What do our global positioning system (GPS) coordinates have to do with our freedom to think and act uninterfered with by government?
In the early 21st century, life on Earth requires humans to comply with rules (or deal with the consequences of not complying with them), rules that vary substantively based on the laws enforced by the multitude of governments that preside over different parts of the planet. Where we live means that we will have to pay a certain percentage of our earnings to stay out of jail, that we will be allowed some forms of personal expression and recreational experience but denied others, that our peaceful choices may be regulated or restricted or prohibited. These are the conditions that we’re accustomed to. We are born into a world with established and powerful institutions authorized to scrutinize and interfere with our private and economic behavior. In some countries like China, filmmakers like Dhondup Wangchen, whose stories expose statism’s impact on people, are incarcerated for years. In other countries like the United States of America, people like Ronald Sekul, adults who grow and sell plants to other adults, are exposed to the risk of losing all of their property, paying steep fines, and serving jail time.
We’ve been conditioned to accept as normal and somewhat inevitable the legal artifices that do, in fact, make our GPS coordinates so significant. But, thinking about it, do you think it’s normal or disturbingly arbitrary how you and fellow human beings are treated by governments all over the world?
It’s actually creepy that the physical location of human beings should result in some being more or less free than others. When you look at this picture…
… do you see any clues that would lead you to believe that your freedom is more or less in jeopardy based on where you live? You can’t. Only a political map would remind you of that man-made mess. Most of us probably can’t avoid thinking of “nations” when we look at a photo-realistic depiction of the Earth. But political borders are not really there when you see the world as it is, not when you look at it as its pictured above and not when you think of your daily social experiences. After watching the Earth spin once in its rotation, it would be “insane” to think to yourself…
“If I were to land on this planet in one place as opposed to another, in addition to contending with location-specific climate- and geography-based challenges, it is apparent (!) that I would also be more or less free from being interfered with at one intersection of latitude and longitude.”
We’re accustomed to our political maps, the lines that indicate where one set of rules ends and another begins, where particular groups of enforcers dominate, where some styles of coercion and other degrees of freedom and control prevail.
And yet, even though this is all we’ve ever known, there’s something unnerving… genuinely counterintuitive… about the notion that a person’s particular location on the surface of the planet— that fact, all on its own— means that he or she is more or less free. Such a notion must discombobulate anyone who thinks about it at any length. How the heck does a person’s location on the planet relate in any way to his freedom? We all know that there is no GPS coordinate that has anything to do with a person’s right not to be interfered with. We have to remind ourselves of the convoluted legalistic schemes and bureaucratic regimes governments that make the world as it is, and we have to consider that simply because this has been the case for a long time does not mean that it is morally valid. It may be the case that we alter our behavior so that we can avoid fines and stay out of jail, but our compliance with coercive laws does not represent a form of agreement with them. There is no such thing as consent under duress, only life-preserving and freedom-retaining compliance.
GPS coordinates do make a difference, in some cases radical differences, to people’s ability to exercise their will. Should they? Is it a good thing that this is the case?
Does a person born in Beijing, as a demonstrable consequence of being born in that physical place, have less of a moral claim to a life uninterfered with by his State compared to a person born in New York? Of course not. That moral claim is available to all individuals regardless of what government they invoke it against, for it is itself the very moral foundation of government— protecting individuals from coercion. I have reached a point of profound skepticism about the feasibility of “limited government,” which has always sounded better in theories developed by classical liberals than it has worked out (can ever work out?) in practice. But I’ll say this.
As human beings are the same everywhere on this planet, so must governments everywhere be constitutionally prevented from interfering with or in any way plundering people’s voluntary, purposeful behavior and their social interactions based on mutual consent. There is no multicultural case for coercion. There is no case for coercion whatsoever. Forget the current political map, forget nation-states as we’ve known them. Consider the Earth as it is, and then think about human beings, in social settings, interacting with one another voluntarily and peacefully, sharing experiences, trading, working together. Why spoil this picture by then conjuring into the scene governments with the power to initiate force? Instead, imagine how governments everywhere ought to be in light of an understanding of human beings as they are.
Here’s what I mean. A government of, by, and for human beings (and no other government makes sense) must appreciate what human beings are.
Humans are sentient, carbon-based organisms, and like all living things, we are mortal. We only have so much time. Once we’re gone, we’ll never exist again. As humans, our distinct biochemical composition and our reliance on a certain atmospheric mix and nutritional intake require all of us to undertake the actions necessary for us to stay alive. But human beings must choose to do what it takes to survive. We are all unique individuals, genetically, intellectually and physically and in terms of our specifics of place and time. Our ability to think and exercise our will voluntarily is universal, but our choices belong to each of us alone, and we bear the responsibility for and must live with the consequences of our choices as individuals, first and foremost. Errors and mistakes are a natural part of our life experience, and some of us are better at processing specific kinds of information or are more socially adept or are more athletic or are less eloquent or are more trustworthy or are less inclined to violence…. what I’m driving it is that we are all the same bag of chemicals, but not one individual among us is, in fact, equal to any other.
