So, I'm reading Elizabeth Anderson's "Private government" (yeah lots of reading this trip) and to be honest, this is probably going to spark a lot of convo from me. I know I'm on vacation, but I still can't avoiding WANTING to post when I have something to say. And not wanting to lose my train of thought, I figured I'd write this.
So...authority. From a secular worldview, is it justified. The book talks a lot about the history of governments and authority, and the idea of public authority and private authority, and I wanted to give my views as it might be useful later for another project I've been working on.
Much of authoritarianism is justified in Christianity. God is the ultimate dictator, and Anderson talks a lot about how Christians had a "chain of things" to justify people having authority over others. God has authority over monarchs, monarchs have authority over subjects, nobles have authority over serfs, masters over slaves, husbands over wives and ultimately...employers over the employee. And, as we know there's significant protestant work ethic style thinking in which people need to be given direction from authority to give them purpose to their lives and cause them for falling into sin. As a humanist, and a western political philosophy enjoyer, I FUNDAMENTALLY reject these ideas of authority.
From my perspective, we are an advanced species of intelligent ape, and there's no valid justification for authority. As I see it, there are two models of governance and authority. There's the idea that government arose as strong men organized loyal subjects to conquer and subjugate their fellow humans and subject them to inhumane hierarchies and autocracies that dominate every sphere of their life. This form of authority is, to me, morally illegitimate, although it may be very legitimate from a "might makes right" standpoint. I believe that ultimately, just authority comes from mechanisms like the social contract and the idea of consent of the governed, as well as democratic support from the people themselves. This is the more morally justified model of authority. In the former model, authority is imposed on people from the outside against their well, and in the second, authority is based on the popular will of the people. In the first, the government oppresses the people, in the latter, the government serves the people.
History seems to show that the history of states mostly follows the first model, with the second model being a legal fiction that came about during the enlightenment and later. We reformed our states to reflect the ideals of the latter, and in such greatly improved our quality of life, but at the same time there are some models where we still reflect the logic of the former in some ways.
As Anderson's book would point out, with the name of it being "private government", our work places still largely reflect the "old world" logic. Anderson talked in her first chapter about how the market used to be this left wing idea, but back then, it was the 1800s. And we were talking America. We know Anderson's work ethic book talked about the history and brutality of capitalism in Europe, but early on, in America, it was a bit different. It used to be that the market was seen as a way for people to earn their own way, acquire their own land, and be self sufficient. The logic that government socialism was bad came from the "gift economy" of Europe and how nobles were beholden to monarchs who gave them stuff in exchange for loyalty. Work used to be about self sufficiency, as one could just acquire a plot of land and be independent. A lot of our conservative american ideals like the american dream and our exceptionalism came from the early 1800s and the founding of the country. But eventually, post civil war, we industrialized, much like Europe, and capitalist relations became oppressive, much like Europe.
Nowadays, the American dream is mostly a thing of the past (IMO), something that people cling to, but had been long lost. We're not in the early 1800s any more. We're not an agrarian society, we're an advanced industrial to post industrial society, much like Europe. Most people work for an employer, much like Europe, and people are forced to be subject to mini dictatorships known as "work places." We consider this "voluntary", which apparently justifies them, but when one's access to the basics of life are tied to labor, how can we truly consider this the case? We can't.
Socialists talk a lot about wanting to democratize the work place. Im apathetic on this. I still have more traditional liberal ideals on the market. I believe the core problem is people being forced to work in the first place. I see work as inherently unpleasant, and an necessary evil. I see the modern workplace as a severe infringement on our freedoms, with private government being almost as oppressive as government government. Anderson portrays the work place as almost like a communist government. We wouldnt tolerate a communist government infringing our freedoms in such a way, but in our dystopian capitalist market logic with forced labor, we see this as a okay, because people "voluntarily" agreed to it. Even though you dont functionally have a choice.
So how do we fix this? Well, the best approach is with the government government. Of course, right "libertarians" will say what private entities agree to is of no business of the government's, but given the transactions arent particularly voluntary, regulation, taxation and spending on universal social programs, etc. actually can be morally justified. After all, the entire logic behind the social contract IMO is that we set aside a little bit of our natural liberty to enjoy the rest in greater security. We give up the right to murder to avoid being murdered. We give up the right to steal so we can enjoy greater security in property rights. By the same logic, we can give up some of our absolute liberty to accept bad business deals, to ensure that only ethical deals exist, or to ensure that the deals are actually voluntary. As Anderson has touched on, and I am also a believer of, there's more than one kind of liberty anyway. Most accept only negative liberty, ie, the right to be left alone, but anderson talks of positive liberty and republican liberty. I emphasize various brands of positive liberty myself, believing both in van parijs' "real freedom" as well as widerquists "freedom as power to say no", not just to any job but no jobs.
The "propertarians" (as widerquist) would call them act as if taxation is theft, but in reality, so is property, as Anderson points out, simply enforcing property rights requires a massive sacrifice of the community in respecting one's property rights. It only makes sense the community as a whole gets paid back for this right, and the inconvenience and burdens placed on them. I think the best way to do this is to ensure that every individual is entitled to enough property to ensure no one is forced into wage slavery. And it should be paid for with taxation. Some people might not like that, but tough crap, I dont like being forced to work for others just to obtain a wage in order to survive and meet my basic needs. Wage labor in the form that exists is literally a form of slavery, just one in which we went our lives out on an hourly basis instead of being owned outright. There's nothing wrong with wage labor, as long as it's voluntary, just as there's nothing wrong with consensual sex, as long as it isn't rape.
If we want to reclaim the true american dream, the one of the early 1800s, we need to implement a UBI, universal healthcare, and other universal services as we see fit. This is justified simply in the people demanding it, and demanding our society reflect this new philosophy and way of thinking. If our society is just, and our society reflects the second model of governance and authority, the government is our servant. It is morally and legally required to do what we ask of it. And if this means a curtailing of property rights, so be it, these rights arent natural ones from god, but human ones from people anyway. People created them, people can take them away. What is unjust is forcing us to live according to these undemocratic edicts based on divine command theory or some other anti democratic logic and imposing a system on people that functionally enslaves them. As I always say with human centered capitalism, either our society exists to serve us, or we exist to serve it. A society that exists to serve us is one that is legitimate, in my ideal on authority. One where we are forced to serve it, is one that is unjust, and one that can justly be dismantled by the people, if they so choose. Much of our modern logic for the justification of the states is based on the model of democracy and social contract, but for some reason property rights and the consequences that come from them are still treated as this inalienable divinely inspired right that cant be changed, even if they impose negative conseuqneces that condemn the majority of humanity to de facto slavery and oppression for most of their lives. I say we change it. There's no reason we can't. These ideas only hold as much power as we collectively give them, and as much as our social structures impose them on us.
Obviously, I'm not, in any of this, calling for the abolishment of property itself, as some leftists do. All societies need a system of determining who gets what. There's nothing wrong with a system of private property, within reason. We just shouldnt treat it as something handed down from god and treat it as sacred to the point that it enslaves us. These social structures exist to serve us. We should make them serve us. And that's my view on that. And on authority in general.
EDIT: As for how we can avoid UBI falling into the of a "gift economy", the key is to make it universal and unconditional. UBI, and its correspondiing universal services like healthcare, and education, need to be treated as universal rights every citizen and possibly legal resident is entitled to. The fewer restrictions, the better. The government will only hold power over people if it sets conditions on those things to extract obedience on people. If people are entitled to these things as citizens and they cannot be taken away, then the people will not have their freedom abridged. Quite frankly, conditional welfare and employment are greater threats to freedom than UBI and other corresponding ideas are.
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