Why real-world governments don’t have the consent of the governed | Hacker News Reader

Why real-world governments don’t have the consent of the governed

washingtonpost.com

45 pointsakbarnama85 comments

This is why direct democracy would be a better model of government than representative democracy. However it's a threat to the existing power structure so don't expect to see it soon. We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app.

Consider Switzerland:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy :

"Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament.[16] Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a school house or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year"

How does the education of policy function in practice?

I ask because in the UK we're planning a referendum on exiting the EU (or not). On most political issues I'd consider myself more well read than a great percentage of the population, but I don't feel in any way qualified to argue one way or another on this (I have a guy feeling, and I know which way I would probably vote, but really - that's not the right way to do things). I know that it will end up being driven by biased forces for political gain, like every other election / referendum held in the UK.

How does Switzerland devolve information to the public so they can make a genuine informed decision?

This is not the advantage that a democracy gives. A democracy makes it impossible to fuck any group that's sufficiently large to either be a majority or able to team up with another minority and make a majority.

You won't realize why this matters until you either study history, or look at how things work in countries like the UAE or China or other dictatorships.

If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? (or vote invalid if the ballot is non-optional)

> If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ?

This is an idea I've been toying with. Whenever an election rolls around, I keep hearing people say things like "I don't care who you vote for, just vote." "People died for your right to vote." "The problem today is that people don't vote."

But I wonder whether the problem is that too many people vote. And mostly they don't do actual research, so they vote based on whatever's trickled down to them through the media they consume. This gives an advantage to whichever side can make itself sound most attractive in soundbites, which seems suboptimal.

That's the flip side of the point, I guess; you can't go against the obvious interests of a majority of citizens, but if you can manipulate an uninformed/prejudiced/scared majority, then you have a relatively free hand to abuse everybody. Hence the importance of informed voters.

The Swiss have so many referendums that they are always on very small, focused issues. Examples from the recent past:

• Should we buy new Gripon fighter jets?

• Should we build a new tunnel through the mountains?

• Should we expel criminals if they are non-Swiss?

• Should the central bank be required to buy gold to back a fraction of the money supply?

Because the issues are so much narrower than referendums in the UK tend to be, it's much easier and quicker to develop an opinion on them.

For people who don't care, they either don't vote (turnout is often ~30% though for the recent highly charged expulsion vote it was more like ~60%), or they vote how the government recommends they vote. Trust in government is very high here so that sort of delegation tends to work OK, and in fact the government wins most votes.

W.R.T. other ways people get informed, it's just the usual mechanisms. Leaflets, media coverage, discussion amongst friends and family. Billboard advertising campaigns notify people of upcoming votes and tend to be very simple. Almost invariably a poster that says something like, "More tax for farmers? NEIN" or "Better working conditions for the people? JA". I doubt they change anyone's minds but they are quite eyecatching.

It's not perfect.

We get a booklet explaining the voting issue at hand, things are also discussed in the media and on political parties websites.

If it's a referendum then both the referendum people and the government get pages to explain their point of view. If the government disagrees they often use scary words to make people vote against it.

If it's a constitution change you see the diff. Like any diff it's not always obvious how it inscribes itself in the bigger picture. The constitution is much larger than the us-one as it includes all sorts of things.

At the end of the booklet you also get to see what each political party (10-15 of them) would vote.

People use all of these sources to take a decision, putting different weights on different things. I think a lot of people just defer to what their preferred party recommends.

The author still wouldn't approve of direct democracy either: they think all democracy is non-consent, and do not recognise societal majority as a form of consent. The author is arguing for anarchism, which generally doesn't scale beyond one person. As soon as you have multiple people and they disagree, you need some mechanism to fix the tie. This is obvious to most adult humans, which is why I'm surprised the article made it to WP.

As the other poster notes with the example of Switzerland, the solution to governments straying too far from the will of the people is more democracy, rathe than abandoning the will of the people.

Anarchism can work at a larger scale, look at the success of revolutionary Spain. Anarchism can take many forms, the people can decide how they want their government to look. Anarchism merely rejects any form of authoritarianism.

Well I don't agree with the author because he appears to be a right-wing, or American libertarian, who overlook the inherent authoritarianism and tyranny of corporations.

What are you referring to?

