From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: The social contract
Date: 9 Nov 1992 16:17:18 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <37568@uflorida.cis.ufl.edu> jfh@reef.cis.ufl.edu
(James F. Hranicky) demonstrates an inability to understand analogies:

>In article <1d683iINN25b@armory.centerline.com> mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>
>>>The government does force me to accept its 'services' if I live here.
>>
>>Typical cart-before-the-horse thinking.  You agree to accept our government
>>to live here.  Just as if you buy a condominium, you must join the condo
>>association and abide by their rules and pay their fees.
>
>Cart before the horse--you've got to be kidding. Here you are free to 
>seek housing elsewhere--just try and defect from the US. In the condo
>situation, if you choose not to join, no one punishes you.

It is trivial to "defect" (emmigrate) from the USA.  No one punishes you
for not immigrating to the USA.  Let me spell the analogy out for you:
condominium is like nation.

>Try to not pay your taxes and also not get punished. You don't undersatnd
>the concept of force. Try working without a Social Security number.
>I am not free to refuse one--working without one is prohibited.

Try to not pay your condominium fees.  Try disobeying the regulations
established by the condominium association.  Both are contract violations
on your part a form of FRAUD.  There is no debtor's prison here in the
USA, but instead you can have your property confiscated and thus be expelled
from your property.  That would be analogous to being expelled from the US.

>>>But this impiles that the government ultimately owns 'here'...
>>
>>Not at all.  The condominium analogy holds well here also.  The condominium
>>association holds no title, and indeed could be disbanded or replaced by the
>>owners of the condominiums.
>
>The condominium owners have no say in property down the road.

The US has no say if you obtain citizenship in another nation.

>What you are
>trying to do is form an analogy between private property and government
>laws. It is flawed--the condo owners cannot physically punish you for 
>not associating with them. To say that one could leave this country for
>another is still a bad analogy even if it were true, based on the fact
>that governments today have the condoned power of intitiatory coercion.

If I knew what you meant by "intitiatory coercion", I might agree that
governments ought not to do it.  However, I challenge you to name people
who have been coerced by the US government for emmigrating or not
immigrating.  That's the analogy.

>The proper government sees that the rights of all individuals are guaranteed.
>This is not the case today.

You're a utopian.  That task is impossible.  For example, is it possible
for any government to protect the lives of all its citizens from murder
successfully?  No.  Your formula will never be satisfied by any government
unless the rights are reduced to meaninglessness.

>Voluntarily contract? What, by being born? This country was founded on the
>principle that individuals were allowed to act by right, and the government
>was allowed to act by permission. This principle has been reversed.

The US did not register you as a citizen when you were born.  Your parents
did.  It was their choice to bear you here.  That you have remained in the
US since your independance from your parents was your choice, not that of
the US government.  Lots of people have emmigrated: it's their choice.

The responsability for your social contract with the US government lies
squarely on your shoulders at this point.  You can cancel the contract any
time you want simply by taking citizenship in another nation and residing
outside of the US.

Mike Huben

"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."   Samuel Beckett