How about you actually address the argument in the OP, rather than pretending you've read Leviathan. — Bartricks

Again, I am addressing the OP. You just do not like what I have to say.

I'm still waiting for you to explain where you talk about organisations in the OP.

I'm still waiting for you to explain where you talk about organisations in the OP. — Banno

Oh, you need to read the OP then. And when you've understood its content - which has clearly yet to happen - you can try and address something in it. Or you can pretend you know things you do not know, and pretend you've read people you've not read. My prediction: you're going to do the latter.

In Saudi Arabia they believe the state rules by divine right.

Bartricks denies any legitimacy to the state, which means he needs to move to the US where we lay seige to the Capitol when we feel like it.

Why do Australians accept the authority of the state?

Bartricks denies any legitimacy to the state, which means he needs to move to the US where we lay seige to the Capitol when we feel like it. — frank

No, Frank, try again. I don't deny legitimacy to the state: I showed how it could be legitimate. Read the OP again. I don't believe I mentioned laying siege to anywhere.

As Bertrand Russell said "never trust a stupid man's report of what a clever man has said. He will unconsciously translate it into something he can understand. I would rather be reported by my bitterest of enemies among philosophers, than a friend ignorant of the subject".

Why do Australians accept the authority if the state? — frank

That's a question for Australian psychologists to answer. The philosophical question is whether the state is, in fact, legitimate.

Why do Australians accept the authority of the state? — frank

Oooo, that's a good question. And a puzzle. There's a few directions one might go, from subservience to the squattocracy to reliance on mateship. But I think I would put it down to "She'll be right" optimism and contempt for dickheads.

Why do Australians accept the authority of the state? — frank

Well, the ones that agree with the state accept it's authority, the ones that don't do like everywhere else and grumble while not getting too much attention.

In a futile attempt to bring this back to the argument in the OP rather than the psychology of Australians, here is the important point:

Seems to me quite clear, then: our parents have violated our rights and have voluntarily exposed us to the risks of living. As such our parents owe us a living and owe us protection for our rights. That is, our parents owe us the state institutions: they owe it to us to provide us with an education; owe it to us to provide us with a police force and justice system designed to protect our rights; and owe it to us to provide us with a welfare system that guarantees us a decent standard of living without us having to work or beg for it. And we are entitled to extract payment for these things from them with force if necessary; that is, it is justified to tax parents to pay for the state institutions.

Your parents have forced you to live a life. Well, we're all entitled to make them pay to insure us against the various risks we will face while living it. Yes?

I'll make it easier: who should pay for prisons? The innocent? Or criminals? Criminals, right? (Don't tell me who does pay for them - I am not describing the world, I am talking about what is just).

Same idea. It's not your fault you're living here. Not your fault you need to work for a living. Not your fault that you live in a world full of people who threaten to violate your rights. None of it is your fault. It's the fault of your parents. And so they should pay. They should pay to protect your rights - pay for the police etc - and they should provide you with what you need to live a decent life etc.

didn't choose to live a life here. That is something others - my parents - have made me do. — Bartricks

our parents have violated our rights and have voluntarily exposed us to the risks of living. — Bartricks

Determinism (?). Anyways, it depends a lot of how lucky you could be. Nobody chooses to be born. But also not anyone has a risky life. Others born in a wealthy/lovely life, others born in a dangerous place and then they will be in risk the rest of their lives. So I guess you are defending that the fact of not choosing to be born is a duty that our parents have to being punished for us or the state as a punishment.
Ok... but imagine this fatalism. Your kid is dead since the birth. What can happen here? Who is guilty of this situation? Because you are typing that every pregnant woman will have healthy kids, etc... but the reality is hardest than this.
So I guess being born in a situation where you actually can talk through a forum is a gift which is worthy to paying for.

Why do Australians accept the authority of the state? — frank

Because is a developed country which believes in the rule of law due to how good the system works.

FWIW I don't agree with Bartricks' conclusions here but I think the quality of argumentation against him in this thread is just awful.

Philosophical anarchism (the view that the state has no right to command, its subjects have no duty to obey, so the only rights and duties anybody has are the same ones they'd have in the absence of any state) is a pretty well-known position covered in any intro to political philosophy, usually alongside Hobbes, Rousseau, and Locke as archetypes of the three main alternatives.

You can disagree with it if you like, of course, but OP is clearly taking it as a premise and then deriving conclusions from that premise, and that derivation is clearly meant to be the topic here, not the premise itself.

If you insist on debating the premise anyway, try giving an argument against it instead of just saying the equivalent of "nuh uh" or acting like this is some novel complete nonsense that nobody in their right mind would legitimately defend.

if there is no state I am still entitled — Bartricks

No you ain't. You are entitled to the produce of land to which you hold the title, which if you do, you get from the state. No state, no entitlements, merely whatever you can hang on to you hang on to until you don't.