Spain has never been a long term example of anarchy. It has been a dictatorship many times though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia

It was quickly crushed by all the other global powers together, the Soviet Union, the West, and the Franco Nationalists with the Nazi's. But while it existed, it was very successful. Read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" to get an impression of it.

Revolutionary Catalonia wasn't anarchist - your own source says "Although the Catalonian Generalitat was nominally in power, the trade unions were de facto in command of most of the economy and military forces."

Socialist trade unions and anarchists are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum (assuming the anarchists are actually anarchists .... my experience of such people is that they often claim to be, but when the rubber hits the road they turn out to be communists too)

Anarcho-syndicalism is a well known concept. If you are of the opinion that it isn't actually anarchist, you should just say so, otherwise people will just talk past each other.

Can't reply to your post down the thread for some reason, but your characterisation of trade unions as being anti-anarchist is a strawman. Go read about Anarchist Spain, it was a huge success, literacy shot up, productivity went up massively, it enjoyed broad popular support, it wasn't perfect but it functioned well, well enough to be considered a threat by the existing powers.

Another example of a successful anarchist society is the Rojava government of the Kurds in Syria, as mentioned in the thread.

The author seems to be a libertarian, not an anarchist. If he has any sympathy for anarchism, it seems to be for the philosophical kind [1] rather than the practical kind that you say is impossible.

Or perhaps his position might be closest to the "natural duty" argument for political obligation [2], which isn't all that far off from philosophical anarchism anyway.

The central premise of both philosophical anarchism and the natural duty argument is that governments have no legitimacy whatsoever by default, and only gain legitimacy to the extent that they help bring about beneficial consequences. The two theories differ in block size. Philosophical anarchism only acknowledges the value of individual pieces of law (if at all) that they think are beneficial, whereas the natural duty folks are more willing to give their blessing to entire systems of government in a broad brush.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_anarchism

[2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/political-obligation/#NatD...

> The author is arguing for anarchism, which generally doesn't scale beyond one person

Anarchism has been the default way of running the show for most of our species's existence. Civilization is only 10 thousand years old. Seems to me like it's population density rather than numbers that anarchism has trouble with

There's also the fact that the historical anarchic societies didn't achieve much, whereas modern civilization...well, you're on the Internet. The point I'm making should be clear.

> Civilization is only 10 thousand years old.

Tribal societies generally had leaders, decided by ability, combat, or other means.

You are clearly misrepresenting the author. The second part of the article starts with a concession that democracy is beneficial despite the lack of consent. He is arguing that the non-consensual nature of government suggests limited local government is preferable to needlessly invasive global government. Here's a relevant snippet:

> Nonconsensual government must be subject to a substantial burden of proof when it exercises coercive authority, and it may often fail to meet it. The nonconsensual nature of most government policies also strengthens the case for devolving power to regional and local authorities in order to increase the number of issues on which citizens can “vote with their feet” and thereby exercise at least some degree of meaningful consent.

There's a place in the world which has it. Rojava, US ally and the world's most effective ground force against ISIS: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_...

There's lots of literature on their bottom-up democratic model, with self-governing communities that come together and hopefully will dissolve the bureaucratic nation-state. (For example, as NYT points out, all their 6,000 police are elected, a women-only force deals with sexual assault, and all recruits receive weapons only after two weeks feminist instruction. This is incredible anywhere in the world, not to mention in Syria under attack from ISIS and Turkey.)

We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app.

Using a smartphone app would mean people who are too poor to afford a smartphone, or physically unable use a smartphone, or who believe a smartphone is too great an invasion of their privacy, etc would be disenfranchised from the democratic process. That means it wouldn't really be democratic.

Pretty much every single solution to direct democracy will leave someone out, so you need several ways to gather people's votes, and then it ends up being incredibly difficult to manage and expensive to run. Maybe in 30 years time when smartphones are truly ubiquitous, old people have grown up with them, they're genuinely secure and respectful of an individual's privacy an app will be a good idea. Until then, it's not going to work.

I don't see how it would be that difficult to manage and run. Smartphones + kiosks + teaching social services workers to help the disabled equals much better participation that with current systems.

Two important attributes of a fair voting system are the ability to verify that only one vote is allowed per eligible person, and that it is impossible to tell afterwards which way a particular person voted.

