link to original reddit post by /u/cnnr_g
Michael Malice's Anarchist Handbook came today (I'm also interested in your opinions on him). I found this excerpt from Goodwin to be thought-provoking:
"Mr. Locke, the great champion of the doctrine of an original contract, has been aware of this difficulty, and therefore observes, that “a tacit consent indeed obliges a man to obey the laws of any government, as long as he has any possessions, or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of that government; but nothing can make a man a member of the commonwealth, but his actually entering into it by positive engagement, and express promise and compact. “ A singular distinction; implying upon the face of it, that an acquiescence, such as has just been described, is sufficient to render a man amenable to the penal regulations of society; but that his own consent is necessary to entitle him to its privileges."
At first blush, libertarians will agree that I'm not obliged to follow any law I don't have a hand in crafting (we can assume that my participating in democracy is not sufficient to satisfy "having a hand in"). But it's also the assumption that a society's collective will binds me in any fashion that is false. If I don't agree with a given social norm, it's still in my interest to give it strong consideration. But I still have the right of choice. I don't obey laws solely because there are consequences for disobeying them; even the most dedicated statists will engage in victimless crimes that they think ought to be legal (notice how young quasi-communists love LSD and cocaine). I also choose to respect the property and bodies of others. In this sense, I do in fact recognize a sort of obligation to society's will as it relates to me.
The difference with law is that it is a weaponization of social norms. Assuming that the majority is adequately represented by a state's laws, the use of force still perverts efforts by individuals in society to impose their own will on others. If it happens to neither over- or under-emphasize a given will of society at large, this is accidental although still unjust and unadaptive. That's the best-case scenario. It's more likely that the state will justify its using the big stick with some vague sense of morality as summarized by the vote, which is nothing more than a compromise of the majority's preferences.
I understand that my choices will always be somewhat abridged by the existing construction of society at any given point, but the monopolization of force entails the monopolization of the majority itself. By the time a social norm snakes its way through congress, there's no telling who it will and won't benefit. Choice, my mechanism for negotiating with social norms, is in no real sense intact once monocentric law enters the picture.