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Why Government Should Be Voluntarily
Chosen

by Michael S. Rozeff
by Michael S.
Rozeff

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I have earlier
argued that choosing one's government is a basic choice or
decision right that follows from Thomas Jefferson's ideas of rights
contained in the Declaration of Independence; and that following out
Jefferson's reasoning we arrive at the concept of panarchy (see here). Rights arguments do not
persuade everyone. The arguments in this article make no use of the
concept of rights.

The question
arises: What is government? Government must be defined by some
quality that it uniquely has that distinguishes it from other things
that are not government. That quality has to do with principles or
rules that govern action. But what rules and what actions?
Governments vary greatly in the scope of actions they govern, in
their methods of governing, and in their relations to the persons
governed.

There are all
sorts of governments at many levels. To simplify the discussion, let
us think only of national governments associated with States. Let us
suppose for a moment that the reason that these governments vary is
that the nations that they rule also vary. The Russians have their
form of government and the Chinese have theirs. This is, at least in
part, a matter of taste. Although these governments may have
originated in conquest or in other ways, they found stability, at
least in recent centuries, in ruling over amalgamations of people
with some sort of identity or focal and shared points of belief and
value and often religion and language. Insofar as an entire people
had a say in the form of their government, that government may
reflect that say. There is a kind of crude collective choice that
either has been made or agreed to in some way or else brought about
by force and custom, at least to some degree. I am not saying that
governments come about by collective choice. I am saying that it
plays a part, and that this helps explain variation among
governments.

In some sense,
the existence of a variety of states and governments shows that we
acknowledge variations of preferences for government among large
aggregations of persons. But if a part of the choice of government
is collective, then we should recognize also that collective choice
glosses over the vast variation we have as persons by aggregating in
some way over our personal preferences and beliefs. If government is
government of a population of people, it suppresses the expression
of preferences for government among a large range of sub-populations
and sub-groups of people. One cannot logically contend that a
national government rests upon the consent of the governed without
simultaneously recognizing that it does not rest upon the consent of
sub-groups among the governed who express preferences not to be
ruled by that national government.

Despite the
state-by-state variation, there really are not too many different
kinds of government to choose from. Yes, there is a large difference
between being ruled by Mugabe and Bush. And individual governments
do not all have the same mix of programs; but the fact is that if
one tries to escape a land with big government and find one
with small government, one is apt to have a difficult time of
it without having to move out of one's native land. Choosing a
government that is different from one's current one is apt to be
very costly. It is even more costly to notify the world that you
belong to no State or to renounce the State of your birth.
Governments use force to keep people under their rule. Such force
includes majority rule in democracies. The costs of getting out from
under the rule of force are high. Each of us is apt to go along to
get along. The result is that governments tend to be more
homogeneous in appearance than they otherwise might be and that our
choices among existing governments are not as broad as they might
otherwise be.

The point is
that if each of us could voluntarily choose the government we wanted
without having to move or move very far away or without having to
move to a foreign land, the range of government options could only
rise and probably rise substantially. To put it another way, the 8
million people in New York City, if given a choice of government in
that region, will likely exhibit a vastly greater range of
preferences than the single one that they now have. They have many
different ideas of what the scope of government should be, what its
rules should be, how it should enforce those rules, and what its
relations to those it governs should be. In a nation of 300 million
people, it is obvious that there are vastly more personal
preferences about government than are reflected in the existence of
one national government for all. Personal preferences for different
kinds of governments are not finding expression in our current
arrangement. We have far more choice of fruit juices and drinks in a
supermarket aisle than we do of government, and yet the choice of
government probably has a far greater impact on our lives than
whether we choose grape or cranberry juice.

If you think
that you should have your choice of cereal, or spouse, or mode of
transport, or job, or religion, even if the reason is simply that
this is what you want, then, by the same token, you should have your
choice of government if that is what you want. In these cases, I am
speaking of making peaceful choices that do not oppress
others. It is not necessarily your rights that come into this. It is
simply your will, that is, the expression of who you are. To be
human is to act, and to act is to choose; and to choose is to choose
freely (still in the sense of peacefully). I am not saying at this
point that choosing and expressing your personal humanity is a good
or right thing (although I believe that and say that in my
conclusion). I am saying that if you choose products and services,
and nearly all of us do, then you logically can think of choosing
government inasmuch as government purports to provide various goods
and services. Phrases like "consent of the governed" and "no
taxation without representation" express this choice. Voting is also
said to be an expression of this choice, and, even if it is not in
reality such an expression, the idea of choosing one's government is
still present in the rationales for voting.