A paper voting system fulfils both of these requirements, simply by the fact that a voting official can check your name and ID as you enter the voting area, and you personally can check that there are no distinguishing marks on your particular voting slip. Therefore the identification step is separated from the vote counting.

With an electronic voting system, it is impossible for the individual to inspect the inner workings of the voting mechanism and verify that the identification step is separated from the vote counting, so the second attribute described above is not fulfilled. As technology improves, computer systems become more complicated, not less, and so this becomes even more true. Because of this, I do not foresee any future technology that will adequately provide secure and deniable electronic voting that the individual can trust.

Sometimes the simple way is the best.

It's very possible to make a watertight electronic voting system.

Just as it is pretty easy to inspect the inner workings of bitcoin/blockchain, it will be as easy to check that every vote worked the way it should.

I agree with you that it is possible (even easy) to make a watertight electronic voting system. However, it is not easy to make an electronic voting system that anyone can look at and verify. Only a small proportion of people have the skills to do that.

Only a small proportion of people (including me) watch the election process near election booths. The point is - everybody can, some small proportion actually does.

WRT skills - it takes a week of dedicated study before you can watch the blockshain like a boss.

I don’t think direct democracy is a good system, but perhaps that’s an issue with democracy as a whole. Decisions based on the majority’s choice are not always the best and you can easily end up in a situation where propositions are made based on popularity instead of effectiveness. Propose to remove all taxes or give $1m to every citizen and you’ll probably get a significant share of the population with you even if it’s absurd. The problem is uninformed vote: people who’re not informed/serious enough to make a wise decision. You have to either educate people (but in that case, who does that? How do we ensure they’re not biased?) or prevent them from making decisions (but that’s dictatorship: how do you ensure the dictator(s) stay wise and benevolent?).

Decisions based on the minorities choice are not always the best either.

Unfortunately, the sentiment you're expressing here is increasingly common, especially in America. Pew Research have been doing surveys since the 1960's that show that the percentage of people who agree that they have "a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people" has been in steep decline for decades, and people who agree are now in the minority:

http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/declining-confidence...

This is IMO leading directly to the popularity of guys like Trump, whose brand of politics is based almost entirely on "don't trust democracy, trust me".

Unfortunately, it's easy to take for granted the stability that democracy brings. Yes, sometimes, bad decisions are made ... or we look back on earlier times and judge their decisions as bad in retrospect (although at the time, lots of people thought it was good, e.g. slavery, oppression of gays etc). But history has shown us what happens when you choose the alternative of decision making by small minorities of self-proclaimed "elites". You get communism and much worse decision making.

By the way, your lack of faith in people is either misplaced, or a purely local phenomenon. For instance in Switzerland there are 16 referendums per year, and people do in fact vote against things that would be trivially good for them in the short term but possibly worse in the long term, like longer holidays.

Switzerland is in fact an excellent example of how the world's most democratic country is also one of its most stable and prosperous.

Do you think it has something to do with the size of the country? E.g. Switzerland has 8M people; is decision making easier there than it would be in e.g. the US and its 320M people?

The USA has referendums at the local level. I think it's certainly easier to do that when you have a smaller population, but power in Switzerland is extremely localised even within its relatively small area. Localism and democracy go hand in hand - for the USA to become more democratic in the style of Switzerland I think you'd need to see a re-assertion of states rights.

The best model of direct democracy is where you vote every day for the goods and services you want in your life with your dollars.

Everyone would have to have the same number of dollars

Direct democracy with one vote for one person is fine, until the majority starts voting to infringe on the minority's rights.

The "Opulent Minorities" rights should be balanced with mob rule. Unfortunately in the US today, the Opulent Minority decides the laws for the rest of us, unless there is nearly unanimous dissent.

I wasn't necessarily referring to just the "Opulent Minorities", i.e. the rich unless you are referencing something else I'm not understanding. There are plenty of examples where mob rule overruns the rights poor/disenfranchised minorities too.

Direct democracy is susceptible to mob rule, but we could certainly try it in some form on a small scale in order to learn more about it's strengths and weaknesses.

> say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app.

