Authority

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Do you consider internationally recognised states as legitimate authority? If so, why? If not, why not?

Do you consider any other bunch of individuals legitimate authorities? If so, why? If not, why not?

What exactly does it take for some group of people to be recognised, by you, as having authority over you?

A recognised state usually has police, an army, and mountains of paperwork which you accept as part of your life. Why is such an organisation more legitimate than, for example, a bunch of guys running around in the jungles of Borneo with guns and a leader? Or is it? Is it merely that one has a larger rate of acceptance as authority?

I consider Somaililand an independent state that should be recognised even though it is officially not one. I don't consider the s**ts who rule the UK to be a legitimate authority, though.

Is that what you're asking?

If i agree with something i figure it's authority is legitimite to me. If id dont agree i dont respect that authority though will still follow the rules or keep quite about breaking them if, for instance, they are powerful enough to lock me up for rulebreaking.

I also agree with local autonomy so if an area with as little as 20,000 people wanted independance id agree with it, though think they should be subjected to some UN mandated international standards like human rights.

Authority largely comes from the beneficial nature of respecting an authority force. If you disrespect the authority of a cop then he will beat you down. If you don't respect the authority of your government than it will bust you. However, you may see both of those as illegitimate because of your moral/philosophical beliefs or the conditions of your life and not respect the authority because respect is not rewarding enough to do so. The people who disrespect authority and defy it are known as criminals, if there are enough people who disrespect the state enough to defy it and they have a common cause then there is a rebellion.

Authority is a social construct and an incredibly useful one. It maintains societal order without having to give a threat of force simply because the expected results of such an action would be negative due to one's personal investments in society, the conformity of peers to certain norms, the expected punishment for crimes and so on and so forth. It is based off of the idea of how powerful something is and how beneficial it is.

I consider other nations to be legitimate authorities because they have power over their land and because there is no advantage in considering them illegitimate. To consider another nation to be legitimate allows for trade and agreement while not doing so leads to the opposite.

I recognize most individuals as having authority over what they possess. They are able to enforce their claim through law and disrespecting their authority would worsen relations. I also usually give some respect to people in authority positions unless I feel that they are undeserving of my respect due to their lack of interest in what I consider to be my well-being in which case I comply as much as I feel is acceptable to my interests and my ego and nothing more than that.

Authority requires that I benefit from respecting something as having authority. This includes long-term and short-term benefit. I might gain more in the short run from supporting a crazy revolutionary's rise to power but in the long run the established government might do a better job at meeting my needs.

The recognized state with bureacracy is more acceptable because it seems more fair and stable than the group with guns and therefore it seems more likely to get one's goals accomplished. However, to the poor oppressed peasant the gun wielders might seem more authoritative and the government to be false because they might not benefit from the established government.

I wouldn't agree with that idea because that weakens the authority of a nation because it suggests instability and a lack of power. The weakening of stability has negative economic and societal impact upon a society and is harmful to the nation in question as a whole. It may be a bit more beneficial to the locals but is harmful to the thousands and millions of people outside of said locality. It promotes greater fragmentation which hurts the economy more and more as legality becomes more muddled and trade more difficult. I would really prefer that such groups are put back in line if at all possible because I don't want these people to hurt my nation's economy out of their own interests and I do not believe in a right to secede because of the strong negative repercussions of such a right.

sorry, posted twice...

Last edited by peebo on 27 Apr 2006, 10:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

you say it maintains social order without a threat of force, however, is not the expected punishment for a crime, or even peer pressure, in itself a threat of coercive force? i maintain that all, or almost all authority is simply the result of both overt and implied threats of force. implied violence is what leads to the power of authorities, and the more power an authority holds, the more "legitimate" it appears.

What I meant by threat of force is the presence of a physical gun or officer of the law, not the fact that there would be punishment. People will respect authority even when they could possibly get away with something or when punishment will not be an issue in the short run. I said this in order to stress the fact that most sources of authority do not have the power to defeat a mass insurrection by the majority of the population but because of their authority they don't need to. If a bunch of Nazis took over an area and started giving orders we would be openly defiant until they killed enough people or did enough threatening to get their point across, however, if people from our own government gave out strange orders we would be more likely to comply due to the perceived authority of our own government, even if the same orders were given by both groups. You are right, authority comes from power.

ah i get your point.

i'm not so sure about this though, i'd like to see what would happen in such circumstances in a nation like the US or UK. wouldn't you think, as long as the armed forces sided with the authorities, that an insurection could be easily defeated and crushed? i mean, look at the '68 riots in france, while perhaps not the majority of the population rebelled, a significant amount of workers, students, and unemployed occupied universities and factories in much of paris and other cities around france, bringing the government close to collapse. but the threat of the armed forces and a declaration of state of emergency basically ended the crisis.

