TOPIC #3 — PHILOSOPHICAL ORIGINS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT

Q1.     On the whole human existence is happier and more prosperous if people are willing to undertake productive, future-oriented, “investment” activities — that is, to undertake burdensome and unpleasant activities today that can provide rewards for tomorrow, e.g., to clear and cultivate land that can provide food later. Under what conditions are people more or less likely to undertake such activities?

Q2.     Governments impose taxes on people, stop people from doing some things they want to do, and make people do other things they don’t want to do. Can this be justified? If so, by what kind of argument?

Q3.     Cars and trucks used to emit large quantities of pollutants, resulting in air pollution that was both unpleasant and unhealthful. In the 1970s, it became possible to reduce such pollution greatly by installing fairly inexpensive pollution-control devices on car and truck engines. Suppose in fact that everyone prefers (a) the state of affairs in which everyone pays for and installs the devices and the air is clean to (b) the state of affairs in which no one pays for and installs the devices and the air is polluted. Would (almost) everyone voluntarily install the devices? Would a law requiring everyone to install the devices pass in a referendum?

Normative vs. empirical statements

Anarchism / Anarchy

Legitimacy of governments (normative legitimacy vs. empirical legitimacy)

Basis of (Normative) Legitimacy

          Divine right of kings (etc.) vs. Consent of the governed

                     “paradox of consent”

Consent theory

          Thomas Hobbes, The Leviathan (1651)

          John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690)

state of nature => state of war (Hobbes)

social contract / covenant

          law of nature (Locke)

delegation of powers and rights (conformity costs, agency loss)

limited (Locke) vs. unlimited (Hobbes) government

          implications of limited government

                     government can abuse its power

                     probably want "checks" on government

                     right of revolution

                     ambiguity in defining limits