Now you are tracked by both private entities and the state.
I don't want to be tracked by anyone, without my explicit consent, which I should be able to withdraw anytime.
I don't want to be tracked by anyone, without my explicit consent, which I should be able to withdraw anytime.
You don't? Nor me.
Governments presume to have authority over everything in their domain. The belief in the false idea of 'government' by the majority is what sustains their power.
It is actually immoral and fraudulent. They are meant to serve us - and a servant is less than a free man/woman. That is not how they see it though - they are only serving themselves.
The people in Norway have a clear and simple choice; they can sit and do nothing, or they can do something. Action might entail moving the hell out of the country and complain from a distance. They could also vote in a new government, but it's up to them.
As far as that BS idea that "They are meant to serve us", no you are quite wrong. The Government serves the people who voted it in, and gave it control of those resources. That Government, in the end, has no obligation to _anyone_ else . Its only obligation is to those who voted it in, and it uses that granted power as a proxy for those people (and corporations) to enact their will. Don't' like it? Fine, do something about it, rather than complain here about big, bad Government.
You implicitly agree to some measure when you participate in the society set up by government.
There is today a very common attitude that governments are intentionally only serving a small elite. This populist - perhaps even intuitive - rhetoric is exaggerated for most of the Western world.
If you’re living on your own out in the wilderness, I can see your argument. But this actually does exist to some degree in how uncontacted peoples[0] are generally not subject to the laws of the government whos jurisdiction they fall under. This isn’t a lifestyle most of us would choose but perhaps there is some merit to making this path easier to take for those who desire it.
Correcting it I would rephrase it to say that massive components of society are directly facilitated by the government as one example: (roads -> shipped goods, travel experiences, etc)
Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?
> Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?
Government is allowed to occasionally make the wrong decision. Perfection is an imperfect standard.
A radical relatively recent notion is that democratic systems of government which allowed the public to elect representatives to the decision-making positions within the government would alter this historical dynamic and would eliminate the concentration of real power in the hands of a small group of elites. This notion hasn't really worked out in the USA as it's rather clear that American politicians today almost universally serve as the equivalents of corporate middle managers within a larger power structure controlled by entities like large banks and hedge funds, industrial conglomerates in energy/tech/pharma/ag/etc, military industrial contractors and affiliated government bureaucracies, and corporate and state propaganda organizations, who funnel wealth up to a tiny minority (quite similar in proportional structure to say, the House of Saud's ~15,000 affiliates relative to the Saudi population of what, ~35 million?)
The alternative approach of communism has merely replaced one set of elites (inherited aristocratic wealth) with another (members of government bureaucracies selected by internal bureaucratic politics, see China for example), where the general population doesn't even have the illusion of being represented in a democratic process. In some cases (Cuba) this has indeed raised the average standard of living for the majority of the population, which is an uncomfortable fact for many, although repression of all dissent tends to be the price for that.
Now, maybe equalizing technology can get us out of this mess to some extent, but it truly dates back to the origins of what we call civilization. Kings and priests weren't really possible until farmers figured out how to grow far more food than they themselves needed; some narcissitic types figured out they could control this excess and use it to set themselves up at the top of the social pyramid (rather literally as in Egypt, Mesoamerica, etc.), and that's continued relatively unchanged right on up to the present day (with some improvements of course, for example the elimination of chattel slavery in most places).
In the past, it was really hard to sever ties with one society and government and go form a new one, but you could actually find places where nobody would immediately chase you away (even then most expansion was at the expense of natives, though). Nowadays that's impossible. A small number of people could maybe live in Siberia undetected, but that's more like partisan warfare than establishing a new country: The moment Russian government finds out anyone's there, they're getting deported. Your best bet for not living in an existing state is amassing an army (likely illegal in your home country) and invading a weak state. Good luck.
Also >You don't get to use any of society's infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You don't represent the rest of us, so why are you pretending to the authority to make stipulations like this? I'd imagine if there were any outlands left to retreat to, you would at least have some bartering going on there at the fringes.
You can't pick any parts. Choice has nothing to do with it. You serve the government, it does not serve you. You are a slave.
But you can pretend that you picked what society is asking you to do, if you like - that you picked how much tax you paid, that your government borrowed so many trillions, the way they spend that money, which wars they fight, etc, etc. If you don't believe me, try and change something.
I personally think that's an example of Stockholm syndrome, but each to their own.
https://vividmaps.com/non-private-land-in-united-states/
But you should check what you can do in it. It will be probably legal to park a vehicle there and very probably illegal to dig a moat around it (public means "of everyone", not just "free").
You can go to live in a forest. Your obligations to the jurisdiction remain.
Technically (in at least some systems), you do when you ask for residency - when you leave the parent's house to live somewhere defined in the territory, and make that formal. That is the "signature of the contract".
The simile of the "service" holds credit. Of course, do not forget that many other models were drawn in History (e.g.: Hobbes, "better compromise than the insecurity which comes with anarchy", etc).