I'm no "sovereign citizen", and occasionally enjoy compilations on youtube of them getting owned in front of a judge (makes for a good laugh).
I do however find some sympathy with _one_ of their arguments, where they argue they never consented to be governed.
I mean when I think about it, I was born into an established system that imposed its rules on me from birth. I had no say in accepting/rejecting the rules. I'm essentially property of the state, subject to its whims with little to no hope of changing them. So I get where some people come from with a "naw fuck that" attitude, even if I see such resistance as futile.
Not directly sov-citizen related, but that does intersect with a broader community of people upset over how property works in the US. Namely, you don't own a damn thing. All deeds/titles are fee-simple, in that you merely buy and sell the right to rent that land from the government for as long as you can afford it. "Renters" in the colloquial sense are really renting twice, which is why "owning" is better. True ownership of property however no longer exists in the US.
Maybe we can experiment with better society designs on mars, where landowners are truly sovereign and the state only owns the commons. Enforcement then only exists in the commons (and optionally on property with the consent of the owner).
Plato's Crito[1] deals directly with this question, after Socrates has been found guilty and sentenced to death for 'Corrupting the youth', his friends offer to help him leave the city rather than die.
To paraphrase, Socrates says "Though not explicitly, I have by my actions agreed to be ruled by the laws of Athens by carrying out my life here and not choosing to move away to somewhere with a different set of laws"
I believe Plato will say they consented to be governed by this state, not at birth, but throughout their life by choosing to stay in a place that is governed by this state and enjoying the benefits.
I think that's somewhat different because in Ancient Greece there was extreme decentralization. Cities were sovereign entities with an extreme diversity of ideological and other values. Compare Athens and Sparta, for instance. And so in this system, if one stays in a city then there is a strong argument to be made that they are implicitly supportive of the laws and rules of said area.
In modern times this isn't really the case. There tend to be immense legal restrictions on movement, let alone living + working in different areas. And the differences that do exist between even nations within the same "sphere" tend to be relatively negligible compared to, again, the sort of monumental differences you'd see just between different Greek city-states like Athens/Sparta.
> There tend to be immense legal restrictions on movement
There were extreme legal restrictions on movement in Ancient Greece, too. You couldn't just pack up your bags and move to Spara or Athens and become part of the citizen class.
And as a non-citizen, there were a lot of different ways that you could be abused by citizens, with little recourse.
Just because despotism and abuse was decentralized, doesn't mean that it wasn't despotism and abuse.
> There were extreme legal restrictions on movement in Ancient Greece, too. You couldn't just pack up your bags and move to Spara or Athens and become part of the citizen class.
In your belief, from what comes Plato's link between place and state? Places exist before states and often afterward. Can a state exist without place? If a place can exist without any particular state, can a person have a link to a place independent of a state?
>I mean when I think about it, I was born into an established system that imposed its rules on me from birth. I had no say in accepting/rejecting the rules. I'm essentially property of the state, subject to its whims with little to no hope of changing them.
Would you rather be born into a state of anarchy? I think Hobbes addressed this.
As a counterargument to Hobbes here is an excerpt from "The Dawn of Everything" in which Graeber and Wengrow argue that Hobbes' assertion isn't based in evidence.
Most of the anthropological evidence sides with Hobbes. The rates of violence in hunter gatherer societies is massive, with 10-15% of people dying at the hands of other humans. For the 20th century, despite two world wars, this figure was about 2%
The evidence is very sparse, and what we do have suggests that modern hunter-gatherer societies are, on average, no more violent than humanity in general. (My personal if limited observation, having lived briefly with several, is that they seem to be notably less violent than the -- often frontier -- communities around them.)
Steven Pinker has muddied the water with quite a lot of nonsense in The Better Angels of our Nature. An interesting, better-sourced and less cherry-picked read is a 2013 paper in Science[0].
The evidence is not sparse, it comes from a diverse set of sources from observation of existing hunter-gatheter communities across different continents as well as archaeological evidence. It's true that violence is much lower in absolute numbers. But by virtue of drastically lower overall populations, the proportional rate is much higher. 5 people killed our of a kin-group of 100 people is like 15 million people killed in the USA.
There is an appeal to the thought that humans in a natural state are peaceful. Because if modern society has made mankind violent, then we can hopefully roll back it's influence and restore us to that peaceful state. But that's not what our evidence suggests.
The problem with this is that all modern hunter-gatherer societies are under extreme pressure due to the theft of their lands and resources. This is particularly true in the context of the anecdotes given in the linked article, even if its characterization of today's !Kung or aboriginal peoples in Australia as being in a state of "almost constant tribal warfare" is bizarre (to put it kindly and assume good faith).
