POLITICAL POWER.

1. I’m going to use the term ‘Rulers’ to refer to the group of people who, as part of some organised population, have political power. Where this political power is the power to decide (to make the rules about) how the population do things, where these things are ones that need to be done collectively and which affect everyone. And (more generally) it is the power to decide the rules by which the members of the population relate to and behave towards each other, especially in economic terms.

2. Here are some examples of the sorts of things that Rulers have the power to decide about. What sort of transport infrastructure the population is going to have. What rules (if any) there are about how people buy and sell from each other. And about how they employ and remunerate others. And how they own things. And how much taxes they pay to fund the things that need to be done collectively.

3. Here are some questions I have about the power of the Rulers.

FIRST, how can the Ruled be sure that the Rulers aren’t abusing their power?

SECOND, what is the Rule-content? By which I mean: what determines how the Rulers rule and what kind of rules they make? For example, do they only ever make rules that are only in the interest of them (the Rulers)?

THIRD, what is the Rule-basis? By which I mean: what determines who the Rulers are? Is it the people who are able to exercise the greatest force (the ones with the most guns)? Or is it the people who have the consent of the ruled? Or is it something else entirely?

FOURTH, what constitutes a Ruler being a tyrant. By which I mean (something like) being ‘undemocratic’.

(These four questions will crop up in the rest of this essay.)

3a. But wait, I think the main question I have is: So Politics is the name of process by which decisions get made about how we relate to each other (mostly about socioeconomic stuff). So Politics could be democracy or monarchy. But the question then is: what is the name of the process by which the decision is made about what political process we have. I don’t see how there can be an answer to this question because making a decision about what political process to have presumes you already have a process for making decisions.

Abuse of Power.

4. The first question is: how can we be (or make) sure that the Rulers aren’t abusing their power? (This question is sometimes stated as “who guards the guardians?”). This question is about trust and the possible betrayal of that trust. For example the people give the Rulers money in the form of taxes and they (the people) trust the Rulers to spend that money in the interests of the people. But how do the people know that the Rulers will do that? The Rulers might just spend the tax money on themselves. Or spend it on things for the people but in a way which isn’t the best. For example by giving infrastructure construction contracts to their friends where these friends are not the best ones at constructing infrastructure.

Non-political power.

5. The abuse of power is not just about politics. Here’s a simple example from everyday life. Jack gives Mary money to go buy his grocery shopping. But she doesn’t show him the receipts and Jack trusts her so he doesn’t ask to see them. So he doesn’t know that Mary spends less than he gives her and she keeps the difference for herself.

6. Another example is: we read newspapers and we trust the journalists to be fair and objective when they write their reports. (Stating this point in terms of power, it would be: “we have given journalists the power to determine what we believe”.) If journalists were, for whatever reason, deliberately putting a bias on what they write towards some (false) opinion. We wouldn’t know they were doing this.

7.

Similarly, we assume that when University academics write serious books on some important subject, that they have done their research in a careful, objective, rational and disinterested way. To give us the truth. Universities are supposed to be the seats of unfettered and disinterested enquiry into the truth. But how do we know that the academics haven’t been taken over by some group which is presenting us with a biased view? A biased view which isn’t the product of disinterested, objective enquiry. Maybe even while at the same time claiming that it is! For example what if the Biology Department has been taken over by Creationists? For a long time universities were filled with people who thought it made sense to talk about how many angels you could fit on the head of a pin. (Or that kind of thing anyway.) They weren’t being sensible about it at all!

Maybe a simpler statement of this point is: how do we know university people are the ones most capable of producing truth. It might become taken over by stupid people. And, given that universities are in charge of their own recruiting, then this situation will be self-perpetuating.

8. When you get a closed institution like a University there is always a worry that something like this might happen. By ‘closed’ I mean its members decide who future members will be. (A related question might be: “how do Catholics know the Pope isn’t a heretic?”.) If some group of people have become entrenched in an institution then there’s nothing you can do. If some institution is “institutionally” slack. Its members might know that they are being slack. But they don’t have any incentive or reason to change. If you pointed out the slackness to an officer of the institution hoping that then they might make an effort to correct their slackness they will respond: “so what, I get paid anyway”.

8a. This worry about institutions we trust is a part of “climate change denial”. Deniers say that university science departments are infested with liberals who are biasing the results according to their agenda. But they’ve got no reason to believe this apart from what other self-styled experts say. But why trust them any more than the liberals?

Carelessness.

