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> After these, a lot of power shifted from the people to the federal government. That's the fault in this line of reasoning: the people never had the economic
by matt4077 10y ago
> After these, a lot of power shifted from the people to the federal government.
That's the fault in this line of reasoning: the people never had the economic powers of a government. Government derives its power from being the solution to a collective action problem. Or, in other words, the people gained power by pooling their decision making process.
- pmyteh 10y agoTo be fair, government is one possible solution to a collective action problem. There are other possible solutions involving various kinds of voluntary cooperation. It just turns out that some collective action problems (such as the existence of child labour, for example) are much easier to solve by a body with coercive power than one without. But you're quite right that the notion that 'the people' once had such power before being oppressed by the creation of collective government is an ahistorical idea, normally deriving from dubious state-of-nature theories.
- kazagistar 10y ago"Property" itself cannot exist without involuntary coercion. Cooperative collective action resulting in some form of free market solutions cannot function without a base layer of coersion, which is then implicitly supporting the collection action, rendering them no longer truly purely cooperative.
- st3v3r 10y agoThat base layer of "involuntary coercion" being "punishing people who steal".
- kazagistar 10y ago"hurting people who take stuff other people are keeping from them" You can spin it all kinds of ways, but the concept steal is not a fundamental one, but one that we invented and enforce through government, through coercive action.
- st3v3r 10y agoAs opposed to you just coming along and saying you deserve my stuff?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]