In general,
your choice of cereal disagrees with your neighbor's choice but
since you each choose what you want, you each get what you want
without harming each other. Choosing government can be the same kind
of thing. You each can be better off by making your own choice. At
present, this is not the case, and it is hard to imagine it as a
reality because both you and he are now presented with only one
cereal and you must both eat it, whether you like it or not. At
best, you may vote for a person, the effect of your vote on that
cereal being nil. This is all you and he have ever seen. You do not
choose a government itself or a method of governing or rules of
governing; you express yourself, to no effect, concerning a few
people who may or may not run that government. An alternate reality,
that you actually choose your own governance, seems quite unnatural
in the present state of affairs, even though it is as natural as the
fact that you and your neighbor choose different churches, or that
two members of the same church choose to attend two different
universities. America was inhabited by hundreds of Indian tribes
with different forms of government, and even today there are
hundreds of Indian nations within the borders of the U.S.A. If they
can have their governments, there is little reason why other
sub-groups cannot have theirs.

The
disagreements over government that you may have with your neighbor
can be and are far greater than the disagreements over cereal
because they are over more serious matters that each of you values.
He may wish to make war on Iran, while you may wish to build rockets
to Saturn. He may ardently desire Social Security, and you may want
a strictly limited government. You may want a monarch, and he may
want no government at all. The greater these differences are, the
stronger the argument is that you should each have the government of
your choice, for then you will each gain more from getting what you
want and each of you will experience less harm by being made to
endure policies with which you disagree.

But I neither
want to overstate the differences among people nor make them seem so
great as to render life impossible without relying on a strong man
to rule over them. The existing pattern of government by states
engenders and amplifies differences and plays upon them.
Political leaders of states create loyalties to their states by
finding and exploiting differences both between states and within
states. They find and also create and encourage rival groups and
play them off, one against another. Their "solutions" to differences
involve force, fraud, and payoffs (economic and psychological) that
make them as much indispensable as possible. They are the exclusive
priests of their religion of the State which makes them and the
State appear to be the indispensable means of social cooperation and
economic benefits. They would have us believe that we are unable to
cooperate without them and unable to work together in a productive
economy. Their system of rule depends on inculcating and educating
us in the belief that without them and the State, we would be at
each other's throats. They pose to us an unnecessarily restricted
(and thus false) range of choice: the State or chaos. They educate
us to be divided and reliant upon them for our welfare. They play
upon our insecurities while holding out promises of generous amounts
of security at a low and reasonable price; but these are promises
that they cannot keep. They are Ponzi schemes in which they return
to us our own contributions after deducting large amounts for
themselves and their favorites. They are schemes in which the
returns produced by one segment of the population are transferred to
another segment, without there being any genuine increases in
returns brought about by the State and with all such increases being
brought about by ourselves and made to seem as if they are bounties
of the State.

Judging from
the frequency and severity of civil wars, it seems conclusive that
disagreements over government are strong. The rulers of ruling
states greet secessions and independence movements with dismay and
force. They mobilize public opinion to support the State. A typical
litany of rationalizations can be found here,
as Putin defends Russian attacks on Chechnya. Chief among these is
the fear of chaos and the opposing idea that the State brings unity,
strength, and order. The Framers of the U.S. Constitution used
similar arguments, and this occurred immediately after a
confederation of states without a strong central power defeated a
major European power! What does Russia, which already occupies
one-seventh of the earth's land surface have to fear from Chechnya?
The fear of Putin and all leaders of states is that one concession
to one breakaway district or group will lead to further concessions
to other groups. This position of Putin is clearly expressed in that
news article. The implicit and unexpressed value is that the State
of Russia must be maintained. Russia is a value in and of itself,
they believe. Lincoln's glorification of Union is quite similar. If
pressed, the statists like Putin do not peacefully argue that
all Russians will gain by a united Russia, and still less do they
offer this as a voluntary choice to Russians. Instead, they
resort to force. The Chechnyans (and other breakaway groups in other
lands) clearly do not see the value in remaining under
Russian rule. An independence movement speaks for itself. It
expresses its own values. Those who wish to suppress it do not. This
is entirely obvious. The strength and success of statist thought is
evidently remarkable if something that is so obvious needs to be
spelled out and emphasized. The American independence movement that
broke with Great Britain expressed its own values, and they did not
include submission to King George. No argument of his could have
held up against the revealed preferences of the rebels who had not
consented to his rule. Force is not an argument. It is what we
resort to when argument fails.

The propaganda
of the ruling states is so strong that it seems novel to raise the
possibility of non-territorial governance, as well as
governance arrangements that cover a wider scope of possibilities
that are yet to be discovered and realized. This is the idea of
panarchy, namely, that there can be (as John Zube writes): "The
realization of as many different and autonomous communities as are
wanted by volunteers for themselves, all non-territorially
coexisting, side by side and intermingled, as their members are, in
the same territory or even world-wide and yet separated from each
other by personal laws, administrations and jurisdiction, as
different churches are or ought to be." If we maintain the fictional
idea that is drummed into us by the State that we cannot agree to
live side by side while having our differences, then we cannot even
imagine panarchy. The State has then cut our thinking off at
the root. It has replaced independent thought, voluntary and free
choice, peaceful expression of personal values, and peaceful
association with others by force, fraud, fear, and falsity.
The State cannot logically maintain that it is of prime important
for the welfare of all of those within its borders when persons
within those borders express clearly that they are worse off being
ruled by that State and wish to dissociate from it. The State's
force is neither persuasion nor argument nor an expression of what a
dissenting person values. It is a suppression of that
dissent.

