oppression. The protagonists in this type of novel are typically rebels who disobey the abusive authorities and try to disrupt their plans. We cheer them on with each page, hoping their resistance succeeds so they can be liberated and enjoy peace and prosperity. And the stories are very popular. Consider Hunger Games, wherein Katniss Everdeen becomes the face of the rebellion, fighting against President Snow’s Panem. Katniss and other Tributes collaborate in their disobedience and actively work to undermine the Capitol’s efforts to maintain its ruthless stranglehold over the districts. Then there’s Star Wars, the franchise that popularized rebellion against imperialism, inviting the audience to cheer on a group of dissidents.
These stories are not fantasy; the issues presented are not alien to our world. Instead, we recognize in these stories our observations and experiences about the real world. We sympathize with the protagonists because we see their suffering at the hands of the state. We revere their bravery and wonder what it would be like to be in their shoes. Part of us might be jealous of their opportunity to actively oppose the oppression they face, while we instead silently suffer.
Thomas Jefferson and his fellow contributors to the Declaration of Independence knew that such opposition is rare. “Mankind are more disposed to suffer,” they wrote, “than to right themselves by abolishing the forms [of the state] to which they are accustomed.” But their story is similar, and it wasn’t fiction. The colonists who rebelled against the most powerful empire on Earth basically became a real-life Star Wars story, two centuries before the movie was filmed. Rebels smuggled illegal goods, refused to pay certain taxes, settled land they weren’t allowed to, tarred and feathered tax collectors, destroyed tea at Boston Harbor in protest of a government-granted monopoly, and more. And when the Crown cracked down on the colonies, these rebels stood their ground and fought back. What’s more, the Americans fully seceded from British rule, disassociating themselves from its government and refusing to recognize its authority over them. Essentially, they blew up the Death Star.
The history of our world is one of illegitimate governments oppressing people, requiring heavy taxes, causing wars, and interfering in the everyday affairs of their subjects. And while examples of inspiring opposition—major or minor—are few and far between, those that do happen are worth sharing and studying. These stories feature individuals who, in essence, do not break any moral law, but instead oppose a man-made malum prohibitum that is in conflict with their natural rights. Think of a homeowner who is in possession of a shotgun, which his state has forbidden, who uses the illegal weapon to successfully repel an invader. Or consider the case of cancer patients who use cannabis to soothe their pain and increase their appetite, even though the state threatens to put them in prison and remove their children from their home if they’re caught.
In cases such as these, civil disobedience, as these acts are commonly called, is really obedience to a higher moral law. And like the other issues of law, this one has a Latin expression: lex injusta non est lex (“an unjust law is not a law”). People may disregard a mandate the state says they must obey when that mandate is in conflict with a higher law the person chooses to follow. Are such people justified?
Yes, according to Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher and author who spent two years living a social experiment at Walden Pond, on property owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson near Concord, Massachusetts. One year into his project (trying to “live deliberately” and escape “over-civilization”), the local tax collector confronted Thoreau and demanded he pay the six years of poll taxes he owed and had failed to pay. Thoreau refused, believing that this tax was helping to fund the Mexican-American war and the expansion of slavery, both of which he strongly opposed. Thoreau was arrested and put in jail; an unidentified woman paid his debt, though the tax collector kept him locked up overnight.3
“Must the citizen… resign his conscience to the legislator?” Thoreau asked in “Civil Disobedience,” an essay he wrote about the experience. “Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.” He was emphatic that issues of moral importance should not be suppressed merely because a majority of legislators have passed a law ordering it. “It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law,” he added, “so much as for the right.”4 To Thoreau, laws were only worthy of respect and allegiance when they did not violate one’s conscience—when they were right or, in other words, when laws do not violate our natural rights.
Thoreau’s provocative essay explores this question in detail and has served as inspiration for a wide range of individuals engaging in civil disobedience, from Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., to Vietnam War protesters in America and pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square, China. Ask yourself: what should you do when you are ordered to do something you feel is morally wrong? Is a person required to submit to the state in all cases whatsoever? Using the language of this book, are you responsible to forever obey a state that does not have the consent of the governed and that utilizes positive law to enact all sorts of malum prohibitum mandates that wrongly restrict your freedom?
When doing the right thing has been made wrong by the state, you will find yourself in quite an awkward position—one that many people shy away from, silently doing what they are told, fearing the consequences of disobedience to the state. That’s natural and understandable. But those who choose to dissent when their actions are morally justified have an opportunity to educate a great number of people who see and sympathize with their actions. Do you recall Arnold Abbott, who fed the homeless despite being arrested by the police and ordered by city officials to stop? Millions of people throughout the world saw the news of his actions and cheered him on, bringing so much shame upon the state that its agents were pressured into leaving him alone. And every time a child’s lemonade stand is shut down for failure to obtain a government permission slip, parents everywhere shake their heads at the unreasonable silliness of the bureaucrats and police officers who are giving that child a personal education in the very lessons this book discusses.
History has provided us other examples to which we can look for inspiration and emulation—courageous people who stood up against the state to choose the right, when right was deemed to be wrong. Let’s look at a few stories.
WILLIAM PENN
Have you ever been to Pennsylvania or studied American history? If so, chances are that you were taught that that state was given its name in honor of the colony’s founder, William Penn. This man, a Quaker, is well known to many as an early supporter of confederacy between the colonies. But his most impressive stories come from decades before, as a youthful activist and advocate of religious freedom in England.
Born to a militaristic father and a socialite mother, Penn soon found he didn’t quite fit in his own family. Sent to study at Oxford, young Penn was expelled for criticizing the Church of England and rebelling against forced worship. Furious over his expulsion, his father attacked him with a cane and kicked him out of their home, denying him any future inheritance.
Now homeless, Penn found shelter in the homes of some Quaker families. This religion and lifestyle slowly began to appeal to young Penn. Perhaps he was impressed by their refusal to bow or take off their hats to any superiors, believing that all men were equal before God—an idea that was quite contrary to the concept of t
he monarchy in England. Quakers, then, were treated as heretics—religious rebels—because of their principles and their refusal to swear oaths of loyalty to the king.
At the time, the government in England effectively prohibited minority religions in an effort to shut down competition—especially the disruptive type. Quakers were basically denied the ability to freely worship, and Penn was arrested for attending one of their meetings. Rather than denying he was a Quaker to escape legal consequences, he publicly declared himself a member, formally joining their ranks at the age of 22.
In 1668, and at the age of 24, Penn wrote his first pamphlet, Truth Exalted: To Princes, Priests and People, a criticism of all religious groups other than Quakers. In it, for example, he called the Catholic Church the “Whore of Babylon,” and he didn’t have nice things to say about the official Church of England, either.5
In the same year, Penn authored Sandy Foundation Shaken, which attacked the doctrine of the Trinity (the nature of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost). Penn’s barbed writings were controversial and triggered an open rebuke by some clergy in the Church of England—especially the Bishop of London, where the pamphlets were printed and circulated. This Bishop secured an order of imprisonment for William, who was to be locked up indefinitely until he publicly recanted his remarks. Penn was placed in solitary confinement in an unheated cell, threatened with a life sentence for saying what he did about his religious beliefs. While the real “crime” the state was punishing was blasphemy—a punishable crime when church and state are tied together—Penn was officially charged with “publication without a license.”
How would you have responded in such a circumstance? At what point do you compromise your beliefs in order to be safe and avoid punishment? What do you do when your conscience says one thing but the state says another?
Lessons from a Lemonade Stand Page 9
