If you are alone in a forest with no one else, you have the right to do whatever you want. It is not until someone else comes along do you have to negotiate each others rights, assuming you wish to cooperate with them. As a result, rights come out of our legal system. Or in the case of the founding fathers, they determined individuals rights and said the legal system must work about them.
When you have two or more people together, there has to be some agreement on how the two will organize themselves. Most of these rules are unspoken, such as which language to communicate in and the degree of politeness to use. We may also tacitly agree not to kill or harm each other or steal from each other. Some of these agreements where instilled into each other by our mothers, some are the result of society and some are a result of the nature of the interaction.
In most cases these agreements are irrelevant because they are just two people walking past each other on the street, nevertheless, there is an agreement to let each other pass by the other unhindered unless there is some need to interact.
But when it comes to roads, there are many rules and many of them are technical so that if there is a car accident, blame can be assigned and insurance companies can negotiate payment.
And this is the main thing government sets up for us is a way to negotiate our interactions when things go wrong. Government gives us a legal system to step in to provide a path to justice.
Government evolved as an outgrowth of human organization. It has evolved from one man being in-charge, as in the days when government was the tribal chief or a king, to an organization of checks and balances in place to make sure it keeps working, hopefully optimally, and for the betterment of the society it is governing. It is meant to evolve as society evolves. It is a balancing act between maintaining a status quo and adapting as people have realized flaws in the current system.
Curiously the following quote from Jefferson is often used by anarchists and libertarians to say there should be no government. Strangely these types don't realize that removing government means they will have to govern themselves which was the justification for getting rid of a king at the time of the revolution. The founding fathers set up a government that was supposed to be a negotiation amongst the people's representatives.
When you have two or more people together, there has to be some agreement on how the two will organize themselves. Most of these rules are unspoken, such as which language to communicate in and the degree of politeness to use. We may also tacitly agree not to kill or harm each other or steal from each other. Some of these agreements where instilled into each other by our mothers, some are the result of society and some are a result of the nature of the interaction.
In most cases these agreements are irrelevant because they are just two people walking past each other on the street, nevertheless, there is an agreement to let each other pass by the other unhindered unless there is some need to interact.
But when it comes to roads, there are many rules and many of them are technical so that if there is a car accident, blame can be assigned and insurance companies can negotiate payment.
And this is the main thing government sets up for us is a way to negotiate our interactions when things go wrong. Government gives us a legal system to step in to provide a path to justice.
Government evolved as an outgrowth of human organization. It has evolved from one man being in-charge, as in the days when government was the tribal chief or a king, to an organization of checks and balances in place to make sure it keeps working, hopefully optimally, and for the betterment of the society it is governing. It is meant to evolve as society evolves. It is a balancing act between maintaining a status quo and adapting as people have realized flaws in the current system.
Curiously the following quote from Jefferson is often used by anarchists and libertarians to say there should be no government. Strangely these types don't realize that removing government means they will have to govern themselves which was the justification for getting rid of a king at the time of the revolution. The founding fathers set up a government that was supposed to be a negotiation amongst the people's representatives.
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:320
For the most part government is invisible and should be so and because it mostly is invisible people only notice it when it is going wrong. In fact, the only time I hear about it is when I go on-line and hear my friends complain about it. Corporations in reality have much more impact on my life and often far more negatively so. Similarly corporations have had a negative influence on government.
The founding fathers were aware of the problems of corporations and tied them down but corporations got loose and we see the mess we are in today because of them. They have corrupted our justice system and political system, using the government as a tool to go to war with foreign nations for the purposes of looting their resources.
The founding fathers were aware of the problems of corporations and tied them down but corporations got loose and we see the mess we are in today because of them. They have corrupted our justice system and political system, using the government as a tool to go to war with foreign nations for the purposes of looting their resources.
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