Opinions on legitimate government

Powerful business interests can debilitate our high-level elected officials through implicit or explicit threats to transfer or eliminate jobs and capital investment, thus economic stability, if corporate ‘requests’ aren’t accommodated. It’s a political crippling that’s worsened by a blaring news-media that’s permitted to be naturally critical of incumbent governments, especially in regards to job and capital transfers and economic weakening.

In Canada and the U.S., our First Past The Post electoral system, which I find barely qualifies as democratic rule within the democracy spectrum, seems to well-serve corporate interests over those of the general populace. I believe it's basically why those powerful interests generally resist attempts at changing from FPTP to proportional representation electoral systems of governance, the latter which dilutes lobbyist influence.

From my understanding, when it comes to big-business friendly thus favored electoral systems, low-representation FPTP-elected governments, in which a relatively small portion of the country's populace is actually electorally represented, are the easiest for lobbyists to manipulate or 'buy'. A much more proportionately representative (PR) electoral system should create a greater challenge for the lobbyists. A PR-elected government, which much more proportionately represents the electorate as a whole, should be considerably harder for big business to steer — if at all, in some cases.

Here (Canada), big thus powerful corporations actually write bills for our governing representatives to vote for and have implemented, supposedly to save the elected officials their own time. I believe the practice has become so systematic here that those who are aware of it (that likely includes mainstream news-media political writers) don’t bother publicly discussing it.

Reply to Vishagan

When you give an institution the power to realize needs you give them the power to determine what the needs are. If you give the government the power to do something for you, you give it the corresponding power to do something to you. I suspect it wouldn’t be long until the government determines you need a decade of hard labor.

Quoting Vishagan

Needs are essential things in life, wether it be material needs or essential rights.

Quoting NOS4A2

you give them the power to determine what the needs are

The whole exercise steps off on the wrong foot. People lived long before governments existed and even longer before rights theory was invented. So people don't need rights. Indeed, many people lived having been wholly deprived of many "rights." No one, to my knowledge, has lived very long with their head cut off. Using the word "need" for s living person's right to travel and "need" for a living person's requirement for a head should demonstrate why conflating those ideas is in error.

Government, as such, has no needs for life because it is not alive. So whatever the government is after, it certainly isn't that necessary for its life. Government is, therefore, at best motivated by wants (as if a government could have wants independent of its constituency). There is, therefore, never a time where a government can deprive you of actual needs for life without being "unfair." Nevertheless, when a government tries to arrest a murderer, people don't typical advocate that the murderer is justified in using violence to repel the government.

I suggest you try some different buckets to contain your ideas. Legitimizing governmental coercion is not such a simple task even if people largely seem to accept that governmental coercion is good.

Might have once read something about government gaining legitimacy through the consent of the governed.

A legitimate government is one that assumes and discharges the responsibility of executing maximally beneficial projects that require large-scale cooperation. This condition not being met, no government is legitimate.

We live in anarchy: therefore there is and can be no prohibition on government. All government and all resistance to government are equally legitimate. Those who wish to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate government can only do so by means of legislation, and are thus setting themselves up as the government of governments, aka God. And the best of luck to you all with that!

Quoting Ennui Elucidator

Might have once read something about government gaining legitimacy through the consent of the governed.

For most of human history governments have gained legitimacy through lies and fear. The governed may appear to be consenting (North Korean citizens proclaiming their love for their precious leader is a good example), but they only do so out of fear. In this sense they are not consenting, they are coerced.

When power-hungry elitists gain control of government and consolidate their power (outsider, non-politicians are not welcome in their group), and much of what they do is behind closed doors and what they say is all generalizations and plurality, then is this what the goverened has consented to, or are the goverened merely preoccupied with celebrities and themselves (making themselves a celebrity) on TikTok and Facebook to give a damn? Dumbing down the governed is one way to make it look like the governed are giving consent when in fact the governed are just to dumb to know that they arent, or wouldn't, if they really knew what was going on in the government.

Whoo, that was a pretty negative point of view and I immediately thought to President John Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline and Camelot. We loved them. Or how about the pharaohs who kept everything in order and could prevent chaos? We can love our leaders and from the days of Sumer, we can replace them when they obviously are failing. Democracy can mean replacing them peacefully, and granted having to replace them through violent means, is quite problematic. But in general, turning to a leader was a choice because good leaders are essential. However, in the past, rulers did not have the technology to manage the details of our lives. Even the most powerful pharaoh had very little power because s/he just did not have the bureaucratic organization, nor the technology of modern-day rulers.

Today many people appear to love Trump as a god. Now that might justify your cynicism. Biden does not have that benefit because those who voted for Biden were voting against Trump, and from there, they base decisions on reason, not worshipping anyone! Pleasing democrats is more like herding cats. :lol: Good luck with that.

Quoting Athena

We can love our leaders

[quote=George Orwell]You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.[/quote]