If you insist on debating the premise anyway, try giving an argument against it instead of just saying the equivalent of "nuh uh" or acting like this is some novel complete nonsense that nobody in their right mind would legitimately defend. — Pfhorrest

I don't see how one can mount an argument against such counterfactual nonsense. Entitlement is a social construct; you make like a tiger, expect to be shot and skinned.

An interesting point of view, though why would the state in this case be justified in dictating in what way parents shall provide for their children?

In addition, you state others are entitled to protect other people's rights. However, if that were the case then someone can use their subjective idea of rights to justify literally any action.

Entitlement is a social construct — unenlightened

Even if so, "society" and "state" are not synonyms.

Even if so, "society" and "state" are not synonyms. — Pfhorrest

No they are not. But 'state' relates to 'estate'. In order to institute property relations as a construct, a society has to lay claim to the land whose rights it wishes to confer. A state is a society that claims sovereignty(?) over a territory.

Does that join the dots sufficiently for you?

I disagree with your definition of a state, preferring the usual political science definition of "a monopoly on the legitimate use of force". A society doesn't need any claimed monopoly on the use of force to recognize claims to property. This doesn't change the fact that assignment of ownership to properties is a social construct. For analogy: the meaning of words is a social construct, words mean what they mean only because a linguistic community agree to use them that way, but that doesn't have to entail that there is some central authority on the meaning of words.

I actually just had a thread on this (the meaning of words thing), and will be doing one on the analogous property-rights topic eventually too.

if they so wish, can decide to protect my rights — Bartricks

You talk of rights, but you do not explain where rights come from. Did you create your rights ex nihilo? Did you just decide you had something called rights? Why would anyone else care that you "had rights" all by yourself?

They wouldn't.

@Banno called this kind of thinking "the sovereign individual". In another discussion I called it "atomization" which you said you didn't understand.

You didn't invent the concept of rights; that was done long before you were born. Besides being born to parents who were playing an exceedingly cruel hoax on you (probably you in particular) you were born into a society of non-sovereign, non-atomized individuals which granted you rights.

It's way too late (by centuries) for you to invent your sovereign individual rights. You missed the boat -- sorry. [individual creatures, no matter what species, are always enclosed in a matrix of other individuals and other species. There are no 'sovereign individuals' anywhere!]

Look: I can understand the wish to be a sovereign individual, having the privileges of an absolute monarch. The desire is latent in our id-self per Dr. Freud. It happens to be an infantile, narcissistic desire. It is embarrassing to see an adult elevating the self-centeredness of a helpless infant to a philosophical platform.

He wants his mum to pay for everything. Not a highpoint in the intellectual life of the forums.

An interesting point of view, though why would the state in this case be justified in dictating in what way parents shall provide for their children? — Tzeentch

It is because force can legitimately be used against those who are violating another's rights and also to make sure people pay restitution. For instance, if someone damages some of your property, then I - any anyone else for that matter - is justified in making them give you restitution. And thus as state institutions are really nothing more than bodies of people, those institutions would be justified in extracting money from parents with menaces. So, whereas there is no justification for taxing those who have not violating anyone's rights or who do not owe anyone restitution - and thus taxing regular folk is unjust - it is not unjust for us to tax parents. For it is their fault we have to live a life here and their fault our rights are liable to be violated and thus need protecting.

He wants his mum to pay for everything. Not a highpoint in the intellectual life of the forums. — Banno

And you're qualified to judge that?

You talk of rights, but you do not explain where rights come from. — Bitter Crank

They come from Ipswich. By train.

What, exactly, are you asking? We have rights. We recognise them using our reason. It's that faculty that few here know how to use effectively.

I asked you earlier if you had an imagination. You did not answer, so I will assume you do. Use it: imagine an island on which there lives a hermit. So an island on which there is no society. This hermit has built himself a little shack and grown himself some vegetables.

Now, does that hermit have any rights? For instance, if I just rock up on the island, may I kill him? Or will killing him be unjust? It will be unjust, yes? Because he has a right to life. See? No society. Yet he has a right to life. Again: there is no society on the island. No laws. No nothing. Just a hermit, a shack and so on. And yet it is blindly obvious to all those of moral sensitivity and intelligence that others are not morally permitted to treat the hermit in just any old way. He has a right to life, a right to that shack, to his vegetables and so on.

Don't ask 'why?' - we can give all kinds of backstories about that, but it won't make any difference to my case, which requires not that we can explain why we have rights, but only that we have them. So again, the important point is that he does have such rights, and that there are no human institutions on the island. And thus those who can reason clearly can recognise that rights are not constructs of human societies. Far from it, the legitimacy of a human society's institutions derives from whether and how well such institutions are respecting the rights we have.

That's all John Locke above. It's standard stuff. The 'problem' it generates - and it is not a problem, just the logical upshot - is that taxation is not justified. For I rock up on the island and I decide to protect the hermit's rights. That's something I'm entitled to do. I am not violating his rights in deciding to do this. But then, having decided to dedicate my life to protecting his rights, I insist he pays me - that he gives me space in his shack and a portion of his vegetables. And I threaten him with violence if he does not give me these things.