9. Another thing is that the abuse of power might not be deliberate. It’s something that might happen when power is carelessly or incompetently exercised. For example we trust that scientists are careful when they go about producing their results. But they might produce work which is inaccurate because they didn’t double check their results. This could be where they know they are being careless. (In which case I suppose it’s more just that they are being lazy.) But it could equally be that they genuinely believe they have been very careful but where their measuring and reasoning has been (subconsciously) affected by biases and prejudices.

Power corrupts.

10. The problem of covert abuse of power I have talked about so far is just an example of the more general opinion that power always gets abused. As per the saying “power corrupts”. The abuse of power I have talked about above is suspected covert abuse. But we already know about the more common version of this which is the overt abuse of power. Like in a monarchy where it is obvious that the king is ruling in a way which benefits him (and his acolytes) more than it does his subjects. It’s so much taken for granted that power corrupts in this sense that we would find it strange if this kind of overt abuse didn’t happen. For example suppose there was a king of a country who had all the absolute powers that goes with kingship. And yet he was content to be averagely wealthy. He lived in an average house on an average road. And he was strictly anti-privilege in many other ways too. That would be strange.

10a. It is so much taken as a given that someone having power (as in: being in charge of deciding the rules) will result in them abusing that power (as in: they will make those rules to benefit themselves) that very word "ruler" which doesn't, according to the dictionary, suggest abuse of power, is taken to mean that. A ruler is just someone who rules, which means they manage the organisation of things. Based on this definition there is no reason why it shouldn't be just some average paying technical job, being a ruler. But being a 'ruler' actually implies that you are higher status and wealth. This is because there is an assumption that someone whose job it is to organise things will, inevitably, choose a way of organising things which benefits them over everybody else. Which is why rulers of one country will invade (or they used to anyway) another country so they can become rulers of that country as well. If 'ruler' just meant the job of ruling then no ruler would do that. It would just be creating extra work for yourself!

10b. (Aside about management.) Similarly with managers in an organisation. It’s their job to decide who does what in that organisation and who deserves to get how much for doing what they do. So, inevitably, they have decided that their job deserves a quite high rate of pay. Their job is actually just an average technical job. But it has associations of instructing the servants.

10c. If a ruler is someone who decides the rules by which things get run. Then they don't need to be permanent? They can just describe all the rules and then go. The fact that they are permanent is suspicious. I know we say that the ruler is "running things" but they don't do that on a daily basis. Micromanaging everything all the time. A business manager does need to give their staff the same instructions every day.

11. People say: “all these politicians are corrupt, they always break their promises, they never do the things they said they would do before they got elected”. If you think that power inevitably corrupts then you can’t solve the problem of corrupt politicians simply by replacing them with some other politicians who say they will not be corrupt. Because, once they have power then they too will get corrupted.

Inevitability of Rulers.

12. One idea for solving the “power corrupts” problem is just to not have Rulers at all. Instead we could have some system where the population does the ruling directly. But that is difficult. Because it seems necessary that a population has a separate group of Rulers. Where this need for a separate group is an example of the more general idea that a population consists of a division of labour because no individual member can be self-sufficient to produce all the things they want. We can’t all build our own house and make our own car and produce all the food we eat, so we have people separate groups of people specialising in these tasks. In the same way: we need a specialist group of people to coordinate the division of labour. Because that’s another task that we can’t all do.

13. And even if it were possible for the people to Rule directly. This would be to “give power to the people”. But the “power corrupts” idea still applies. If you give power to the people then the result will just be that the people are corrupted. (Or, to be precise, the majority of the people.) Is that what you want?

14. So, the line of reasoning goes: to have an organised society and economy it is necessary to have Rulers, and having Rulers leads inevitably to abuse and corruption and sometimes even (see later for more) tyranny. But the disadvantages due to the latter far outweigh the disadvantages of not living in an organised society and economy. What seems to be misguided is it to want to be free of both sorts of disadvantages. To live in an organised society and then to complain about (the relatively minor inconvenience) of being subject to Rulers who abuse their power.

14. (continued) Social order is better than chaos. But then we have to choose some particular order. And whichever one we choose will contain advantages for some particular group. Members of different groups will favour whatever order gives an advantage to the group they are a member of.

15. (Aside.) In the past people used to come up with theories about the formation of society. These theories were along the lines of that people originally used to live separately and then they realised that they would be better off living in societies so they sorted that out. But actually the more accurate historical story is that some strong Ruler type made captive slaves of people and forced them to live together. For the benefit of the Ruler only. Then, later on, the Ruler’s power diminishes. Mostly because the people get fed up of him bossing them about all the time. But then the people have the problem that they still need to live together. Up to that point the only thing that was making them live together successfully was the Ruler. So then they need to come up with something else that gets them to live together. Either that or they just dissolve society and go back to living as individuals like their ancestors did.