That creates the problem of implementing a truly democratic voting system. You have to ensure that:

- voting is secret (i.e. you can't map votes to individuals using just the information available to the public or the vote management)

- voting is free (i.e. you can not influence the votes of individuals by coercion, which is easiest implemented by ensuring that voting is secret)

- voting is equal, i.e. every voter has the same number of votes and votes can be entered only for entitled voters and each voter gets to vote only once per election

- every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made

- the counting process is open and accessible to everyone and does not require any a-priori knowledge about the finer details of the voting process in place

Now try to implement THAT electronicsally. Even if the solve the first 4 clauses using the right kind of electronics and/or cryptography, the 5th clause is what puts the nail in the coffin for any electronic or computerized voting system: It excludes everybody from participating in the whole process of the election, who lacks deep knowledge about secure electronics design, cryptography and the implemented voting protocoll.

In short, your idea of a "smartphone voting app" is stillborn, if you aim for a truly democratic election system.

> every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made

This isn't currently implemented in paper voting systems, why should it count against electronic voting systems?

Also 5 isn't implemented too well at the moment either.

I think if you got printout with your vote identifier after voting, and then printouts with all the votes (secret identifier->vote) were available - peple could check if their vote was counted. In which way paper voting is more open or more secret than that?

Of course this is implemented in a paper voting system, if done right. When there are elections over here (in Germany), I can sit in the room all day and observe that the ballot box is empty at the beginning, every voter only votes once, and that votes are counted correctly at the end.

When I did that last year, I also wrote down the totals and compared these to the published results for my electoral district.

OK, you are right that you can check more without trusting others with that system (with public votes/secret vote identifiers you can only check that your vote was counted).

But you still have to trust other people because you can't be everywhere.

Well, assuming that observers attend the counts at all locations each observer can compare his local results with the officially published results for each location. If one mistrusting observer did this for each location, each and every single miscount would be immediately detected.

Of course it is. In a paper vote you can mark your vote in a unique, distinguishable style; as long as it clearly shows your intention unambiguously and meets the elections constraints it must be counted.

So after the vote closes you stay for the count, wait for the ballot with your particularly marked vote to be counted and assert that it gets counted the way you intended it.

I think all of the things you said I can disagree with on some level:

- voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing?

- voting is free - the media spend a lot of money cajoling voters down certain paths. Voting isn't free - I mean look at all those poor republicans voting against their own self interest.

- voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy.

- voters can't currently tell if their vote was counted and in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless even without direct cheating.

- the counting process is open and accessible - this is making the software open and the votes tied to real people. That would completely solve this, especially if it was on some kind of public ledger.

> - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing?

Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced.

> - voting is equal - your vote should count as the inverse percentage of your age. Young people will be here longer and should have their votes be worth more, old people who only have a few years left disproportionately affect policy.

Old people choose to vote. Young people do not. Disenfranchising those voters with the most experience (and one would hope, the most wisdom, but that is not always the case) in favor of those who currently cannot be bothered to vote is absurd.

> votes are worthless even without direct cheating.

Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox. But in reference to the above, an individual old person's vote is meaningless, yet somehow they are disproportionately affecting policy...

> Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced.

Already happens indirectly now right? Or are you saying the person with the most money hasn't always won the US presidential election?

> Old people choose to vote.

That's fine but I'm suggesting a way to make the young more engaged. I vote but my vote is usually wasted as we don't have proportional representation in the UK. Why should voting power not be held by those with most to loose? The current system is an arbitrary 1 person is worth one vote, why it shouldn't be done on years of remaining life is arbitrary as well.

> Every time I hear this I think of Zeno's paradox...

Let's look at what I actually said:

in a lot of cases (i.e. Electoral college, jerry mandering) votes are worthless

This is actually just a fact. If you move boundaries to make safe majorities in areas that were close now my vote that might have changed something is worthless.

In first past the post rather than proportional representation your vote is wasted if there is a big majority.

> > Because it allows votes to be purchased or coerced. > Already happens indirectly now right? Or are you saying the person with the most money hasn't always won the US presidential election?

You're conflating buying influence with buying/coercing votes. These are vastly different. Imagine you live in a factory town and work in the factory. A proposition is put on the ballot to require your employer to dispose of waste properly at great cost. How are you going to vote knowing that your employer and coworkers will be able to see your ballot?