There is also an idealogical appeal by the likes of Pinker to the idea that nation states are the only structures that can prevent us from a return to a kind of endemic violence amongst hunter-gatherers. This thought has historically been exploited by those who would steal their lands, and do it "for their own good".
You might call it "doing a Chagnon" - precipitate violence, use that to characterize a people as warlike, then use that as a pretext to take even more resources.
Of course it's possible to find a hunter-gatherer society which is more violent than a particular modern nation state. It's also trivial to find an inverse example. When you look at what evidence we do have, you see that hunter-gatherers are no more or less violent than the rest of us, and when violence does flare it happens for the very same reasons it happens anywhere else.
Your point about butter gatherers being pressured by the encroachment of civilization is true. But in those situations, the rates of violent death are mostly in the 25-60% range, as was observed in many of the Native American societies during the colonial period. It's important to exclude these outliers due to the influence of encroaching civilizations. But even absent these outliers, and exclusively drawing on archaeological evidence, the rates of violence in hunter-gatheter societies is drastically higher [1].
Therein lies the problem though. Even if we take the numbers from the linked article (whose starting point was... Steven Pinker!):
- the "ethnographic evidence", which I accept you're not defending, largely features indigenous peoples during an active genocide.
- the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.
What was the historical rate of violence amongst, say, the Zo'é people? They are very isolated today and violence is apparently unheard of, but what happened in the past? We can't possibly know. What of the Awá? No hint. The Sentinelese, even? Who knows?
My point is that all of these data are so limited, so compromised and often so cherry-picked it's revealing nothing very helpful. What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans. That observation doesn't sell books, though.
> the "ethnographic evidence", which I accept you're not defending, largely features indigenous peoples during an active genocide.
Incorrect. Plenty of hunter gatherer societies are highly isolated and are not experiencing active genocide or displacement. Even ignoring those outliers that are in such a situation, they still exhibit rates of violence many times greater than modern societies.
> - the archaeological evidence is, naturally and obviously, extremely few and far between. Much of it doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all. As for the rest? Taking one at random: the 12% violent death share at Ile Téviec. Read the sources and this is extrapolated from three (3!) bodies. Two of which were apparently not violent deaths after all. The remaining body? We have no clue if the incoming arrowhead was from warfare or a hunting accident. How unfortunate if a single 6,000 year old hunting accident is labeling entire peoples violent and uncivilized. Either way, it's nonsense all the way down.
Correct, no sane anthropologists would use a single sample to draw conclusions. But there are many such sites and estimates are drawn across a wider body of samples.
> What little we do know is that rates of violence amongst different hunter-gatherer peoples today, despite them all being under immense outside pressures, are extremely variable... as it is between all other different groups of humans
For the third time, no, this is incorrect. Rates of violence among hunter gatherers, even among those highly isolated from other societies, is much greater than modern societies. You're probably reading sources that claim that few death occur due to war. But that's because the authors of these papers just categorize the motivation for killing as something else, like revenge. The rate of death is usually in the 10-15% range.
The data you've presented just don't allow us to make those claims, and fall apart at the gentlest interrogation:
- much doesn't relate to hunter-gatherers at all
- some is a tiny sample size (in the only case I dug into, n<=1!)
- the bulk of it involves peoples under pressure from encroachment (and worse)
- by its nature it's woefully incomplete, some of it cherry-picked, and ignores the majority of hunter-gatherer peoples
It's a fascinating and important question, though.
And they're right. They never (formally, explicitly) consented to the rules. But therefore... what?
They have three options. One, they can choose to live and operate under those rules. Two, they can work within the system to change the rules. Or three, they can go somewhere that has rules more to their liking. This isn't a prison; they can leave any time they choose. One could even argue that by staying in the country, they are (informally, implicitly) consenting to be governed by its rules.
But instead, they try a fourth alternative: Stay, but pretend that the rules don't apply to them because of laughably bogus legal theories. That doesn't work, no matter how many new legal theories they try, and no matter how much bogus logic and philosophizing they throw at it.
We've got a lot of non-sov-cit people who don't consent to the rules. We call them "criminals".
> Or three, they can go somewhere that has rules more to their liking. This isn't a prison; they can leave any time they choose.
That's an illusion of choice, though. There isn't any unclaimed, habitable land anymore. If your views don't align with any of the 195 existing countries, then this isn't actually an option. It's just 1 or 2, but in a different location.
You can't be an anarchist, ever. There's nowhere to do it. If you want to live somewhere that pledges itself as a Christian theocracy, you better hope you're Catholic. Ditto for most religions, really. Or if you want to live in a sovereign entity with the population of a small town.