Oversight.

16. OK, so that’s the first proposed solution to the “power corrupts” problem dealt with. Another proposed solution (particularly relevant to abuse of power in its covert manifestation) is to have “watchdogs”. This is where you give oversight powers to some second group of people (‘meta-Rulers’) to keep an eye on the Rulers to make sure that the latter aren’t abusing their power. As per the famous quote which goes “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot.” (See HERE.) I think the word ‘liberty’ here is being used to refer to the freedom to elect your officials. In which case “eternal vigilance” and “continued oversight” mean keeping an eye on them.

17. The first thing about this is that it is very impractical. If you are constantly checking that your elected officials are not misbehaving then you won’t have time to do anything else. (Similarly, if you are fact-checking everything you read to make sure it’s accurate then you might as well just write it yourself.)

18. But it’s more than just impractical. It’s kind of self-defeating. (Is that the right word here?) Because if you are going to have people (meta-Rulers) performing “continued oversight” over the Rulers then you will need to have some more people (meta-meta-Rulers) to perform “continued oversight” over the meta-Rulers. It will go on forever!

Left-field solution.

19. Another solution to the “power corrupts” problem would be to have Rulers who don’t know they are the Rulers. (Like (spoiler alert) the Ruler Of The Universe in the novel “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” by Douglas Adams.) Power only corrupts when people know they have it. If they don’t then that’s fine.

19a. More generally: looking for a solution it’s like we are saying: we don’t want our rulers to be so bossy! But bossy people are the only ones who want to be rulers. Everybody else is too chilled out.

More about covert abuse.

20. So the covert abuse of power is where the Rulers are abusing their power unknown to the people. By which I mean they are doing things secretly, without the consent of the people and in their own interest while at the same time telling the people they are doing things in the interests of the people. A more sophisticated version of this is where the Rulers are doing things in their interest, but not secretly. So the people know what the Rulers are doing. But the Rulers have persuaded the people to believe (falsely) that what they are doing is in the interests of the people. (This word ‘consent’ is an important one and I should probably have used it more than I have done so far! Also what I say here shows that P consenting to X isn’t the same as X being in P’s interest. More on this later I think.)

21. Left-wing type people would say that the idea of “trickle-down” economics is an example of this. This is where the Rulers make rules which mean that some people get fabulously rich and leave the rest very poor. And the Rulers say to the rest of the population: “It might not seem like it but this situation is actually good for you too. If there weren’t these fabulously rich people then you would be even poorer than you are now. Furthermore having rules which allow these rich people is the only way for you to have the standard of living that you are currently enjoying.” (Which is all rather like the way Dr Pangloss says: “this is the best of all possible worlds.”) So you might have Rulers who get 100% of the vote (ie full consent) but who are still ruling only in the interests of their own class. All the Rulers need to do is manipulate the electorate into thinking (wrongly) they are voting for things that are in their interest.

Morals.

22. What the “power corrupts” idea is saying is that if you give a particular group of people power then they will always exercise it only in their self-interest. So, in answer to the second question in §3 above, the “power corrupts” idea says that Rule-content is determined solely by what is in the self-interest of the Rulers.

23. But surely there are factors other than self-interest which determine Rule-content. Just from experience don’t we see that sometimes Rulers are nice and implement policies which promote the welfare of the population. Where they don’t have to do this and could instead just keep the people in a state where they have only the barest minimum to survive. All of which suggests that Rule-content is also determined by the Rulers’ innate sense of morals that tells them not to abuse their power. And maybe this also happens with more ordinary examples of power. For example everyone has the power to shout abuse at a stranger and then run away. Or to steal things from a store without being detected. But people don’t do this as much as they could. And that’s because an innate sense of morals stops them.

24. Maybe we underestimate this innate sense of morals. And we could rely on it more than we do. So we could abolish all law enforcement (police, courts etc) up to and including the law against murder. Once we are in this situation where we can’t rely on any legal system to keep us from being murdered, we would then be forced to put more effort into promoting and cultivating the moral virtues of trustfulness and trustworthiness. The point I’m making here (admittedly not a great point) is that having strong law enforcement agencies is counter-productive. Because then we rely on these agencies and so don’t put as much effort as we would otherwise do into making people well-behaved.

Rule-Basis.

