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Who are its rivals? Foreign governments? Or "citizens" who want to overthrow the government? A fully legitimate government protects individual rights (as defin

Who are its rivals? Foreign governments? Or "citizens" who want to overthrow the government? A fully legitimate government protects individual rights (as defined by Rand); foreign governments or local "revolutionaries" are the initiators of force if they attack such a government. Remember that they would be attacking an entity that does not take anything forcibly from anyone (as it would be funded by voluntary contract insurance sold for individual transactions), and exists only to arbitrate between disputes and protect individuals from being deprived of their property. Governments come at the end of a very long process - people constantly evaluate, adopt and reject philosophical ideas. These ideas, whatever they may be, are the ultimate determinants of history, and they matter. It's not a given that governments will always grow more corrupt, or that they always need to expand unnecessarily. That those things have always happened to every government in the past is really a stain on the political repercussions of altruistic philosophy rather than men (as they could and should be) or the concept of a legitimate government. Ideas matter. Anyone who wants to live happy, fulfilling life needs to take philosophy seriously. When a majority of the populace doesn't do this for a long stretch of time, tyranny results, no matter what the government or its laws may have been.

philwelch 17y ago
Let's imagine someone breaks into my neighbor's house, I round them up, give them a fair trial, and lock them up in my basement for a year. No different from what the actual government would do. Just like a legitimate government, I have not initiated force. At this point, two things would happen: 1. The government would initiate force against me to protect their own monopoly on the business of rounding up burglars, giving them a fair trial, and locking them up. 2. The government would let me continue unimpeded, at which point they relinquish their monopoly on the legitimate use of force and cease to be a government. They are simply one of many competing retributive justice agencies, and we have anarchy. As you can see, Rand's philosophy is not "logically consistent"--it comes to vastly contradictory conclusions.

philwelch 17y ago

Let's imagine someone breaks into my neighbor's house, I round them up, give them a fair trial, and lock them up in my basement for a year. No different from what the actual government would do. Just like a legitimate government, I have not initiated force. At this point, two things would happen: 1. The government would initiate force against me to protect their own monopoly on the business of rounding up burglars, giving them a fair trial, and locking them up. 2. The government would let me continue unimpeded, at which point they relinquish their monopoly on the legitimate use of force and cease to be a government. They are simply one of many competing retributive justice agencies, and we have anarchy. As you can see, Rand's philosophy is not "logically consistent"--it comes to vastly contradictory conclusions.