Secret ballots are necessary and "presidential elections are determine by money" isn't a counterargument against it. I am also skeptical that the link between campaign money raised and votes received is strictly causative. It seems likely that a popular candidate will receive more donations just as he receives more votes.

> That's fine but I'm suggesting a way to make the young more engaged. I vote but my vote is usually wasted as we don't have proportional representation in the UK. Why should voting power not be held by those with most to loose? The current system is an arbitrary 1 person is worth one vote, why it shouldn't be done on years of remaining life is arbitrary as well.

Like MTV's RockTheVote which motivated people who could not otherwise be bothered to stay informed to vote? No thanks.

Why do you think young people have the most to lose simply because they are statistically more likely to have more remaining years on Earth? What about people who ultimately leave the country? Or who die in car crashes? Why should people with less experience and knowledge have a greater choice in decisions? (That same demographic has already largely decided not to vote, despite being the largest demographic and therefore having the most potential influence.) The idea is absurd. (It used to be land-owning males "who had the most to lose". Disenfranchising others doesn't work.)

> This is actually just a fact. If you move boundaries to make safe majorities in areas that were close now my vote that might have changed something is worthless.

Corruption is always a threat to a vote. But giving yourself "a better vote" because you feel disenfranchised doesn't solve the problem of gerrymandering, etc. I would say your belief that your vote is unable to effect change (despite most eligible voters not even voting) is more causative than these problems.

As for the Electoral College, it's an odd example, since the position of POTUS is elected by the States and not the people. Individual states can choose to use "winner-take-all" or not.

> voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing?

Unnamed rich hopeful approaches a load of people and tells them (s)he will pay them $AMOUNT if they vote for him/her. If the voting is not secret, then the said rich hopeful can verify who actually voted his/her way, and who to pay. Likewise, a random thug can politely offer to break the legs of someone if they do not vote his/her way. If the voting is secret, it removes the ability to pay someone to vote a particular way, or use threats or coercion.

> Unnamed rich hopeful approaches a load of people and tells them (s)he will pay them $AMOUNT if they vote for him/her

Isn't that basically the current system? Replace the $AMOUNT with healthcare/tax breaks etc.

> Likewise, a random thug can politely offer to break the legs of someone if they do not vote his/her way.

Clearly this could already happen - stooges could be used and people could be threatened. The secrecy of votes would not make a difference. If people were hell bent on stealing an election, large scale illegal activity would be easier to spot with a public ledger.

> - voting is secret - I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing?

Speaking as someone who was born and raised in a country that as only known democracy for the last 42 years, making voting not secret is not an option. Maintaining the vote secret protects the electorate.

> I think everyone's voting record should be made public! How would this be a bad thing?

You boss don't like Democrats. After elections he fires everybody who voted them. Especially bad (and probable) when you work in government institutions and you want to vote opposition.

It's really not outside the realm of possibility. We manage to have free and fair elections, with a voters roll. We manage to have pretty well-run surveys of public opinion, which are quite reliable.

Every citizen could have a unique code or login which allows them to vote. Security would be important and require some of some 3rd party who designed the system. That will take trust. However we trust our government to make all the decisions for us daily, and we trust 3rd parties to our security and privacy all the time.

Look at the blockchain as an example of an open, secure, trustless, permanent ledger. It or a similar technology could be utilized if no 3rd party is desired. What's lacking is the will to implement such a system, not the technical feasibility.

The problem is: Average Joe or my mother are not going to understand it. And a democratic process that is not transparent to everyone is not democratic.

Also voting by paper ballot is not less efficient or slower than voting with voting machines. I used to live in a rather large district and observed the counts of several elections (communal and federal). Communal elections are a major clusterfuck of parties, lists, individual candidates; every voter has 3 votes that may be distributed according to certain rules, etc., etc. And even with that mess counting all the votes the mandatory two passes took less than 3 hours. Yet it took another 5 hours for the official result to be announced. That 5 hour overhead would have still been there if electronic voting machines would have been used.

Also a lot of people forget that it's not a democracy's goal to be efficient, but to be just and, well democratic. If you want efficiency you want some form of dictatorship, technocracy or other top-down heavy from of government. Personally I don't care if I get the result of the election the same day, or a week later. Usually the actual administration will not form for another few weeks or so, due to playing their cards with all the other parties, forming coalitions and such.