The basic
reason why government should be voluntarily chosen is that in this
way, each of us can get more of what we want and less of what we do
not want. The fact that we personally disagree over what government
is and should be counts as a reason why it pays us to agree to have
rival governments in and on the same land (with one major exception
to be noted shortly). The fact that we, to some extent, have
coalesced into different kinds of governments as in nation-states
(even if the equilibrium is held together by force and deceit),
counts as a demonstration that cooperation among rival governments
is possible. The earth is one great territory that contains many
governments within its limits. There is no reason why the territory
of the United States or any government cannot contain many more
independent jurisdictions, up to and including the very smallest,
which is a single person. Government should be a matter of personal
choice.

The argument
that it pays each of us to agree to have rival governments has one
important exception, namely, except for those people who gain
by ruling over other people. Some of us want a government that rules
other people than ourselves even when they do not want to be
so ruled. Some of us not only want to tell others how to live and
govern themselves, they want to force them to live in a
particular way. This kind of person we may, following James
Ostrowski's analysis,
call a fascist. I quote him:

"What shall we
call this broad-based statist coalition? It is apparent that there
are two basic political mindsets: libertarian and fascist,
the latter term being used here in its colloquial sense to mean
imposing your will on others. Even a more academic definition is not
far from my usage. Fascism involves ‘the glorification of the state
and the total subordination of the individual to it. The state is
defined as an organic whole into which individuals must be absorbed
for their own and the state's benefit.' (Columbia Encyclopedia,
6th ed.)"

Panarchy is
unalterably opposed to the fascist idea, which is the
imposition of a government (or state) upon a person who does not
want that government. The libertarian idea explained by Ostrowski is
similarly unalterably opposed to the fascist idea. If the fascists
do not give ground peacefully and if ways are not discovered to get
out from under their rule, then there is no alternative except for
the panarchists and libertarians to resort to defensive force as the
American revolutionists did.

A truly
American ideal is that of Jefferson, which is the voluntary choice
of one's government. This ideal was radical in the eighteenth
century and it is radical now. It is the idea of liberty extended to
choice of government. The idea of liberty is the polar opposite of
the idea of fascism. The idea of liberty has not yet been achieved.
We have drifted far, far from it in the direction of fascism.
Fascist ways of thought are prevalent in America, so much so that
the resurgence of liberty seems at times but a dream. And yet
liberty will prevail because the fascist idea is basically an
evil idea inasmuch as, among other things, it suppresses humanity
and human beings. Fascism rules by force and fraud, but it will not
withstand exposure to truth or to the aspirations of living life
fully that are within each and every human being. The latter
statements are value-laden. In neutral terms, the same idea can be
expressed as follows. There are very large opportunities present
when people are suppressed and unable to achieve their preferred
values. The people can achieve much higher returns by re-organizing
and removing the suppression. The system in place that suppresses
these values and returns maintains itself because there are high
costs of effecting the change. Sooner or later, however, the good
people of this world will find ways to lower those costs in order to
get the returns. They will end or at least reduce the domination of
the fascists.

Many of us are being held captive by the
State under a government that we do not prefer. I refer, not just to
libertarians or anarchists or minarchists or greens or socialists or
democrats or republicans or any political classification, narrow or
broad, but to all of us who are not fascists. Instead of
combating each other, we should recognize that we are all
prisoners being held in the same prison. Our common enemy is the
fascist who refuses to allow us the freedom to choose our own
governments. Our common enemy is the fascist who insists on herding
us all into the same wars and the same programs under the same rules
enforced by a monopoly government. And when we succumb to the
temptation to make the other guy have the kind of government that we
demand, then we become the fascist.

Let us demand
our liberty and free ourselves from fascist thinking, no matter what
our political persuasion is. Let us understand that this means not
imprisoning others within the walls of our own parochial beliefs by
the fetters of a national monopoly government or any other monopoly
government. Let us understand that we cannot have our liberty
without the other fellow having his. Let us recognize that our enemy
really is the fascist idea of "imposing your will on others." As
soon as we attempt to rule others and attempt to bring about a
system in which our views prevail and prevent others from
choosing, we contribute to our own defeat. We are imprisoning
ourselves and allying ourselves with the fascists. We are
intolerantly dis-allowing the voluntary choice of
government.

January 2,
2009

Michael S. Rozeff [send him mail] is a retired
Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New
York.

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