You're Not Just Up Against Government

You're also up against the cognitive bias and lack of imagination of billions of people (5.X.2)

Our last discussion focused on an Academy of Ideas video (largely based on the work of Michael Huemer) that explores the reasons people submit so readily to authority. That installment looked at arguments defending the concept of an implied social contract, demonstrating why each is morally and logically flawed.

The other main thrust of the video was to explore the psychological biases that keep humans subservient to the illegitimate institution of involuntary government. We need to take a closer look at this.

As before, I am going to include an unedited AI summary outlining the details of that aspect of the video. The summary is imperfect, but for these purposes, it is good enough. (I could spend a few hours doing my own version from scratch, but there are more productive uses for those few hours right now.)

This topic is very relevant to our work on the Distributed Nation. I will explain why after the summary.

While you read the summary, think about this: Have you observed these cognitive biases and syndromes in others? Are you yourself experiencing them now, or did you in the past? Do you hear their ring of truth?

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SUMMARY

1. Status Quo Bias (The Default Effect)

Core idea:
People instinctively treat existing social arrangements as morally correct simply because they exist and are familiar.

How the video develops this:

• Because we grow up in a government-run society, we never experience a world where political authority is absent — so we assume the current arrangement must be normal, natural, or necessary.

• This creates a self-perpetuating loop:

  1. Government exists.

  2. People assume it must be legitimate.

  3. The belief in legitimacy keeps it in place.

  4. Its existence continues to feel normal.

• The psychological comfort of familiarity overrides reasoned evaluation.

• This bias is especially powerful in political systems:

  • Children learn early that governments create laws and enforce them.

  • Schools, textbooks, ceremonies, and media reinforce the idea of state legitimacy.

  • Most adults never question it because it feels as unchangeable as gravity.

Effect on political authority:
The mere presence of government feels like proof of its legitimacy.
This makes the absence of government seem chaotic or unimaginable, even if the current system creates immense harm.

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2. Stockholm-Syndrome-Like Identification with the State

Core idea:
People psychologically identify with powerful institutions — including the very ones that coerce them — leading to emotional loyalty and defense of authority.

The video stops short of calling it literal Stockholm Syndrome, but it draws a clear analogy.

How the video develops this:

• Over time, citizens begin to see the government as “us” rather than “them.”

• People emotionally invest in national symbols (flag, anthem, leaders), mixing:

  • self-esteem

  • group identity

  • personal meaning

  • patriotism

• Because the state wraps its coercion in narratives about protecting the public, citizens feel gratitude instead of resentment.

Examples highlighted implicitly in the video’s framework:

• When the government wages war, citizens often feel personally attacked if someone criticizes the decision.

• Citizens may defend policies (taxation, surveillance, military action) that directly violate their own rights, purely out of identification with the state.

• People often experience policy criticism as identity threat, not as rational argument.

Effect on political authority:
Citizens come to see the government’s power as an extension of their own agency, even though they have almost no real control over it.

Thus, coercion is reinterpreted as “our collective will.”

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3. Cognitive Dissonance (The Need to Resolve Inner Contradiction)

Core idea:
When people hold two conflicting beliefs, they feel psychological discomfort — so they revise one of the beliefs to eliminate the contradiction.

The video uses this to explain why people rationalize state authority:

• Most people believe “violence and coercion are wrong.”

• Yet they see government constantly using violence and coercion (taxation, war, policing).

• Instead of changing the universal moral rule (“violence is wrong”), they reinterpret the government’s violence as necessary, legitimate, or special.

Specific ways the video describes this process:

• If you pay taxes under threat but want to see yourself as a moral person living in a just society, you will psychologically reframe the coercion as legitimate.

• If you know the government commits injustices but you also believe it protects you, you will explain away the injustices to maintain comfort.

• People prefer believing:

  • “The government is generally doing the right thing”

  • rather than

  • “I am being coerced and have little control over my social world”

Common rationalizations the video points to implicitly:

• “Well, taxes are necessary — otherwise there would be chaos.”

• “If the government didn’t enforce these rules, society would collapse.”

• “Yes, some things are wrong, but overall it’s for our protection.”

These reduce dissonance by projecting moral necessity onto state coercion.

Effect on political authority:
People come to morally justify the state’s actions not because they are moral, but because it helps resolve their internal psychological discomfort.

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4. “Political Stockholm Dissonance” (Combination Bias)

The video doesn’t use this term, but it describes the combination:

status quo bias

• identification with authority

• cognitive dissonance resolution
  = the moral illusion of political authority

This illusion:

• Makes citizens perceive government force as morally special

• Triggers emotional loyalty to their rulers

• Prevents serious examination of state legitimacy

• Causes people to defend the very power structures that oppress them

The video emphasizes that this is not the result of rational thought but of deep-seated psychological conditioning.

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5. Special Vulnerability to Authority Narratives

While not a formal bias category in psychology, the video stresses that humans are:

• narrative-driven

• hierarchy-forming

• authority-respecting

• cohesion-seeking

This means people will adopt a moral narrative that justifies the social order—even if the narrative is false or inconsistent.

The video suggests:

• People tolerate immense state violence because it comes wrapped in moral language:

  • “law and order”

  • “national security”

  • “the common good”

  • “public safety”

• These phrases soothe moral discomfort and manipulate our intuitive psychology.