25. So the next question is about Rule-basis. (The third question in §3 above.) By which I mean: who are the Rulers? Why are they who they are and not some other people? Is it because they are the people who have the Greatest Force? And by Greatest Force I mean having the ability to exercise more force than any other group. And by force I mean the threat of violence. So it might be the group who has got the most guns. Then the relation between the Rulers and the Ruled is that the Rulers “can beat the Ruled in a fight”. One alternative to the Greatest Force idea is: Rulers are the ones who have the consent of the ruled.

26. Certainly the Greatest Force idea is the simplest answer. But often it seems like the Rulers are NOT the group who have the Greatest Force. Where, furthermore, this is the case despite the fact that there is some other different group that DOES have the Greatest Force and who, for some reason, are NOT the Rulers. (This is similar to my previous point about how there are Rulers but those Rulers aren’t behaving completely self-interestedly.) For example, sometimes you hear about an army “military government” who took over in a coup and now they are giving power to the civilian authorities. Where this latter are a weaker (in terms of guns) group than the army.

27. Of course about this kind of situation you might say that what I have described is just what it looks like. But that’s now what is actually going on. So the army is not really giving power back. Because the civilian government knows that if it does anything the army doesn’t like then the government will be overthrown again.

28. But is Rule by Greatest Force even possible? It doesn’t seem that it would be practically possible for a very small group of Rulers to rule By Force. So Imagine a small town of about ten thousand people. And a group of 100 (that’s 1%) get some guns. And no one else has guns. Then can the group with the guns enforce its will on the rest? Won’t the other 9,900 people overpower them? Despite not having any guns. I guess it depends on the size of the guns. (All this reminds me of when a lion kills an antelope. But that antelope will be part of a herd of hundreds. That herd could easily fend off a single lion.)

29. The Rule by Greatest Force idea implies that the Rulers are a very small group or even just one person (dictator). But, in a practical technical sense, Rulers can’t be a very small group. Because they have to delegate power downwards to civil servants and officials. They can’t micromanage everything. Rule by one person would only work if the Ruler had superpowers and could see what everyone was doing all the time and, when they were disobedient, could punish them immediately wherever and whenever. Only then would a monarch have true absolute and total power.

30. So (despite what the terms suggest) monarchy or dictatorship isn’t rule by just one person. When there is a monarchy it’s not as if one single person can do literally anything they want. There will always be other people that they have to get the consent and approval of. So this means that Rule is always with the consent of at least a sizeable group of people. (Usually some barons or lords or something like that.) So then real question here is: what are the limits to the size of the Ruling group. How big does it have to be?

31. And to some extent the Ruler would need the consent of the people in general and not just a small group. For example a monarch and his group couldn’t (for example) suddenly decide to ban people from eating meat. There would be some sort of uprising surely. So, even in a monarchy there is some concept of the consent of the governed. In that sense power always comes from below. This is why there’s no point having a Socialist Revolution. Which is the implementation of Socialism by force. But if you need force to implement something, it’s not going to last. If you need force to implement it that means there’s a large (possibly a majority) of people who don’t want it.

32. On the other hand here’s a thing in support of the idea that Rule is always by Force. This is the thought that Force and consent are not really different things. The consent of the Ruled is constituted by their threat against the Rulers that the Ruled will overthrow (by force) the Rulers if they don’t Rule according to the consent of the Ruled. So, contrary to what I said at the start of §29 above, Rule by Force doesn’t imply a small group. So Democracy is an example of a situation where there is Rule is based on Force. Because the majority rule by Force over the minority. Because the 51% can (in principle) beat the 49% in a fight.

Strategies.

33. So let’s say I find myself in some situation where the Rulers are ruling by Force. Where I am one of the Ruled. Say I accept the situation. But I would expect, at the very least, that the Rulers are preventing Rule by some other people who might want to Rule over me in a more exploitative way than the present Rulers are. It might not be much but the best I can hope for is that the Rulers are, out of all the possible groups of exploitative Rulers, the least exploitative ones. I might even give my support to a group of exploitative Rulers because I know that they will exploit me less than the next most likely alternative.

34. It’s rather like a protection racket I suppose. If some mafia type people say to me: “pay us some money and we will protect you” I might think: “the only thing I need protecting from is you!”. I need to pay whichever mafia group is the least harmful to me. They will all be harmful to some degree.

35. In general, we feel that there needs to be some kind of Force exercised against people who are not behaving well towards us: criminals and other sorts. But then how do we stop that Force being exercised against us innocents? We want the Rulers to be strong and to have sufficient determination to force people to not be nasty towards me. Rulers who will use Force to overcome the bad people. Even though they may then (inappropriately) apply that Force to me too.