Well you don't have to have electronic voting either, the population can regularly elect local collectives or councils which can make decisions. OK not too different from our model of government. The important thing is popular control over all institutions, mutual aid, co-operation, including corporations, not rule by elites.

Look at the Spanish revolution, it was a great success, and mostly achieved by illiterate peasants, everybody understood it very easily. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH2pFTx_8VE

Direct democracy, while certainly better than todays kakistocracy, is not a solution to the problem of governmental legitimacy based on something other than violence. Consider direct democracy involving the citizens of China and the US. Is there any way that such a system could avoid a tyrannical outcome? The only way to have meaningful consent amongst the governed is for the political unit to be significantly homogenized, and for voting to not really matter all that much.

This is why secessionism and the devolution of sovereignty to smaller political units is a moral imperative. Voting should be used to ratify already existing consensus.

This is also why multiculturalism is so deeply wounding to political legitimacy, and requires increasingly totalitarian measures to maintain.

> they chose him as the lesser of the evils put forward by a political system that they have little if any leverage over.

Bilge! You only need to look at the successes of fringe religious candidates in parts of the USA to see that small groups can wield enormous leverage if exercised correctly.

In most parts of the world, it's trivial to join a party / trade union / action group / stand for election. If you cannot convince a few hundred people to vote for you - perhaps it's you who are wrong, not society.

Religious politicians in the US are not successful in promoting religious groups' goals. This may provide nice careers for politicians of repeating appropriate slogans but: gay marriage has been legalized, small business owners are even forced to cater to the ceremonies, new companies have to pay for contraception, etc, etc.

On the other hand, [creationism is taught in (some) schools](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016...) and there are vast parts of the country with [little or no access to reproductive health clinics](https://www.facebook.com/nationalabortionfederation/posts/12...).

Consent of the governed does not mean, agreement of the governed to specific measures. No does it mean majority rule, which can easily be tyranny of the majority (possibly, the worst kind of tyranny, because it's possibly the strongest kind). One can easily consent to something without actively participating. The author of this oversimplified piece doesn't seem to even acknowledge a category of decisions that people might consent to, even if they disagree with them. It's obviously foolish to say that government is acting without consent, if it makes decisions that you do not agree with, although you are willing (and may even actively choose) to live under the system for making decisions. Nor, of course, does consent always mean actively choosing; it can mean accepting things. The concept of consent of the governed was articulated most effectively by Locke, whose philosophy was a key inspiration for the American revolution. To Locke, consent of the governed had nothing to do with whether or not people agreed with specific laws. Rather, consent of the governed was the foundation of civil society -- that is a society governed by rules and laws. Locke identified the alternative as a state of war -- government by bare force, unconstrained by the rules of civil society. When the consent of the governed is lost, it means that the people no longer accept the legitimacy of the government (sometimes stated as: government has lost the mandate of heaven, or some other revolutionary slogan). It means, change of the form of government, not just the laws and not just the holders of power. It usually doesn't come out well. But (rarely) it creates something new, and better.

Libertarians to everyone else: "I will use my power and leverage to influence you at will, but don't you dare use your power and leverage to influence me. I don't consent to it."

What the hell are you on about? Libertarians definition freedom stops at the point you start infringing on the freedom of others. It's a core concept. You would not find a single libertarian who agrees with your statement.

They would probably stick to that concept more than any other ideology would.

"I am scared to leave my house because you might shoot me."

Can a person controlling others with their intimidating behaviour? If so, what's the Libertarian response to that?

Libertarianism is the rule of the power of individuals. Which is great if you're strong, skilled, healthy, respected, and/or have access to equipment. For the rest of us, it's a dystopia.

Well if someone threating to shoot you, then yes obviously someone is infringing on your liberty... so yes there would rules against that.

"Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons."

Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...?

"Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons." - That an excuse, people try to make excuses with the current system to get away with things. It's not exclusive libertarianism. You would get it under any system.

"Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...? "

There are millions of different versions libertarianism with different solutions. Some with insurance, private police force that work for the insurer.

Can't list them all.

I personally am a classical liberal, I don't advocate no government just that it should be limited to law, order, military etc

If you believe the media-derived caricature of any political philosophy, it's a dystopia for most or all.

