Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 5:47 pmWell if there powerful so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
Purpelia wrote:Purgatio wrote:
I see, I don't have an argument because the concept of 'the law' isn't normatively meaningful to, interesting...so why aren't you kicking up a fuss about the evil government putting all those murderers and rapists and kidnappers into prison? I mean, clearly according to you their criminal convictions mean nothing, so clearly the evil government is a mass kidnapper who is holding all these murderers and rapists in cages like animals, how inhumane of them.
Oh and don't get me started about how the evil, evil Child Protective Services rips children forcibly from their parents. Now, obviously there are laws giving them the power to do so when the children are being abused, but no, sorry, 'legal violence' is meaningless, so clearly CPS are bunch of evil kidnapping goons going around and ripping children forcibly away from their parents without justification. I mean, I'd say the justification is the law allows them to, but again, according to you, the law is meaningless, therefore CPS is really no different from random child-snatchers.
Oh, and don't get started about that coerced robbery that the government makes you pay up, which I call taxes, but you probably call theft, after all taxation laws which legalise the appropriation are, according to you, meaningless, and therefore taxation is really nothing more than theft in your view, yes?
Whilst you are fundamentally right I feel the way you presented your argument really fails to address him in a meaningful way. That is to say, you fail to make the case for why governments have legitimacy to use violence. Furthermore, you even mix examples of proper government behavior with those of gross and disgusting overreach as if they were equivalent and not just a disgusting cultural practice born of modernity. Anyway, I shall endeavor to fill out the blanks.
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Fundamentally, the reason why governments have legitimacy to do violence in support of their laws is because we the people empower them to do so. The ruling elite in any political system be that democracy or otherwise can only survive and be in power through the consent of the majority of the population. (revolution being voting by other means) And it is from this consent that they draw the legitimacy to use violence. They do the things they do in our name because we let them and indeed ask them to.
It's that simple.
Well I didn't make that argument because (a) I don't believe that law is automatically-illegitimate if made by a government that is non-democratic (ie an autocracy or a military junta or an absolute monarchy), otherwise that implies that people living in China or Saudi Arabia should be allowed to speed, refuse to pay traffic tickets or evade taxes, and (b) the reason why I believe law should be obeyed has nothing to do with the 'consent of the majority' but ultimately it comes down to the argument made by Finnis in his article 'Law as Coordination', namely that the law exists to solve 'coordination problems', by having a central authority make authoritative determinations which everyone in society can ultimately look to in order to coordinate their collective action and maximise the welfare and utility of all. Allowing every individual to make ad hoc determinations on a variety of matters, be it health, child welfare, traffic regulations, industrial regulations, environmental regulations would be so chaotic and disorderly it would nullify any expected benefits of such policies, unless a centrally-organised bureaucracy issues determinative instructions and coordinates nation-wide action in these areas towards a common end.
That's why it is morally-acceptable for a government to levy taxes to build roads, but it wouldn't be okay if I violently-coerced my local community to pay me money in order to build a road for them. One stems from a central and coordinative entity whilst the other does not, and therein lies the moral legitimacy of law, not the 'consent of the majority'.
We probably shouldn't take this debate too far otherwise it'll get to a threadjack, but to bring it back to the original topic, law must be obeyed qua law and that something is legally-sanctioned (ie deportation or imprisonment) is by no means a morally-insignificant or normatively-insignificant fact.