Force as default.

36. If you say: let’s not have any political system. Let’s not have any Rulers. So this is when people say: “let’s not have any government”. Or (at the most) “let’s limit the power of the government to the bare minimum”. (Meaning: limit the number of areas where the government makes the rules.) They say this as if it will increase people’s freedom in general. As if this absence of government will mean that nobody will be exercising (exploitative) power over anyone else.

37. But surely there will still be people getting their way somehow. There will be “natural” processes by which some people get their way. So saying: “let’s not have any Rulers” is not the neutral statement it might sound like. Really it’s saying: “let’s have people as Rulers who get to be so by natural processes”. Which people will usually be the strong and forceful ones. They will get their way somehow. By hook or by crook.

38. It’s a bit like we are in a situation where we have to decide who is going to be first in a queue and someone says: “to make it fair, let’s just pick some arbitrary criteria. So we can do it in alphabetical order, names starting A go first”. And then we ask this person: “by the way, what’s your name?” and they say: “Anthony Aardvaark.”

39. It’s also rather like the saying which goes: in the fight between strong and weak being neutral is the same as siding with the strong. Properly instituted government is the attempt (regardless of how successful) to make it that Rule is according to the consent of the people as a whole. Wanting to get rid of government means you don’t want to attempt to do that.

Competence.

40. Here’s something else which might determine Rule-basis. Something which is neither Force or Consent. And it’s: “that group will Rule which can get its act together”. So you might have potential Rulers who have the greatest Force which, in principle, they could use to impose their will. Or Rulers who are totally in line with the consent of the Ruled. Or potential Rulers who represent the views of the overwhelming majority. But if any of these groups are disorganised and ineffectual then they won’t ever become the Rulers. It’s like a political system is always an X-ocracy where X=“people who have got their act together”.

41. This is why, in a Democracy, you often (with the help of the FPTP system, of course!) get Ruling parties who only have the support of about 30-40% of the electorate. So, for example, it might be that 70% of the population of some country want a socialist republic. But, you know the kind of rabble that left-wingers are, constantly disagreeing about stuff and not any good at organising. And so the country ends up getting the same old boring right of centre business-oriented party that the 30% want.

42. Another example. Suppose a group of people has to decide how, as a group, to spend the afternoon. Where the choice is going to the museum or going to see a play at a theatre. Of the group 40% of them want to go to the museum and 60% want to go to the theatre. But this 60% can’t agree amongst themselves which play to go see. (No play gets 50% or more support.) So they all end up going to the museum.

Relation between Rule-content and Rule-basis.

43. It seems as if Rule-basis determines Rule-content. So if Rule-basis is Force then the people Ruling will Rule in their interests. If some Rulers are ruling by Force rather than by Consent of the Ruled then they will always make Rules that serve their interests and not the interests of the Ruled.

44. Even though this might be what always happens, it is certainly possible that you get a group of Rulers who are there by Force but who then decide to rule according to what the people want. But this wouldn’t be Rule by consent strictly speaking.

Possibilities.

45. But now I’m a bit confused because I feel like I’ve ended up with three things. So I’ve got Force and Consent. But then there is also Interest. I was thinking that the way this third thing fits in is that there’s a four-way split. Because there are two separate distinctions. Force vs Consent. And Interest of Rulers vs Interest of Ruled. So that means there will be four different possibilities. But that doesn’t quite work. I’m not sure why I’ll have to sort this out when I come back later and rewrite this whole essay.

46. So (as described in §20-21 above) Rulers might be ruling with the consent of the Ruled but not in their interest. But then it is also possible that Rulers are ruling without consent but still in the interest of the people. The distinction here is that between BY and FOR in the standard definition of democracy: “government OF the people, BY the people and FOR the people”. So a Ruler might be ruling without consent (thus not BY the people) and yet still in their interests (so still FOR the people).

47. Also: you might have a government which was BY the people. It ruled according to their consent. But it was not FOR them. This would happen if the people made decisions about how to run things and the result was (because of their ignorance about things) mismanagement and inefficiency. (AKA ‘idiocracy’.)

Tyranny and Liberty.

48. In the context of the preceding there is a question about what Tyranny is. Is it:

A. where the Rulers are ruling without consent. Or, is it:

B. where Rulers are ruling in their own interests and not that of the Ruled.

49. The first thing is that Tyrants are Rulers who are absolutist. Which means they make rules without consulting the population. (Other terms that could equally be used here are ‘authoritarian’ or ‘absolutist’ or ‘despotic’ or ‘undemocratic’.) Only they, the Rulers, decide how to run things.