> Libertarians definition freedom stops at the point you start infringing on the freedom of others.

Virtually all people identifying as libertarians believe in property rights, which by definition are restrictions on the freedom of others to make use of certain things.

because people who can take your stuff are also infringing on your freedom...

What right do you have to coerce me into acknowledging the stuff is yours?

Or more precisely, how exactly is that combination of precedent, social contract, practical utility and legal and actual force that allows you to claim the right to limit my use of your stuff different from the basis for government agencies claiming the right to impose other limits?

We must distinguish between the American school of libertarianism, which is capitalist in nature, and has nothing to do with European libertarianism, which came first and was always a socialist movement.

However for the purposes of this discussion we are referring, of course to the American version.

Do you frequently dictate the stances of those you oppose?

To be sure, when Abraham Lincoln said "no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent," he was referring to owning slaves. The men governed without consent were literal slaves; the governers were not governments, but private citizens.

This is a really strange article. Look at its claim that "the exercise of coercive power without consent is a bad thing." First of all, coercion means without consent by definition; you can't have consent and coercion. Second, most laws are about actions which affect other people. What does consent look like there? You can't unilaterally refuse to consent to speed limits, because that affects me by putting me at greater risk. You need my consent too. And if we disagree?

It also refers to "nonconsensual government," implying there's such a thing as "consensual government, and later references "a government that genuinely derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." But it doesn't explain what that would look like.

States governments are just most recent and best invention in the field of predictably and least harmfully exploiting people by people with physical power. Earlier invention in the same field were warlords and mafia. If you look at the World Wars you might be wondering if it's actually a progress but in times of peace they are way more efficient and how else could they learn that war between states is a bad thing until they tried few times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

> You have no reasonable way of opting out of government rule. Governments control all the habitable land, and most of us don’t have the resources or even the legal permission to move elsewhere.

The quickest way to change the law is to board a plane. Yes it's difficult to create a whole new country, but there are 200 readymade countries to choose from.

(I'm surprised this is so controversial. I'm just saying individuals do have some direct control over the laws that they are subject to).

Most of them are terrible in one way (at least) or another, though.

By doing that you're not opting out of government rule, you're just changing governments.

That isn't "opting-out of government rule", and it isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply.

Yes it's almost like sharing the planet peacefully is hard and requires compromise.

> isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply

It's not that hard. In comparison to "opting-out of government rule" it's trivial.

I doubt you've been through any immigration process if you think it's that easy.

We should keep the system in place that we have at the US federal level, but add initiative, referendum, and recall. This allows the citizens to "correct" the legislators, and allows more controversial laws to be passed which legislatures typically avoid.

The only problem I see with this is keeping the moneyed special interests at bay.

This is the old "freedom/security" debate in the guise of interpersonal consent. Governance has always involved coercion at the individual level, because governments rule with force, and a certain amount of force is necessary for order and security; without making that move to unify under some law, a population gets mired in low-level disorders and disagreements. It can be a really shitty Hammurabi-style eye-for-an-eye law, legitimize slavery, rape, etc., but if it protects the interests of the ruling class and is not an immediate threat for most of everyone else, it sticks. Thus, for thousands of years, most people lived as peasants, and enjoyed equality and fraternity with their immediate peers, but few freedoms around property, invention, travel, or other such actions that might threaten harmony in society.

But the consent of the people does exist, as a mass body. It takes quite a lot for a critical mass of them to decide that the government is no longer legitimate and disorder would be preferable, but if they do, the government is pushed into crisis. And when governments make breakthroughs, it's in the moment of crisis where leadership is forced to either make a big concession or be pulled down by the mob. In between crises, the status quo sticks and politicians jockey for position within it instead.

What that never translates to is the individual who sticks out of the crowd, arguing for change, getting special treatment. At all times, even in the era of post-Enlightenment reason, they are viewed suspiciously, because good enough is good enough, and they might just be another "bad guy" (criminal/barbarian/spy/rebel/etc.) trying to pull a fast one. They get no credit; as with business and innovators vs. fast followers, it's the people who come afterwards, using more polished rhetoric and building existing small movements into large ones, who tend to turn those ideas into reality.

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