No, a nation cannot stand if the majority of its people rebel. If such an event occurs then the threat of economic collapse and protracted guerilla warfare would eventually cause the armed forces to fall. The military cannot kill every person who rebels if a majority does so, otherwise the nation would suffer economic collapse and the military does not have the power to subdue indefinitely a group of hostile people either. The sheer destruction caused by such a civil war would be enough incentive for one side to back down in most instances and for a more peaceful solution to be found.

Authority is the power to force your ways upon someone else.


In some cases, it can be by choice (a friendly club who democratically elects an officer)
In some cases, it can be by force (a schoolyard bully)
In others, it can be by money (the whole damn American electorial system)


All of above are authority. All are legitimate, as they have power necessary.
The justice is all that is debatable.

Most concepts of authority these days are related to the protection of property and have little to do with protecting people. Authorities are generally class-based, patrolling the more wealthier areas while instigating and harrassing the more poorer areas. Contours are created between class divisions, and the cops maintain the order of keeping the poor folks at bay and away from the richer folks. Most ultra-rich people, who make the laws and decisions, live in colonized housing, fitted with gates and large fences and massive security systems. They don't even know what a crime is, other than what they see on the news. So, most authority has to do with protecting the wealth and the security of the middle classes, which are diminishing in size with every passing year.

Most crime is poor folks killing poor folks, but at times ... it washes over into the more wealthier areas. And, the wealthier folks don't want their kids on drugs, which is mostly denial ... because they take drugs, if not more, just as the poorer folks. Most of the prison population in the US is related to drug crimes, with a large majority of them victimless crimes. Just an ounce of certain drugs can get someone a lengthy sentence. This has absolutely nothing to do with controlling drugs, but rather controlling people. They want the superfluous population to be locked away and made sure to never participate in the decisions made by the wealthy. So, in prison they can't vote.

Nowadays, with the crime rates having gone down in the US, the topic of authority is absurd. Politicians who make laws governing authority spend millions of dollars scaring people about crime and creating unjust laws, things like Megan's Law and the three-strikes law, instead of spending millions of dollars to stop corporate crime, which tends to hardly go untouched. Exxon-Mobil has made record profits, and we're in an all-time fuel crisis. They're getting away with huge profits, destroying the environment, destroying indigenous cultures and starting wars. The federal government, and its team of propaganda journalists, commonly say they can't do much about it because that's the role of the free market. When it comes to putting people in prison, however, they interfere with all their might. And a lot of crime is the result of the inconsistencies of the corrupt system that we have the nerve to call a "free market."

- Ray M -

The schoolyard bully is not necessarily very legitimate, even as he takes your money you still make fun of him by drawing the stinklines on his picture behind his back and plot against him. Any power that we want to destroy and would do so gladly if given an opportunity does not really have much authority. It may have force but force!=authority. Authority is psychological and force is a more physical thing. When describing the multiple forms of power(reward, coercive, expert,etc), authority gets its own category because it is largely psychological and based upon position alone, not really any other form of power.

Most concepts of authority really don't have to do with property but societal organization. We see authority most often in the work place as we can have bosses over us and workers under us and both are strongly influenced by the concept of authority. It gives the bosses power to tell the workers to do something without having to offer a reward or a punishment everytime and it causes the workers to mostly comply with the boss and in the laws that we follow and usually never really question like traffic lights, stop signs, crossing streets at intersections, taxes, etc. Most of those things involve property but really are methods to deal with organizing society into an effective model for getting things done as they are more oriented towards needs of society(you might disagree).

Drug laws are not made to control people and most certainly not voting habits. Most poor people don't really vote anyway, the people who vote are usually the ones with college degrees and stuff like that as they understand the system better and that they can impact it. Most people in the US do not vote so suppressing people to prevent them from voting is really not necessary. What this really is is that it is a part of a culture that believes that drugs are bad(there is also a culture that believes drugs are good in the US) and this culture tries to suppress them to protect the US from their dangerous moral and possibly economic impact.

Megan's law is an important thing for people to feel safe, especially parents. I would want to know if there was a sex offender near the home of my kid. It is very important to protect people from rape and things like that, especially children from those vile things. It is not a "useless law" as you described it because it does provide societal benefit. Three strikes law, whether you think it is good or bad or not was an attempt towards more protection from crime. Even though crime rates have gone down still crime exists and there needs to be laws for dealing with criminals. The question is whether 3-strikes is effective.