50. But the second thing is that Tyrants are Rulers who are (usually overtly) ‘oppressive’. Meaning that they only make rules that are in the interest of themselves and their class. Thus unfairly disadvantaging everyone else. For example if they make a rule that only members of their class are permitted to own a certain kind of (lucrative) asset. In general that’s what ‘oppressive’ means. If the Rulers make rules preventing you doing things that are in your interest then you are being oppressed.

51. But what if the Rulers make a rule that sets limits to the amount of rent that building-owning citizens can charge for letting other citizens live in a building they (the building-owners) own? Then the building-owning citizens might say they are being oppressed. But they are not. Because that rule is not in the interest of the Rulers. Rather it is in the interest of all people who don’t own property and so have to rent. (We call people tyrants who are forcing us to be nice to other people.)

52. It all depends on the reason for the rule. What if the Rulers make a rule that only a certain group of people (where this group is not one that has got anything to do with the Rulers) are permitted to work at some particular occupation. We’d need to know the background to this rule.

53. But, to return to the main point. So being absolutist and being oppressive, despite the fact that they pretty much always go together, are still (conceptually) two different things. So, with the definition of democracy as rule “by the people and for the people”. Like I said above, you could have an enlightened despot where the rule is not ‘by’ the people and yet it is still ‘for’ the people. Maybe the despot really does know better than us what is good for us. For example a despot might design and order the construction of a certain sort of infrastructure. Where the people want a different sort. Which is fair enough because the people don’t have enough technical expertise to make an informed decision about what sort of infrastructure is the best.

53a.The term ‘controlling’, like ‘authoritarian’, is seen as very negative. It’s as if have encountered people who are ‘controlling’ with negative consequences. And so we have assumed that all controlling has negative consequences. But it depends on the content of the controlling. It might be for good. What is the controller controlling? About the controller of public finances you wouldn’t say: “oh, he’s so controlling!”

54. The example of being in prison. (Or being a slave). The essence of being in prison is the deprivation of liberty (in other words, having to do things against your consent). But that’s not really the issue. When you are in prison you are also being put in a situation where you have a seriously worse standard of living than you would have had otherwise. (In other words, you are in a situation that it is not in your interests to be in.) That’s the irksome part of being in prison. Of course these things are related. If you had your liberty you would use it to (or at least to try to) improve your standard of living by going out and being economically active in whatever way you want.

55. Another example is: the government stops us taking harmful addictive substances. (Example of Odysseus and the Sirens.) Or suppose it was important that some people do X. But left to their own devices they wouldn’t. Then the (tyrannical) government that makes you do X against your consent is like your better self. If you aren’t annoyed by being told what to do then the government is not doing its job properly. (Of course this doesn’t mean that if you are annoyed that then they ARE doing their job properly!) If we obey Rulers the way we obey our doctor’s instructions. Neither of these are examples of Tyranny.

56. Sometimes I think people equate rules in general with oppression. I can imagine people thinking traffic regulations like having to stop at a red light is an infringement of their liberty. Or what if there was some place that did not have the rule that you must queue at the Post Office. So every day people just had to muddle through to the counter and there were often harsh words spoken and people were stressed out. Everyone knew that queueing would make for a nicer experience but they didn’t implement this because they saw it as an infringement of liberty. Which in a way it is.

57. An absolutist regime could also be liberal. I mean one which didn’t make people do things for their own good. It would let them take harmful addictive substances (within reason). So you could have a liberal monarchy. Not elected. But it wouldn’t interfere in people’s private lives, their religion or sexual behaviour. And it would allow a free market economy. (In this sense liberalism isn’t coextensive with democracy.) The only freedom such a regime would restrict is the freedom to elect the government.

58. Where rule is despotic the population describe their condition as one of ‘slavery’. But, again, that term is only applicable if the despotic rule is also oppressing them. The term ‘slavery’ is a bit confusing. Does it mean deprivation of liberty? Or does it mean exploitation. The Rulers might force upon the population without their consent rules which say, for example, what sort of work each member of the population must do. Or other things about how they live their lives. So they don’t have any freedom to decide what they do. This makes them slaves? But, in and of itself, this does not imply any disadvantage to any group. The Rulers might make the rules about work allocation so that nobody is disadvantaged. (In particular, for example, if they made a rule that said all professions are paid the same, so what you do doesn’t affect how much you are paid. (This is a bad example!)) Conversely If the Rulers make a rule that a certain group of people get paid only half of what everybody else gets paid for the same work. That group is disadvantaged but this is not about any restriction of their freedom.

