I have noticed a parallel in the ways college students seek to deal with issues in their college and in their country. I think they do this because they see similarities between colleges and countries. Colleges have students, countries have citizens. Colleges have admissions processes, countries have immigration processes. Both colleges and countries have governments, laws and judicial bodies. Both even have mascots for sports teams.
A college student will look to administration to change the ways of the college. Students have a certain influence on college policy as citizens have influence on government policy. If a student does not like his collegeıs policies, he can try to change it, or he can just leave. Itıs not as if the policies violate his rights. After all, he chose to attend the college. But is the situation the same for the citizen of a country?
The difference between the student and the citizen is difference in the nature of colleges and countries. A college has people in charge of it who own the land and buildings on campus. It was founded by a group of people who put effort into creating an institution for higher learning. They did this in order to pursue life-serving values. People choose to become members of the college community. Upon doing this, they actually sign a contract agreeing to the terms of his relationship with the college administration. Part of this contract is the studentıs option to leave the relationship, i.e., leave the school.
But being a citizen of a country is different. Oneıs citizenship is made through a countryıs government. But a government is not like a college, or any other private club. Why? A college administration made the existence of the student-faculty ³marketplace² possible. The academic departments are organized by people in the college administration. A government providing services in a geographic area does not create the marketplace operating in that area. The people working for a government do not organize the market. Markets are not and can not be organized by central planners.
In fact, the government, and any other non-profit organization, can not exist without the production and trade that produces wealth to fund it. The government may protect (and unfortunately violate) property rights, but such protection is meaningless without the existence of property, the result of production and trade.
Yet, relationship between a government and producers of property becomes reciprocal: people will not produce much above a bare minimum of values unless they know their rights to keep or trade them is protected. This does not mean that coercive taxation is necessary to have a government (an organization of people who exercise power to enforce laws protecting property rights.). Do posit this is to say that peopleıs rights must be violated in order for them to be protected (cf. David Oyerly, Full Context, April 1995).
In essence, people believe that the government (bureaucrats) owns the country, just as people own private colleges. This means that certain people who call themselves ³officials² can decide just who enters the countryıs boundaries and who does not. They act as the countryıs admissions officers. Bureaucrats determine who will pay their dues to the country to receive benefits, just as admissions officers decide who will pay tuition.
To extend the parallel, consider how both college administration and government redistribute wealth. Students receive financial aid from a college. Such students are either in need of money, and/or are seen as investments. Their aid comes partly from tuition of the other students and their families. Similarly, citizens of a country receive doles from the government, money raised through taxation, or tuition to the country.
Seen in this light, as a college, state and federal governments in the continent of North America appear to be legitimate. Clearly, private colleges are legitimate. If a student does not like the tuition redistribution practices, or how the administration spends money, he can choose to leave as he chose to attend the college. And the same reasoning, people implicitly think, applies to countries and states.
As I said before, the above reasoning when applied to states in invalid because people must first create values, property, in order for their property rights to be defended. Protection of property rights is one of the proper functions of government. (This is called protection of economic liberties, the other function is protection of civil liberties, i.e., free expression of ideas, etc. Protection of one of these liberties is meaningless without the protection of other.) Protection of property rights allows people to dispose of and trade their property with others based on mutual consent, e.g., the relationship between a college and a student.
Why am I going through such great lengths to draw parallels between colleges and countries? Well, I attend a rather left-wing college. I do not want to believe that most of my classmates, or that most people on this planet, really have no respect for human rights. Most people, left and right, do think theft is immoral. But they do not think that taxation is theft. On occasion I have gotten them to realize that the initiation of force is wrong. They just did not make the connection that government initiates force.
One way to analyze these people is: ³These statists think other people exist to serve their needs, and believe that I am on this planet to serve anotherıs political agenda. They do not respect my right to own my life, and hence are despicable people and I should have nothing to do with them because the implicit ideas behind their statist beliefs are disgusting.²
Well, I have thought the above about people. And unfortunately, some people, e.g. the Clintons, are so evil. But my point is that one can not infer from anotherıs political (or religious, or aesthetic, etc.) conclusions the process, if any, that lead them to the conclusions. (cf. Kelley's Truth and Toleration) In the above, I inferred, with very little evidence, the worst possible reasons for a person's advocating anything but pure capitalism, and branded him as evil.
This idea applies to what one may call political allies as well. I can not infer that someone who claims to be a libertarian that he respects my right to my own life. For instance, Harry Browne, a vocal Libertarian Party presidential candidate, is author of Why Government Doesnıt Work. I heard him speak on NPRıs Talk of the Nation, and I believe he is right: government does not work. Yet he sells his political position for this reason, and not because individual rights are important.
Hence, Browne sells his view for the same reasons most liberals and conservatives do theirs. The reason is: ³Under what I advocate, people will do what we want them to do.² Non-libertarians support government intervention in the economy because in free-market, some people will free do what they donıt want them to. For example, some Democrats and Republicans do not want people to be employed at under a certain wage and do not want people taking drugs. They also want people to give to charity and be interested in art. ³Theyıre oughta be a law,² they say, ³to get people do to what I want them to do.² Harry Browne says ³Hey people, theyıre shouldnıt be a law, because laws donıt work in getting people to do what you and I want them to do.² He is right that such laws do not work to achieve their intended goals. But he ignores the point that even if the laws did work, they are immoral because they violate individual rights.
A person who advocates capitalism may not do so because capitalism is the only political-economic system where human rights are protected in full. With my college and government analogy, I considered how people who appear to respect human rights advocate policies that violate them. Perhaps what is blocking them is the implicit belief in the analogy between government and college administration.