Corporate crime is also a big thing but it is hard to detect it sometimes... at least without hurting the economy through clamping down on all corporations. Besides, the oil industry has not been proven to be price gouging, the fact of the matter is that the demand for oil is currently the highest it has ever been due to China and other newly developing countries and higher demand with the same supply means that prices go up and considering the limit nature of oil resources it also means that companies cannot suddenly jump into the oil market to make their money. The lack of environmental concern is because our demand for oil is much stronger than our desire to protect the environment, so we have given the companies a freer hand in dealing with their need for oil because more supply will cause prices to go back down. The last 2 things are not things that I really see happening unless you are talking about Iraq which was probably really either bad information or a hatred of Saddam that W got from his father as the US has not really benefitted from Iraq. The destruction of indigenous cultures is not something that anybody really cares about except for the indigenous cultures.

The government does not want to interfere with the market. Interfering with the market disrupts the natural flow of capital and tends to make the economy worse. The government does attack social ills though because that is not something that people believe should be left unaddressed. I fail to see how crime is caused by inconsistency. People know what crimes are and they know if they don't follow the law then they will be punished, I don't think that much crime is caused by "righteous" anarchist leanings or any view of justice but rather people doing what they want and such an action clashing with societal desires.

As with eamonn, I respect and follow authorities whose rules/laws make sense to me. If they don't make sense, they don't have my respect. There are trivial laws/rules that I decide ocasionally that it won't be detrimental for me to break, but if it's not something I feel strongly about or I can see some purpose behind the law/rule, I don't do so openly.
Generally I'm honest and law abiding by default, but ridiculous rules that are not explained to me I find very hard to adhere to. As an example, our company dictates that stock should be couriered, and not drawn from stores too far away from us. The problem with this is that the stores at our main centre frequently have an abundance of stock, and it can be trucked down to us with our regular stock requirements, saving the company money, the customer a courier charge, and reducing the risk of breakages. It takes slightly longer, but most people are happy to wait. Head office says no, and nobody has been able to give me a reason to listen to them. I ignore this rule because it makes no sense, and our company management regularly display a lack of practical common sense, so they've lost my respect.

Authoritarian structures arise out of societal organization, yes ... but, in the United States and many other places, the dominant societal organizations in power are related to property management. Work, which is technically seen as labor, is seen as a resource. When most people work, they are a wage slave. They submit themselves to what is called a job market, selling themselves for some sort of price. This resource is managed by authority, notably those at the top. They make the decisions. If the workers are suffering under a hideous health care decision, it is quite rare that the authority is going to make life better for them. Think about what sort of crime that could create. The movie "John Q" more or less was dramatic about it, and to call that a crime? Well, it's simply survival in a hostile and very competitive world.

Drug laws are not made to control people and most certainly not voting habits. Most poor people don't really vote anyway, the people who vote are usually the ones with college degrees and stuff like that as they understand the system better and that they can impact it. Most people in the US do not vote so suppressing people to prevent them from voting is really not necessary. What this really is is that it is a part of a culture that believes that drugs are bad(there is also a culture that believes drugs are good in the US) and this culture tries to suppress them to protect the US from their dangerous moral and possibly economic impact.



Megan's Law is unconstitutional. Once someone is released from prison, his record should not be made public. If there is a need for Megan's Law, the only people who should have access to it are the authorities. Also, statutory rape is not "rape," and the idea of placing a minor under Megan's Law is absurd. Also, you do not have to rape a woman or be a pedophile to be placed on Megan's Law. There are a lot of inconsistencies to this law that are very unjust and unfair, placing a wide array of people as rapists and pedophiles in the public eye who were convicted of far less crimes, and I think bigamy is one of them.



I see that you're commonly using words that express a whole of society, such as "our" and "we." This leads me to believe that you're seeing the world from the perspective that we are all one whole family, with commonly-shared goals and commonly-shared views. This is not true, because the nation is heavily divided, between race, age, gender, class and probably other things, even NTs versus autistics, if you will.

Who really is the "our" when you stipulate "our desire to protect the environment?" If I use the word "our," I tend to do so to mean the system as a whole and to what it stands for in terms of everyone. You're using it to justify a viewpoint. I do not see an "our" in who protects our environment. I see a wide range of environmental views that need to be worked out in concensus to come up with a viable working plan. The oil industry stands on the other side of the environment, but maybe BP has made miniscule steps of progress for supporting a concept called "sustainable development."

I could go on and on about this, even form an economic perspective ... like why the GDP is flawed and why I tend to support its replacement with the GPI.