Well, that's clearly not something I am entitled to do. It would be quite different if the hermit freely recruited me to protect his rights. But he didn't - I just decided to protect them. And because of the lack of a freely negotiated agreement, I do not have any right to a portion of his possessions, and no right to use violence against him.

Yet that's what the state does to us. It taxes us - which is to extract money with menaces - in order to pay for itself. That's not something I am entitled to do to another in the state's absence, and so it is not something the state is entitled to do either, for we can only delegate to others that which we ourselves have a right to do.

But parents have violated our rights and have exposed us to risks that we did not consent to, and thus they can legitimately be made to pay to protect us from those risks. Hence what would be unjust if done to us - namely taxing us to pay for the protection of our rights without our consent to do so - is not unjust if done to parents.

As Benthem pointed out, the doctrine of natural rights is "so much flat assertion".

Argue something, you tedious troll.

Hey, you are welcome to ignore my posts.


But you can't bring yourself to do that.

no, I just choose not to. You are doing me a service.

Well, we might agree that this is tedious.

Your hermit only has property if, when you 'rock up', you decide that it is so.

aw, look at him trying to do a bit of philosophy. No, because it is clearly unjust of me to take his vegetables and shack.

Ah, well. There's nowt so queer as folk.

That's false. Isn't there a YouTube video you can post your inane comments underneath?

Once upon a time there were 10 early Homo sapiens adults kwho happened to be the only sentient species within the very large valley they found themselves in. The 10 were not related (beyond being the same species) and they had never met each other before. Each person was on his or her own, wandering about, foraging for nuts, berries, and tubers or fashioning spears and killed small game.

When one of the early people wanted to engage with someone else they used gestures and inarticulate noises, since they didn't have language yet [note, language isn't the issue here]. If one of them wanted to trade a roasted squirrel for some nice currants, the trade could be worked out.

Questions:

Did any of the 10 people have any rights? No.
Did any of the 10 people have any property? No.

Fast forward 100,000 years.

Once upon a later time, 100 people happened to live in close proximity to each other. Some of the people were children, some of the people were their parents, and some of the people were not related to anyone else. They tended some plantings of grains, but they still foraged and hunted. They could communicate with each other, so if they wanted to engage with each other, it was easy.

The place where they lived did not have a name. It wasn't organized. Shelters and piles of garbage were helter-skelter. There was no communal storage bin. Everybody kept their own little store of grain.

Questions:

Did any of the 100 people have any rights? No.
Did any of the 100 people have any property? No.
Did a government exist? No.

Fast forward 10,000 years.

Once upon a still-later time, 1,000 people lived together in a city with stone buildings. They raised grain and lentils, onions and parsley. They do not hunt or forage. A very minor potentate rules over the city and controls everything.

The very minor potentate divided up some of the land into little plots and said each person could raise whatever they wanted on the and, and they could keep it, except for 2% of the crop which the very minor potentate said belonged to him. People didn't have much in the way of material stuff, but they did have a little.

Questions:

Did any of the 1,000 people have any rights? Yes.
Where did their rights come from? From the very minor potentate's government.
Did any of the 1,000 people have any property? Yes.
Where did their property come from? From the very minor potentate's government.
Did a government exist? Yes, if you can call a very minor potentate a government, which you can.
Where did the very minor potentate get permission to rule over everybody? Executive Fiat.

The people didn't give themselves property. Until someone came along and created the idea of "property" and said, "All this is mine, and that little bit over there is yours. Keep your hands off my property or you'll be dead meat." the idea of having property couldn't exist. "Rights" to having property couldn't exist either until they were created by (in this case) the very minor potentate. "You have a right to grow whatever you want on your little plot of land. Remember to keep your hands off my property. You have no right to it whatsoever."

The government, such as it was--a tin-pot potentate--gave the people rights. Maybe he shouldn't have, but he did.

What happened to the 1,000 people living in the city run by the very minor potentate is a crude model of what would happen in the future:

a) people live together in large numbers and need a coordinator
b) the coordinator of all the activities a large number of people undertake becomes a government
c) the government, with the assent of the people, creates rights, or revokes them.

In time, people become very accustomed to the various rights they have and come to think that rights, like apples, grow on trees. They don't. They come from a collective of some sort that has the necessary power to either create or destroy rights. It might be the collective of all the king's horses and all the king's men, or it might be the self-constituted revolutionary government, the junta, or a committee democratically elected by the citizens to form a government snd define rights and responsibilities.

However it is done, rights are granted.

The hermit has rights. It is wrong to kill him, yes? He is entitled to defend himself against your deadly attack. So he has a right to life. Yet there is no society - no one 'granting' him that right.

1. If rights are granted by humans, then the hermit has no rights
2. the hermit has rights
3. Therefore rights are not granted by humans.

Furthermore, you are not addressing the main argument of this thread, which is that taxing parents does not violate their rights, whereas taxing the rest of us does, other things being equal. But well done for focussing on the less interesting claim!