The Three Branches of Politics

The Courtroom. A place where disputes are settled in a civilized manner, and the truth is determined by the process of reasoning and detailed analysis. Image from this site.

A country with a healthy political system does not exist today. But what is a healthy political system? Is it the one that works, or the one that people don’t want to violate, or is it something else?

What is the function of a government? The government is supposed to uphold the principle of individual rights by protecting them. Since there is only one means of violating this principle, and this is by force, this means that the government must protect its citizens from force. The only means to do so is by force. Therefore, the government must have an exclusive monopoly on the usage of force.

By what means should a government exert this protective force? Let’s dissect force to get to this answer. There is something called initiation of force. This is always bad because utilizing force against a human being is a violation of his rights. Then there is retaliatory force. After force has been initiated, the damaged party uses retaliatory force against the initiator. Something similar to retaliatory force is self-defense. However, self-defense is not neccessarily force – in certain occasions one can talk his way out of trouble.

The government may use these types of force to protect against criminals and invaders. It can, of course, protect to the extent to which it can apply such force. The best government then is exactly the one which invests everything it has in force and the means to apply it.

To build an efficient government, let’s first look at where it will have to apply force. But the first principle to look at is that the government must never be the initiator of force. Therefore, it can only use force against those who have already initiated it.

There can be citizens of a country which apply force against other citizens. This is where a part of the government can interfere. Actually, it’s two branches of the government which may interfere here: the police and the courts; the police catches the criminal, the courts determine whether or not he really is the criminal. There are cases where the courts will not be necessary. For example, if the criminal is shot during the chase or as he threatens to kill one of the policemen. The courts may then, in fact, examine the policeman who shot the alleged criminal in order to determine whether the shooting was justified.

Another kind of an initiator of force is a foreign invader. If with anything, the anals of history are filled with wars. How does the government protect from foreign invaders? By means of the army. Countries with strongest armies thus have the most means by which to protect their citizens. As with all other branches of a government, so must a government not use its military to initiate force – both against its own citizens, or against the citizens of other countries.

These are the basics of how a government should be construed. Functions of individual branches of the government are only superficially described here, and are a topic for further discussions.

Basic constructs of Laissez-Faire

Every social system rests on some kinds of principles. The topic of this post is to show what these principles are in Laissez-Faire and how they give rise to the three branches of a Capitalist government. The metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical justification for these principles is beyond it. Nonetheless, it is worth mentioning that it is exactly these branches of philosophy which show why only Capitalist principles are moral.

Liberty is indigenous to capitalism. No social system has ever shown as much respect for individual rights as did capitalism in the 19th century in America. However, today this liberty is being stifled as the government forces ever more controls on a once-free market. Image from this site.

Laissez-Faire Capitalism rests on the principle of individual freedom. Freedom is practiced by practicing individual rights, which are the right to life, liberty, and property. Each individual, no matter what his profession, his job, his IQ, his ethnic origin, etc. is, has these rights and is thus free to act in accordance with them. Important to note is the fact that in order to practice one’s right one has to act. It is today’s common misconception (which is why I’m even bringing this up), that one’s right to life means that others must sustain his life no matter what the costs. This misconception doesn’t work in any way; it fails both logically, and socially. Logically because the very definition of rights entails that they sanction actions of an individual, and socially because there is only one way in a society to enforce such a vulgarity – by force. This very force is then the undoing of what individual rights stand for – freedom; everyone becomes a slave.

All social systems, whether they are moral or not, regard certain conduct as unacceptable. The virtue of Laissez-Faire is that unacceptable behavior is only that which is immoral. However, Laissez-Faire government will not tend to punish all that is immoral, rather a smaller subset of all possible immoral actions. For example, robbing a bank is both immoral and punishable by Laissez-Faire law. However, knowingly investing into a lost cause, while immoral, it is not punishable; neither is thrashing your own property; or endangering your own life for no apparent reason. This suggests that there is a line that is drawn somewhere, which distinguishes punishable immoral actions from those that are immoral, but not punishable.

This line is defined simply. Laissez-Faire Capitalism does not accept, and punishes that conduct which is a violation of the principle of individual rights.

This could be a working definition of punishable conduct in any social system, however there is a difference. All social systems can, at least in theory, sustain themselves by consistently practicing the principles on which they rest. The difference is that the principles behind Laissez-Faire are the only principles of a social system that can be practiced consistently. Consistent practice of Communist, Socialist or other system’s principles inevitably leads to collapse of these systems (I will not here go into details why, but there are good examples of it in human history). Even today, there is the European Union, which is collapsing unto itself; you can see it in Germany, for example. The social system they have, with all the social “benefits” to those without job, and with the unemployment rate as high as it is, it is all but clear that such a social system cannot be practiced. But alas, I am no expert in politics! I’m sure that a person more versed in this field will find even more finer points which will support my story.