Well, the government may not interfere with the market, but it has created the market. Everything that runs our economy, from aviation to biotechnology to oil to computers, was done so at the expense of taxpayers. The entire computer industry, for example, was borne out of the military. It had nothing to do with the private sector, and the same can be said about the Internet, when it used to be called ArpaNet. Automation was also borne out of military forces, and now it is being used to throw people out of work.

Not all, but a lot of crime relates from inconsistency. Yeah, people may know what crimes are and that they will get punished for them. If I steal a loaf of bread for my starving son tomorrow, I could get punished for that. If I blackmail or hold a doctor hostage for refusing my dying son cancer treatment, I could get punished for that. And then a lot of crime is simply anger at the inconsistencies of the system. If I am evicted from my house beacuse my landlord raised the rent, what can somebody do? You surely can't look to a government to help, because they are too worried about the market and supporting the interests of landlords. In New York, they'd even arrest you for sleeping on the sidewalk. So, what can some people do? They do what they know how to survive, and they may do things out of sheer frustration. I think we, with many of us having AS, should know what that's like.

- Ray M -

Even though many sources of authority have to deal with property, I would still have to claim that most have to deal with social organization. We can even look at it this way, property can be a form of social organization but certain laws have very little to do with property, social organization is always a more complete model due to its broadness in covering all things. The workers in most industries are not slaves and have the freedom to leave their job if they desire to do so and the authority of the bosses while derived from the mutual benefits of the trade is used for managing the workers into an effective workforce, the authority is a tool for societal management and is created from a need for societal management towards societally beneficial tasks as bosses exist in most if not all economies. Anyway, my point is that workers do not have to work for the boss that they do and even though the exchange has property central to it, the authority is also largely due to societal organization as some groups will always be at the top and others at the bottom. Authority has never really cared for what is expendable, to some extent human life has a set monetary cost even though most don't like to think this way, it always has been from ancient societies all the way forward to modern societies, to ignore this fact is to forget economic facts that certain forms of labor can be really cheap. However, even though people are a resource they are still not the same as physical property, they fall under the category of societal organization. John Q was a criminal, he forcibly forced certain goods and resources to be used towards his own benefit. Stealing food and stealing a car may be different morally but they are not different in what they are, stealing the efforts and possessions of other beings for your own benefit. Of course, noting how crime negatively impacts systems we must find ways to reduce it while still allowing for good economic growth and for societal mobility. High crime hurts economies as does blind benevolence.


Well, Megan's laws are decided by states to a large extent and as such reflect state's beliefs. In Kansas, sodomy is something that is subject to Megan's Laws, this might not be right but it is what the population of the state apparently wants. If people believed that these laws were unjust they would fight back against them, but people believe they are deserved. The world does not have a uniform code of justice and really, I would feel a lot better if I knew who I could trust and who I might be suspicious of, although the chances of sex offenders offending again is less than that of other crimes according to some sources, the chances of them doing something bad still seems higher than the average. If I was a parent then I would want to know who in the neighborhood I could trust and who I would have to keep an eye on. Megan's law is a matter of making people feel safer.


The reason I use our is because despite the different views some things are still true, people still on average do not really care too much on the environment unless it directly impacts our lives, we like the environment in the abstract but we still value our gas more than the environment. If we did value the environment so much then we would change our spending habits and stuff like that but we don't. We still buy big ol' SUVs, we still will pick cheaper power companies even when given an option that it more environmentally friendly, we will still complain about gas prices being too high even though there are economists that support a gas tax. We, on average, do not really care because we may not be a family but we are part of a society. Honestly though, I would actually support more methods to reduce gas spending such as promoting economical public transportation or alternative fuels and stuff like that because of the need for future economic success, however, most people don't really think in such terms and we as a society really are not embracing the future and trying to change our ways as much as we need to.


Government influence in the economy has done many many things, however, many economists see this government influence as a bad thing. Neo-Classical economists see taxation as a distortion of the market that results in economic inefficiency and Austrians, and Supply side economists, and monetarists and so on also disagree with the goodness of government intervention in the economy. Now, if all of the groups are added together it would seem to be a lot of economists. Certainly some groups are fringe groups but many groups have great intellectuals as members and have contributed to the study of economics as a whole. Certainly the views of people who have studied the economy for years would be important to listen to on a conversation about economics?

Well, there are no contradictions in the examples that you have given, only bad situations. How to deal with these people is something that does need to figured out I suppose, I mean, crime is a bad thing as it damages the market. We need to find a system that does the most good for the most people.