So how do I opt out of the "social contract", unsubscribe from 911 and the postal service, and give up any protection I get from the police?
Oh. I have to move to another country and accept their social contract, instead. I have to go out of my way and leave the land I was born in and the continent that my ancestors lived in for centuries before these governments were even established, and refusing to do so means I have "accepted" a social contract whose terms can change outside my control and against my most spirited resistance.
I can accept an argument that voluntary human interaction does not scale well enough. I can accept an argument that we need institutional violence to keep a continent-wide civilization in order. I can accept an argument that the benefits of civilization outweigh the costs of this institutional violence. But don't pretend this state of affairs is voluntary. We are born into a system, raised knowing no other way for humans to live, made to recite pledges of allegiance in the classroom before we know the language well enough to understand what we are saying, and as adults, expected to obey arbitrary rules with no realistic recourse of change. And we are expected to believe that we freely chose the shape of the society we live in.
Yes, you can vote. You can even assert your constitutional rights and try to convince five judges, rather than fifty million voters. But even then, the voters might vote to amend the constitution to take your rights away. So in reality you're always at the mercy of authority--be it the authority of the courts or the authority of the mob.
When, exactly, in the Indian Wars did the tribes accept their social contract? Does the fact that your ancestors lost a war really constitute consent to the rule of the victorious government just because that government has conquered and subdivided your homeland?
I'm well aware that blood has been shed to secure what little choice we have under this government. Blood has also been shed to force an entire race, under gunpoint, to live under this government against their will. And blood was also shed to take two steps forward and one step back--no more slavery, but on the other hand, if your entire state votes to opt out of the federal government, it gets burnt to the ground by General Sherman.
There is no social contract. No one freely chose to live under government, though many of us do accept the status quo, and many more simply resign themselves to the belief that there is no alternative. We do have a society that seems to work acceptably, and that may outweigh the cost. Government seems necessary for civilization, and civilization is a wonderful thing. But voluntary? No, sir, it is not.
Government is not some exterior entity, it's the expression of the people at large. Of course, that's problematic because we (humans) ran out of spare land some time ago.
If you were part of one tribe and defeated by another here in the US >500 years ago, you could go elsewhere and either establish yourself there or regroup and take back your ancestral land in another conflict. But against European colonists with superior technology, it ended up as a string of lost conflicts. The colonists in turn were opting out of their default social contract, and established another where there was weak opposition.
Technology doesn't make people nicer or fairer, but is used for competitive advantage when fighting over resources. If the South had had better technology (including the socioeconomic kind) they might have secured their desired border and prevailed.
If/when it becomes practical to colonize other planets, we'll do the same things as before on a grander scale.
"Government is not some exterior entity, it's the expression of the people at large."
Perhaps collectively, in the same way that smog is the expression of motorists at large. But that doesn't mean anyone has consented to it, especially when that government is on balance injurious to some group of people living inside of it.
Oh. I have to move to another country and accept their social contract, instead. I have to go out of my way and leave the land I was born in and the continent that my ancestors lived in for centuries before these governments were even established, and refusing to do so means I have "accepted" a social contract whose terms can change outside my control and against my most spirited resistance.
I can accept an argument that voluntary human interaction does not scale well enough. I can accept an argument that we need institutional violence to keep a continent-wide civilization in order. I can accept an argument that the benefits of civilization outweigh the costs of this institutional violence. But don't pretend this state of affairs is voluntary. We are born into a system, raised knowing no other way for humans to live, made to recite pledges of allegiance in the classroom before we know the language well enough to understand what we are saying, and as adults, expected to obey arbitrary rules with no realistic recourse of change. And we are expected to believe that we freely chose the shape of the society we live in.
Yes, you can vote. You can even assert your constitutional rights and try to convince five judges, rather than fifty million voters. But even then, the voters might vote to amend the constitution to take your rights away. So in reality you're always at the mercy of authority--be it the authority of the courts or the authority of the mob.
When, exactly, in the Indian Wars did the tribes accept their social contract? Does the fact that your ancestors lost a war really constitute consent to the rule of the victorious government just because that government has conquered and subdivided your homeland?
I'm well aware that blood has been shed to secure what little choice we have under this government. Blood has also been shed to force an entire race, under gunpoint, to live under this government against their will. And blood was also shed to take two steps forward and one step back--no more slavery, but on the other hand, if your entire state votes to opt out of the federal government, it gets burnt to the ground by General Sherman.
There is no social contract. No one freely chose to live under government, though many of us do accept the status quo, and many more simply resign themselves to the belief that there is no alternative. We do have a society that seems to work acceptably, and that may outweigh the cost. Government seems necessary for civilization, and civilization is a wonderful thing. But voluntary? No, sir, it is not.
(Edited)