I’m not sure we gave up the right to exact individual retribution but merely agreed to hold that right in abeyance so long as the duties of the state were properly exercised. The distinction is narrow but important when considering the moral right to civil disobedience.
I’ve always liked the social contract theory but with a few riders.
Any contract made at the wrong end of a gun is non-binding.
How did my great-great-grandfather gain a right to permanently bind me or my daughter.
Therefore a contract made by great-great-grandfather at gun point is non-binding.
So I’m a constitutionalist but I don’t want the constitution to become set in aspic the way the US constitution seems to have become.
For contracting to work there has to be an alternative. Therefore, if I don’t like the deal on offer in the UK I can influence for all by lobbying for it to be changed or for myself by moving to Australia.
So I’m okay with Hobbes till he starts on Absolute Monarchy and non-separation of powers. I fundamentally don’t accept that the price of civil peace is the expectation of some level of abuse of power and I think it naïve to expect that someone who has absolute power will be able to tell when they over stepped the bounds of acceptable behaviour. I am a great bethinker in separation of powers. The exercise of power and constitutions are dynamics processes not steady states. This, not least, because, technology constantly changes the economy wherein conflict, opportunity and power often lie.
Also, I worry about single point of failure with absolutist unitary power structures. For every Louis XIV or Napoleon there is a Nero or Richard the Lion Heart (or Tony Blair).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-12-13 05:01 pm (UTC)I’ve always liked the social contract theory but with a few riders.
Any contract made at the wrong end of a gun is non-binding.
How did my great-great-grandfather gain a right to permanently bind me or my daughter.
Therefore a contract made by great-great-grandfather at gun point is non-binding.
So I’m a constitutionalist but I don’t want the constitution to become set in aspic the way the US constitution seems to have become.
For contracting to work there has to be an alternative. Therefore, if I don’t like the deal on offer in the UK I can influence for all by lobbying for it to be changed or for myself by moving to Australia.
So I’m okay with Hobbes till he starts on Absolute Monarchy and non-separation of powers. I fundamentally don’t accept that the price of civil peace is the expectation of some level of abuse of power and I think it naïve to expect that someone who has absolute power will be able to tell when they over stepped the bounds of acceptable behaviour. I am a great bethinker in separation of powers. The exercise of power and constitutions are dynamics processes not steady states. This, not least, because, technology constantly changes the economy wherein conflict, opportunity and power often lie.
Also, I worry about single point of failure with absolutist unitary power structures. For every Louis XIV or Napoleon there is a Nero or Richard the Lion Heart (or Tony Blair).
Have you read Aristotle’s Politics?