This is a cognitive vulnerability that authority exploits.

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6. Diffusion of Responsibility (The Collective Illusion)

The video implies one more psychological mechanism:

• People feel less personally responsible for coercion when it is enacted through the government.

• Citizens feel:

  • “I didn’t personally steal money; taxes were collected by the IRS.”

  • “I didn’t personally endorse war; I’m just one citizen.”

  • “I didn’t personally enact the law; the government did.”

This diffusion of responsibility allows people to:

• morally distance themselves

• support aggressive policies

• excuse systemic injustice

All while maintaining the self-belief that they are peaceful, moral individuals.

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7. Fear-of-Freedom Bias

Finally, the video stresses that questioning authority triggers a deep psychological fear:

• fear of disorder

• fear of responsibility

• fear of uncertainty

• fear of moral agency

People cling to government power because imagining life without centralized coercion feels like a plunge into chaos, even if history shows otherwise.

This fear acts as a psychological anchor that keeps people emotionally attached to political authority.

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Summary of the Cognitive Bias Layer

The video’s argument is that people obey the government not because:

• the government has real authority, or

• the social contract is legitimate, or

• majoritarianism is morally binding

but because:

• Status quo bias makes the state feel natural

• Identification makes the state feel like “us”

• Cognitive dissonance makes obedience feel morally justified

• Narrative vulnerability makes authority feel righteous

• Diffusion of responsibility hides personal complicity

• Fear-of-freedom bias makes alternatives feel dangerous

These combine to create the moral illusion of political authority.

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Okay, so why does this matter?

Because it’s not going to change anytime soon.

These biases are deep and pervasive. Some people suffer from all of them. Many hold several of them at once. Very few people have overcome them all.

Given this, how would we have any chance, in the short term, of getting any single large society to become stateless or market-anarchic? There is no way we are going to convince 300 million people, or even a million people in a single region, to all support such a change.

Of course, in a system that uses voting, you don’t need all—just a voting majority. There are just two problems with that:

• First, if a single large system uses voting for decision-making and does not let people opt out of membership in the system, that system is nonconsensual and thus violates our Prime Directive. We cannot do that.

• Second, in a system of that type, the losers/minority are always fighting to regain control and impose their ways upon you. That puts freedom in a constant state of threat. That is no way to live.

This, then, leads to the conclusion that the only morally sound way to organize a society is to leave it alone. Allow people to organize themselves however they wish. Small enclaves. Market-anarchic services for those who wish them. You can even leave room for modern-style governments for those who want them—so long as the rest of us are free to opt out. This social framework is called panarchy, or a polycentric consensual order.

The movement in this direction is still in its infancy, however. Free cities, SEZs, and seasteading will continue to grow, but right now they are swimming upstream against jealous governments and technological hurdles. And we are even further away from a condition in which people can secede and form their own polities, or remain on their own property and choose from a menu of governance providers (or private agencies that provide governance-type services).

This is where the approach of our distributed nation comes in. We recognize that we will not achieve independence overnight—that we must play a long game. Yet at the same time, we want to get started now! We are tired of being isolated and alone, watching our freedoms slip away one by one.

The distributed nation allows us to split the difference—to get started and work towards our independence progressively, over time. No leader. No central authority. Just people who share in common a fierce devotion to our own freedom.

We will have a national identity…

It won’t be based in cognitive dissonance or Stockholm Syndrome or fear of freedom.

It won’t be based in obedience, lack of imagination, or reflexive groveling to authority.

It will be based in the surety that as human persons, we must be free, and that with patient effort, we will be.

Right now, the human cognitive default is to defer to authority. To justify it. To insist that everyone must submit to it.

That IS going to change. One day, governments taking your money or telling you what to do will be a thing of the past. Any “official” who tries to do so will be laughed at or pelted with garbage. But that is not the human default right now. It is going to take years—probably generations—to get to that point.

We WILL get there, but it will take committed effort by committed people. Someone has to get the ball rolling.

That someone is us.

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Postscript:
Just because I favor one approach over another doesn’t mean I do not respect, support, and wish great success for other approaches. I consider anyone who is working in the direction of greater freedom to be an ally!

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Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16 | 1.17 | 1.18 | 1.19 | 1.20 | 1.21 |1.22

(Part II) What: 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 2.6 | 2.7 | 2.8 | 2.9 | 2.10 I 2.11 | 2.12 | 2.13 | 2.14 | 2.15 | 2.16 | 2.17 | 2.XX | 2.18 | 2.19 | 2.20 | 2.21 | | Where: 3.0 | 3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | 3.7 | 3.8 | 3.9 | 3.10 | 3.11 | 3.12 | 3.13 || Who: 4.0 | 4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.5 | 4.XX | 4.XY | 4.6 | 4.7 | 4.8 | 4.9 | 4.10 | 4.11 | 4.12 | 4.XZ | 4.13 | 4.YX | 4.14 | 4.15 | 4.16 | 4.17 | 4.18 | 4.19 | 4.YY | 4.YZ | 4.ZX | 4.20 | 4.21 | 4.22 || How: 5.0 | 5.1 | 5.2 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 5.5 | 5.6 | 5.X.1 | 5.7 I 5.X.2