No One Is the Boss of You. NO ONE.

Yes, Virginia, the nonaggression principle CAN be proved… (DN 1.1)

Aug 20, 2024

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

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1

Chapter 1: WHY

1.1 — Authority and the Nonaggression Principle

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.

—Lysander Spooner

Over the last few centuries, humanity finally reasoned our way to the understanding that no one has the automatic authority to rule another. The reasoning was sound. Unfortunately, we failed to carry that reasoning out to its logical conclusions.

It is time we did so.

After all, we’re not just talking about switching from Coke to Pepsi here—we are talking about the next evolution in human social and political organization. We must understand why that is necessary.

And it is absolutely necessary.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are aware of the creeping totalitarianism that is slowly darkening the human landscape. No matter what country you are in, you have likely perceived that we are on a strange and dangerous trajectory, and you don’t like it.

The mainstream of every society—the state, the mouthpieces, and the many people who blindly follow along—think you are an oddball, a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ or a dangerous radical for even daring to question the narrative. Yet you know better. You are right and they are wrong, and I tip my cap to you for your awareness and courage.

That being said, our core problem is not that we live under good systems that have simply become corrupted by bad people or bad ideas. If that were so, we would at least have a chance of fixing our systems and getting back to normal.

But there is no normal. There never was.

Lysander Spooner’s logic from the quote above holds just as true when extended to countries beyond America. Our respective systems have either authorized the mess we are in, or they have been incapable of preventing it. As such, our systems are unfixable.

There are myriad structural reasons for this, but we need not go too far down that road. Our purposes here are served by a far more basic realization:

All of our systems will eventually become tyrannical because they are all built on fundamentally tyrannical premises.

That is why we must forgo trying to “fix” what is and begin our journey to what should be.

This is not change for the sake of change. This is not an abandonment of the tried-and-true for some faddish novelty or utopian pipe dream. Quite the opposite: this is a return to the most ancient wisdom there is. To understand why, we must go back to basics.

What follows involves a bit of philosophical argumentation, but do not glaze over. Every right you enjoy, every freedom you cherish, is rooted in the moral realities we are about to discuss!

We begin by stating a brute fact:

No one has automatic authority over any other.

We can restate this in a variety of ways.

We can say that there is no such thing as birthright authority. That there are no fixed classes of highborn and lowborn. That no one is born to rule, nor others to be ruled.

We can say that no one has ontological authority—that is, that no one has the legitimate right to rule based on nothing other than the fact of his or her existence.

Or we can say it more colorfully, by quoting Thomas Jefferson (who in turn borrowed the metaphor from Col. Richard Rumbold), when he said that, “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

In every case, we are saying the same thing: no one is (naturally and automatically) the boss of you. The only form of natural authority, which we will discuss separately, is the temporary and conditional authority that parents exercise over their children. But when we are talking about adults, here on Earth, automatic authority simply does not exist.

If automatic/ontological/birthright authority does not exist, then a corollary fact must also be true:

All authority must be either granted consensually or imposed by force.

You can also reverse those: if it is clear that all authority must be either granted consensually or imposed by force, then it must follow that automatic authority does not exist.

We can act like it exists. We can create complex social, cultural, and political structures that impose the pretense upon a society. But it does not actually exist.

If you doubt any of this, you are invited to put it to the test. Find a would-be ruler who claims he has the automatic right to rule over others. Then find someone who refuses to consent to be ruled by him. What option does the ruler have left?

Force.

This too we can state as a principle:

Authority must be imposed upon the unwilling by means of the initiation of force.

He can insist until he is blue in the face that he has some sort of automatic authority, but there is no actual evidence for that authority in nature. And if his intended subjects refuse to bend the knee, then all he has left is the sword.

This leads the would-be ruler (or his would-be advocates) into a performative contradiction. In other words, in his attempt to refute the claim, he is forced to prove it true:

The claim is that automatic authority does not exist, and thus that all authority must either be granted consensually or imposed by force. When the would-be ruler goes to impose his supposed automatic authority upon an unwilling person, he finds he has no choice but to use force. Which is exactly what the claim said he must do.

For the would-be ruler (and his many statist toadies), there is no way out of this conundrum. Thus, the claim rises to the level of an axiom:

Ontological (automatic, birthright) authority does not exist.

Needless to say, there are people who possess natural talents that make them effective or desirable leaders. But their leadership is not a given. It must be granted or imposed.

All of this leads us to the nonaggression principle.

The nonaggression principle is worded in a variety of ways, but they all amount to the same general concept: that it is morally impermissible for any person to initiate force against the person or property of any other.

This is not just some obscure philosophy espoused by libertarian ideologues. This is the First Principle. It is the foundation of moral behavior. Even toddlers understand it. It is so basic that most people do not even bother trying to prove it. It is simply stated as a given.

However, just so there’s no doubt whatsoever, we will prove it here, using the principles and brute facts delineated above as our basis. To wit,

Authority must be imposed upon the unwilling by means of the initiation of force,
No one has ontological authority over any other,

.˙. No one has the ontological authority to initiate force upon the unwilling.

The conclusion is a universal axiom, and serves as the basis of the nonaggression principle. There is no natural authority to initiate force against another. To do so is the violation of a fundamental natural law.

This is a big part of what we mean when we discuss the “moral principles that emanate from natural law.” The nonaggression principle is rooted in inescapable natural facts. It cannot be dispensed with. It is written into the very fabric of reality.

And for our purposes, that matters a great deal.

I need your support to keep this train rolling!