Humans are all mortal, carbon-based beings, equipped with conceptual consciousness and free will, and all humans are individuals, each with its own distinct GPS coordinate, living and learning according to specifics of time and place and culture and family and genetic inheritance, universally free and universally unequal.
So, if humans all have the same basic capacities, but also are universally individualistic, then justice begins with the overall protection of the sphere of human action within which individuals pursue their purposes according to their unique capacities and situations in a voluntary and peaceful manner and justice ends with the punishment of coercion and fraud, which are the ways in some humans attempt to treat other humans as if they aren’t human beings, but instead merely means to their ends.
Not all obstacles to human action are thought up, proposed by, implemented, and enforced by human beings. There are natural external forces, such as gravity, that influence us every day. Natural law cannot be canceled, there are no exemptions from the effects of climate, geography, and tidal forces. There is no way for humans to thrive by evading the nature of the world as it is. Similarly, there is no way for human civilizations to thrive when governments pretend that human beings are natural resources, to be used as if they have no free will, as if their individual preferences or purposes or desires or imaginations or ambitions can be dictated or prohibited, as if their local knowledge is inferior to the priorities of a far-off bureaucrat. Enforcing laws that contradict the nature of the governed is as ineffective a spur to humanity’s social progress as ignoring the laws of the natural world would be to humanity’s technological progress. I previously posted that “Coercion Ain’t Ever Moral.” Well, it isn’t particularly practical either!
The circumstances of life on Earth today may incline us to say that the legal codes of countries determine how free we are, and there are obvious concrete ways in which this would seem to be the case. But humans are free before there are laws, as a function of our nature. So why are there so many governments pretending this is not the case? Who benefits from artificial borders separating us from each other, making it harder to communicate and trade as individuals without complying with costly and disruptive and unnecessary interference? Who benefits from perpetuating the notion that coercive laws are necessary and that governments are indispensable?
The disturbing legal limits that prevent humans from being as free as they are naturally entitled to be, like nation-states and political organizations, will seem absurd to some future civilization, whose participants will breathe a sigh of relief that they live in a world in which their freedom to think and act is the same regardless of where on Earth, or in the cosmos, they happen to be.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Before the kind of world you envision could exist, it first is necessary to create such a realm somewhere on the earth. We thought that is what happened in America as a result of the efforts of the Founders after they won their fight for independence from the British monarchy.
What the Founders created was unique in the history of mankind, a society which attempted to secure the rights of the individual enshrined in a Constitution which attempted to circumscribe the powers of a divided government. It should be no surprise that there were flaws in the armor manifest as chinks in which the seeds of tyranny could take root.
Our experience and perspective has allowed us to appreciate just what corrections in misunderstanding must be made to tie down the gigantic government which has grown to engulf us. Fortunately there are among us men and women who have made us aware of what went wrong and pointed out the path which we might choose to take if we are to regain the liberties we cherish.
That there are those in this world who would use murderous force against those they seek to control or to silence is without question. That each of us is too easily outnumbered is too obvious as well. The need for a government to protect us against those who would bully or invade is readily evident. I believe Jefferson indicated that such an entity would at once need to be quite powerful but that its use of force would need to be constrained so as not to be misused thus encroaching on our liberty itself.
I have set out to answer your parenthetical query as to whether such a limited government could ever be. I contend that such must be our goal, first in our own corner of the world, as a beacon to show the rest of those on the planet that it is possible and worth the effort.
The trouble is that there are among us those who envision a government which does control and enslave the productive for the benefit of those who are deemed to be deserving of the beneficence of the rulers. The mere fact that such people can harbor or flaunt such beliefs qualifies them to be antisocial. The implementation of their schemes and premises requires the violation of individual rights of productive people through taxation and “regulations.” If an individual were to have such premises and acted accordingly he would be guilty of violent crimes and would be considered to be sociopathic.
I have always wondered how such people, though educated and well dressed and groomed, could pass laws to accomplish the same egregious violations of individual rights, and continue to be held in high esteem, re-elected over and over again, and permitted to remain free.
The fault lies in the ideas which prevail among those who elect them to office. I am not aware that their premises have ever really been challenged openly except in literature in the works of Ayn Rand and in the nonfiction of those in the libertarian movement. I imagine there are others, about whom I am not aware, who have identified these evils and written about them who do not call themselves libertarian.
Regarding your question: “Who benefits from perpetuating the notion that coercive laws are necessary and that governments are indispensable?”
We see it everyday in the contentions that it is implicitly justified to take … not to persuade, not to suggest, not to pressure socially, but to forcibly seize… what belongs to somebody in the name of being compassionate to those who suffer. That argument probably makes sense to those who fail to grasp the concept of individual liberty and the consequence ultimately of granting any justification to those who would tax in principle.
Although it might be impossible to change the minds of those who have held altruistic beliefs and statist premises all their lives, certainly the young are more likely to appreciate the need to defend the idea of the rights of the individual including his or her right to the fruits of their own productivity.
There is always a younger generation open to hearing choices which our opposition would as soon prevent them from even being exposed to at all. China still imprisons men who speak out against their dictatorial rule but we are still relatively free to speak our minds here.