Hello,
Why do we obey the government?
Are our obligations to the state founded on any sort of consent?
If we have no real choice is our consent meaningful?
How can we consent to something if we are ignorant to the topic?
If there is no god given ruler, why should we follow anyone other than ourselves?
Well philosophers have supposedly come up with the answers to these question by chiefly debating the types of consent which occur and the scenarios in which this consent presents its self. There are two types of consent, the first being EXPLICIT which is basically when you say: "I totally agree to that 100% - where do I sign?" the second being TACIT consent, an idea pioneered by John Locke, this type of consent is where you do not explicitly consent to anything but you are consenting in some way. For example if you use the roads or the NHS or anything else provided by the government then you are consenting to the laws of the government. Locke thinks that even just living in a country means you agree tacitly to every thing that country does, and the only way to dissent is to leave the country all together... this isn't fair is it? What if you couldn't afford to leave? It's essentially: my way or the highway! In my view this doesn't warrant an actual choice. This was Hume's objection, he didn't think that leaving a country was an acceptable form of dissent. Hume used this analogy:
"Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day by the small wages he acquires? We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves"
- Hume, "Of the Original Contract"
So you have probably already realised that there are absolutely loads of objections to both types of consent, (I will get on to objections to explicit consent later on). Firstly it's very easy to slam Locke and his notion of tacit consent, we can just sate that consent needs to be meaningful to be of any value, so you need to be able to dissent if you wanted to. His consent is similar to a bully forcing people to write them christmas cards at school... the message of good will written inside wouldn't mean anything if you were just writing it to keep you pocket money.
Tussman has some objections regarding tacit consent, which focus on the fact that people are ignorant:
"If we do not explicitly consent we are mere political child-brides"
This quote means that if we are ignorant to what we are consenting to then we will simply not know what duties we are supposed to perform in society, as a small child will not know the duties she is supposed to perform as a wife.
So those are the main objections to tacit consent, and from these objections so far it seems that none of obligations are founded on consent... Any other ideas?
Well Rawls (pronounced rules), had a go and answering the question. John Rawls came up with a famous thought experiment that would create a 'fair' and 'just' society. This is it: imagine that you're setting up a society - but the catch is you don't know where you will slot in when you're done. Rawls calls this the "veil of ignorance".
He sates that IF society was orgainsed in this way THEN we would sign a contract explicitly consenting to the government, because society would be great and equal for every one (yay!). So with his "veil of ignorance" Rawls introduced the HYPOTHETICAL consent. So if we live in a liberal society then we have 'signed' a hypothetical contact. Just letting you know, there is a lot of objections to this one.
Firstly we would not all agree to equality as some people might gamble and choose to have an unequal society hoping they come out on top. This quality is evident in todays society, mainly by the presence of Stock Brokers. Rawls also assumes that a society is a product of negotiation between individuals who have interests before coming in to society (this means that the person behind the "veil of ignorance" knows what they want) but in fact we are born into a society, and our choices reflect our socially defined goals. So essentially Rawls ignores the glaring problem that the fact of the hierarchy of social class, i.e, a lawyer isn't going to swap their fancy wig, for a Sainsbury's hair net are they?
In the words of Dworkin: "Hypothetical consent isn't worth the paper it isn't written on"
This leaves us with the basis that our political consent is formed on explicit consent and this is essentially, voting. But this is not really a great answer to be honest as there are objections to voting as a form of consent too. If voting were the only form of political consent only 61% of over 18 year olds who are eligible to vote would be the only ones who consent as that was the voting turnout at the 2005 general election (that's rubbish). Not forgetting those who can't vote - I can't, but I don't go round breaking all the laws.
So basically this consent would only apply to some people, not that effective then is it? Another objection is how many people are only voting for one party just to keep another one out, so this is not true consent. Furthermore - what are we actually voting for? Just because you voted for Labour and they went on an invaded Iraq, does that mean they have the consent to do that if they didn't tell the voters? Are you still bound to support them? Probably not, judging by the fact that the protest against it was the biggest ever.
So we can say, after looking at all the types of consent that our political obligations are NOT founded on consent. Voting comes close I think, but falls short as not that many people do compared to the amount who don't. I think that Hume got it right when he says that we do stuff as we know it's in our own self-interest. It doesn't shine a good light on the human race, but at least we consent to turning it on, because otherwise we wouldn't read philosophy would we?
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