The options are really just "suck it up" or "spend your whole life trying to change it". I'm genuinely curious what the sovereign citizens would do if they were allowed to secede any land they own. It's not for me, but I am curious whether they'd actually leave or if they just don't want to follow the rules.
While your three options are the three practical options, one should note that it's not trivial to move to whatever country you might want, and not just because of costs.
Getting a work permit in another country is usually pretty hard, for instance.
Still, even with that, I think we (as a society/civilisation) need people like that, challenging the system in all sorts of ways. And not everyone not obeying the rules is a "criminal" — none of the civil offenses qualify, for instance, even in the legal sense.
Of course, some of those "challenges", especially most of those criminal ones, should be dealt with proper "retaliation" (prison sentences, large penalties...) from the society so it's obvious which "challenges" are not welcome. But let's not forget that many of the things we take for granted today have been criminal in the not so distant past.
> While your three options are the three practical options, one should note that it's not trivial to move to whatever country you might want, and not just because of costs.
It's also not trivial (Next to impossible, actually) to survive alone, completely independent of society.
If you want the benefits of society, you have to abide by its rules.
And how do we keep government employees honest when the courts uphold government immunity? In the present topic of Michigan town extortion, how will the government employees be financially and criminally punished?
By engaging in government. You know, voting, protesting, primaries, lobbying, running for office, propagandizing, working with organizations who do all those things, etc.
I've wondered at times if it would make sense for there to be an explicit legal proceeding at the age of majority in which you explicitly opt in to the social contract analogous to the naturalization process when a foreigner becomes a citizen.
I get hung up on what happens if you choose not to opt-in.
(I'm skeptical of the very premise of colonizing Mars, but putting that aside..)
I expect what forms on Mars, at least initially, will resemble the high seas a lot more than it does any country. You'll have facilities owned and commanded by corporations operating under flags of convenience, more or less free to engage in any nastiness they like (at least until a navy or coastguard with guns shows up to enforce their will on the facility.)
Perhaps, though that seems like an unstable equilibrium. By the time we have communities up there, they're have their powerful and their not powerful, just like we terrestrials.
> where they argue they never consented to be governed
They also never consented to birth.
They are free to renounce their citizenship, however. Nobody is forcing them to stay US citizens.
> Maybe we can experiment with better society designs on mars
Hate to break it to you, but Mars colonies (assuming they ever exist) are going to be dictatorships. Lifeboat ethics don't leave a lot of room for arguing, let alone voting.
You can leave most countries and renounce citizenship, typically with some hoops to jump through but it can be done.
The questions of where you'll go and how you'll support yourself are something that you'd best figure out before starting that process, because after you start your country of origin may well say 'not OUR problem anymore' about you.
That's not really the US's fault though, right? "You're free to leave, but if you want to stay here you have to abide by our rules," sounds reasonable I think. There are countries in the world where you're not free to leave even if another country will take you, and this argument would hold a lot more water.
Renunciation is not free - they literally charge you for it. You also can't renounce without obtaining another citizenship, which, surprise, surprise, you generally have to buy with both time and money.
The book Decline and Rise of Democracy goes into detail about this. Pretty much all nations that had a resource jugular (I.e. Egypt with the Nile) become extractive societies.
>> you merely buy and sell the right to rent that land from the government for as long as you can afford it.
You seem to be speaking of property tax on land. Did you know not all land is on county assesor tax roles? Have you researched how to find land not in the county tax catalog?
Moreover, parents should own their kids since they gave birth to them. They should be legally be able to take every decision for them, and be their guardian, until they die. They gave their children birth after all.
We tell these people about "social contracts" then smirk when they raise the common sense objection of never signing such a contract in the first place.
Of course a social contract is not at all the same as a real contract, a social contract is not a document that you sign, it applies to you whether or not you ever consented to it. But when language that seems to conflate the two is used to persuade people who don't really have a firm grasp on the way the world works, it seems cruel to laugh at their confusion.
I do however find some sympathy with _one_ of their arguments, where they argue they never consented to be governed.
I mean when I think about it, I was born into an established system that imposed its rules on me from birth. I had no say in accepting/rejecting the rules. I'm essentially property of the state, subject to its whims with little to no hope of changing them. So I get where some people come from with a "naw fuck that" attitude, even if I see such resistance as futile.
Not directly sov-citizen related, but that does intersect with a broader community of people upset over how property works in the US. Namely, you don't own a damn thing. All deeds/titles are fee-simple, in that you merely buy and sell the right to rent that land from the government for as long as you can afford it. "Renters" in the colloquial sense are really renting twice, which is why "owning" is better. True ownership of property however no longer exists in the US.
Maybe we can experiment with better society designs on mars, where landowners are truly sovereign and the state only owns the commons. Enforcement then only exists in the commons (and optionally on property with the consent of the owner).