59. So if you oppose a rule that is absolutist (ie doesn’t allow the people to elect the government) there must be some reason for your opposition other than just that the rule is absolutist. If there was an absolutist Ruler who was doing a brilliant job at running the country. Everyone was prosperous. Then why would anyone oppose such a Ruler? Would it still be fair to oppose them simply because they were absolutist? Suppose that, in a democracy, the government suspended elections, they said: “right no more elections ever”. But then they didn’t abuse their power but instead they proceeded to implement policies which were liberal and efficient so that the entire population were fabulously prosperous and happy, massively more so than anywhere else in the world. Would people still be demanding elections? If they weren’t then should the be?

60. About liberty. People don’t like it when other people force them to do things they don’t really want to do. Or where other people prevent them from doing the things they do want to do. But circumstances (nature) is constantly doing this kind of thing. The weather is a greater tyrant than any Ruler! To which the response is that the weather isn't a person. We don’t mind the weather restricting our liberty but we do mind other people doing it. But then what about indirect restrictions? So if the government passes a law saying that a certain group of people are not permitted to live in a certain part of the country that’s against their civil liberty. Or what if there is a group of people who are too poor to live in particular area the country. And their poverty is a result of laws made by people. Is there any significance to this comparison? Certainly if you a very poor then your legal right to many freedoms is meaningless. Because your poverty prevents you from exercising those freedoms in any case!

61. When I hear people saying how important liberty is (“liberty or death” they say) I think, what liberty do they mean? The liberty to do what exactly?

62. I have talked about tyranny as the opposite of democracy. But there is something wrong with this. Because the phrase “tyranny of the majority” makes sense. If tyranny and democracy were mutually exclusive opposites then this wouldn’t make sense. Sometimes people describe a regime as undemocratic because it is restricting their liberty in some sense. But there’s nothing undemocratic about that. If the properly elected government (with more than 50% of the vote) want to restrict your liberty then that’s perfectly democratic.

Some other points. Miscellaneous/footnotes.

63. Maybe the casual (overt) abuse of power, as mentioned in §10 above in relation to monarchy, is the ONLY thing wrong with monarchy. Because, apart from that, it’s a good stable form of government. If only monarchs didn’t abuse their power. And were more conscientious in its effective exercise. If they didn’t go on so much about the divine right of kings. And paid more attention to their divine obligations!

64. The first question in §3 (the trust question) only applies where we have given trust such as in a democracy. In a tyranny there is no trust given. And so then the question is only about overt abuses not covert.

65. In §1-2 above I started with a kind of definition of what political power is. I said it was the power to decide the rules about how people relate to and behave towards each other. But often the scope of political power goes further. For example what if the king decided that everyone has to wear a particular sort of hat. Or that they can only sit in chairs covered with a certain sort of green fabric. Neither of these things are about how I relate to other people. Maybe this is part of what tyranny is. When the scope of political power is exercised too widely.

66. Further to §36-37. People did not like Monarchy because it meant there was this one guy who could just do what he liked! But once you have got rid of monarchy this doesn’t mean that there are no groups of people with this sort of power anymore. It’s just that these groups are more diffuse and harder to pin down. It’s usually people richer than you and/or people who employ you or who you rely on. If you were an ordinary person you might prefer a monarchy to this latter sort of situation because with a monarchy at least you know where the power is.

67. Further to §36. Getting rid of government is like saying “we don’t like these rules so let’s not have rules”. What we should say is: “we don’t like these rules so let’s have some better ones”. But I guess these people will say that it’s impossible to improve government. Because it is will always be intrinsically corrupt.

68. About the third question in §3: “what determines who has power, is it the one with the greatest force or what?” Sometimes it’s a rule like: “whoever is on the throne”. Which seems a somewhat arbitrary rule but we follow it. So if Mary is on the throne then she guards it well to stop anybody else sitting on it. But then if Jack deposes Mary and sits on the throne. Then we will follow the rule and do what Jack says. Even though we prefer Mary to him. It’s a bit like people who think: “we believe whatever it says in the Bible”. Or (maybe more relevantly) people who believe whatever it says in Newspaper X. Then power-seekers will seek to control what’s written in Newspaper X.

69. There’s the phrase about how the strong exploit the weak. But why would the strong need to exploit the weak? Surely they don’t need to do that! If they are that strong, they can provide for themselves a great life, without having to exploit anybody.

70. Sometimes people say “the rule of law” as if that was always a good thing. But it depends on the law though? If it was “Jim Crow” law then strict adherence to the law is no good!

71. “Power = freedom”. Power is the freedom to do certain things. I have power over somebody if I have the freedom to get them to do things I want and nobody else can interfere with my freedom to do this. Freedom is good, power is bad? But they are the same. So if power corrupts then so does freedom.

72. Money and power. There is an idea that money is a greater power than force. So it won’t be the group with the Greatest Force that will be Rulers but rather it will be the people who can pay the people with the Greatest Force. In other words the Greatest Force people (the army let’s say) will obey the people with the money. But would this work? Suppose Jack and his people have a lot of money. Then he has power because people want his money and will do what he tells them he will pay them to do. So, on the face of it, having a lot of money makes you powerful. But, on the other hand it makes you vulnerable surely. If you have a lot of money then you will have people trying to take it from you by force. If Jack is not very strong he won’t be able to fight people off. Suppose Mary’s gang are good at fighting. They will just come and take all of Jack’s money. Jack could hire people with guns to fend off Mary. But then they might just use the guns he has given them to take his money! Either way it seems that force (with guns or without) beats money every time.

73. Why do the Rulers have to be squeaky clean when the people aren’t? From the novel ‘Main Street’ by Sinclair Lewis, Here's something interesting a character says: "And the penalty we tribal rulers pay is that our subjects watch us every minute. We can’t get wholesomely drunk and relax. We have to be so correct about sex morals, and inconspicuous clothes, and doing our commercial trickery only in the traditional ways, that none of us can live up to it, and we become horribly hypocritical.”

74. The source of authority can’t be that authority. A Ruler can’t say to the ruled. You must obey me because I say you should and I’m the Ruler. This is like saying: “I know the Bible is all true because it says so in the Bible”. When the pope was telling people what to do. Why didn’t they say: “wait a minute, who put you in charge?”. And he would say: “I did! I’m the pope for God’s sake!”. Suppose Jack said to people that he is a messenger from God. And people say “on whose authority”? Where that phrase is used in the way it can be in: “Mary is a great authority on the properties of metals”. But in the case of Mary we can test her authority. If Mary says: that metal is good for making spoons we can know she is right by trying it. But how do we know that Jack is right about what he says? Is it because he says so?

75. Consensual Rulers (Ruler who rule with the consent of the people) didn’t (couldn’t) arise from what the people wanted. The people didn’t choose consensual Rulers because if they were able to do this then that means the Rulers are already consensual. If the Rulers say to the people: “do you want us to rule with your consent?”. The fact that the Rulers are asking this means that they are already ruling with consent. (And neither could the people at this point say: “no”. In the same way that you can’t vote against Democracy. (More generally: you can’t make a decision about what process you are going to use to make decisions. Because doing this presupposes that you have got some method of making decisions.) I don’t know if this makes sense or how this point fits in with all the above. Maybe it relates to the question of whether Rulers rule with our consent. If they do, it’s not because we told them to do that.

76. Ruler are the people who Rule. But Ruling is the just the job of being a manager, of organising things. Why would anybody want that? It’s so much hard work. But they do. History is full of people fighting each other to be the king. Or embarking on expansionary wars so that they can Rule over more territory. But that’s just more work. Suppose a foreign Ruler declared war on my country because they wanted to Rule it. I’d say: great, that’s a load off my mind. ... But of course all this ignores the fact that being a Ruler means having a vastly superior standard of living. That’s what people fighting to be Ruler really want.

77. Often power is talked about very loosely. For example people will say: “Rupert Murdoch is a very powerful man”. But the power to do what exactly? Looking at him you wouldn’t think he’d have the power to break a matchstick, god bless him.

78. Some people, rather disingenuously, say that they are opposed to government having power because they are worried about the abuse of power. Whereas really they just want to limit the power of the government so that they have more freedoms to do what they want.

79. Blackmail. In a democracy the Rule-content is determined by what the majority of people want. But some people think that this isn’t good enough. For example people protest in a disruptive way to get rules implemented to deal with climate change. This means that they believe (probably correctly) that they don’t expect these rules to get implemented via democracy. So they do their street protests, the plan being that the Rulers will make the rules that the protestors are wanting. But this is just a form of blackmail. B acting thus the protesters are giving their approval to some kind of “force-ocracy” rather than democracy. They would have to allow some other group (for example a group who wanted to outlaw abortion; or to stop immigration) the same freedom to get their favoured rules implemented by threatening disruption.

[Original published October 2019]