The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey

This is the best political philosophy book I've ever read so far. Michael Huemer relies on the best argumentative strategy there is, which is starting from premises that are more plausible than the argument's conclusion. I'm confident he was successful in this strategy, for he starts from moral judgements that are uncontroversial for most people (at least in liberal democracies), regardless of their political/ideological preference; once one accepts these judgements as premises, one will have a really hard time trying to reject Huemer's conclusion - i.e., that no state has political authority. Another strength of the book lies in the fact that Huemer uses a really clear language, making all the relevant conceptual distinctions, thereby avoiding (or at least greatly reducing the possibility of) argumentative confusions. This is a really good thing, especially for such a lengthy book, since it makes the reading process more fluid and pleasant. Part I is nearly perfect. Huemer takes down all the major attempts to justify political authority. He builds the strongest versions he can of these theories and then shows in a very clear and compelling way where the arguments for them fail. The only thing I slightly disagree with in this first part of the book is when Huemer tries to argue that citizens of a state are victims of some sort of Stockholm Syndrome, for I'm not quite convinced people in general adequately satisfy all of the conditions necessary for the syndrome to take place. Other than that minor detail, Part I is by itself already well worth the money. Part II tries to provide a plausible account for the feasibility of an anarcho-capitalist society. In order to accomplish it, Huemer doesn't rely on unrealistic expectations about human nature. He makes an explicit rejection of any utopian account of a social system. Before reading this part of the book, I had many problems with the idea of an anarcho-capitalist society, but most of them either disappeared or were greatly reduced after reading Huemer's account. There are generally two remarkable strengths in the second part of the book. The first is that the author uses empirical evidence to support all of his major claims. The second strength is the strategy of comparing the governmental provision of services with the provision of the same services by private agencies. This strategy is a really good one, for it shows that a lot of problems people might identify in the private supply of services like protection and arbitration are actually problems with the governmental provision of such services. This is not to say that in an anarcho-capitalist society there couldn't be serious shortcomings, but simply to note that a lot of possible problems in this kind of society that people might point out to are already very serious problems in our government-dominated societies, and that one should take all of it into account when comparing the two kind of social systems. Despite all of the plausible arguments, supported by empirical evidence, I still don't share much of Huemer's optimism about the implementation of anarcho-capitalism in the future. I don't think it's unreasonable to think anarcho-capitalism is a desirable and/or feasible social system, but I'm not sure that the fact that some governments are already outsourcing some of its central functions to private agencies will make it very likely to cause the government to be as weakened as expected by the author. Either way, I must congratulate Huemer for making a reasonable and realistic account of anarcho-capitalism. To sum up, TPPA is a clear, very well reasoned and compelling case against political authority, as well as a reasonable defense of the feasibility of anarcho-capitalism under realistic conditions. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in political philosophy, from scholars to laypeople. It's well worth the read, even if you ultimately disagree with the central arguments of the book.

The book is a gem, destined to become a classic, and any serious student of the field should have it on their shelf. They should even, dare I say, read it. The topic that Humer’s astonishing tour de force concerns itself with is the moral and ethical underpinnings of state power, an area known in political philosophy as the "problem of political authority". In considering the justification for the state, a nagging question naturally arises. Most people would claim it is morally impermissible for your neighbor to force you to give money to a charity of his choice at gunpoint. However, in stark contrast, most people would claim it is permissible for the state to do essentially the same thing, that is, to extort taxes from you using the threat of force in order to spend those funds on projects other than your own. Most people appear to claim there is an important difference between these cases — otherwise, they would not believe in the legitimacy of the state. The eponymous problem of political authority is the question of what the distinction between these cases might be — on what basis, if any, might we justify this difference in treatment between the behavior we consider ethically justified from individual actors versus the power we accord to the state. Huemer systematically addresses the justifications that have been articulated for political authority over the centuries, from hypothetical social contract theory to consequentialism and everything in between. I will give away the punchline by noting that his arguments would appear to fatally damage all of them. Political philosophers often start by attempting to construct a complete moral framework within which they justify their positions. Huemer takes an entirely different approach. He does not assume that we all agree on a single universal moral framework. He only assumes that most of us generally share similar moral intuitions about certain sorts of situations in the average case. (The strongest sort of assumption he demands is that his reader agree that beating people up without provocation is usually bad.) Because he demands that the reader agree with him on so few things and so weakly, Huemer’s argument gains enormous strength, since there is no need to accept an all-encompassing ethical theory to believe the rest of his arguments. On the basis of very pedestrian ethical assumptions, Huemer manages to build a case against any moral justification for political authority whatsoever. He engages, attacks and destroys arguments of all sorts with panache. Even John Rawls famous “A Theory of Justice” (perhaps the most cited work written in philosophy in the last century) is mercilessly examined under bright lights and staked through the heart. One of the book’s greatest strengths is the simplicity and lucidity of his prose. Unlike many of his academic peers, Huemer’s writing is crystal clear and (nearly) jargon free. A bright ten year old would have no difficulty with the language. He does not seek to conceal weakness beneath an avalanche of polysyllabic words and mile long sentences. Instead, he makes his arguments so straightforward to understand that there is little or no room to disagree with him. I am uncertain as to whether Huemer will persuade many people. As Swift once observed, “it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” Most people hold their political positions not as a result of rational contemplation but because they were exposed to a set of ideas at an early age and have an emotional attachment to them that is not easily altered. The fact that Huemer is arguing for unfamiliar idea that goes against most conventional wisdom is probably more important to the average reader than the razor sharp edge to which he has honed his arguments. Never the less, in a hypothetical world in which all chose their views on the basis of rational consideration, Huemer would be changing hearts and minds by the trainload.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Prior to this I read the first half of Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" as an introduction of anarcho-capitalist theory. Although Rothbard's foundation is on a hatred for the state (not trying to detract from Rothbard) Michael Heumer takes a different approach: He takes common sense views on morality that we use every day and apply it to agents of the state and asks: "Why should 535 people in Washington be entitled to issue commands to 300 million others? And why should others obey?." Or what gives states the right to tax, spend, regulate, legislate, arrest and incarcerate where it would be considered extortion, kidnapping and intimidation for normal people like you I try the same on others? His conclusion is that states rule by might rather than right and has no moral authority to do any of these things and we have no moral obligation to obey. He uses his philosophizing powers to expose flaws in the ideas of the social contract, democracy, consequentialism and fairness that all attempt to legitimize governments (and fail to do so.) He goes through the psychology of authority and predation to bridge into how common functions delegated to the state--like police, military and courts--and how these could be provided much more cheaply, efficiently and ethically as a good or service on the market economy. Not only because it's practical and leads to good results--it would-- but because it's ethical, voluntary and doesn't rely arbitrarily on coercion through state diktat. In the last chapter he cools down a common skeptical impulse even those who are sympathetic to anarchy would have on it: That it won't be possible to achieve and anarchist society since regions have governments and most people aren't persuaded of it for it to ever be adopted. In response he says massive social changes have occurred throughout human history that people's of prior time periods couldn't have wrapped their heads around (slavery, genocide, gladiatorial combat, death penalty are looked down upon especially in liberal democracies) and being that most people agree with the common moral principles that lay the foundations for anarchism that there would be a tendency for them to apply those moral principles more broadly to the state as history carries on, which may lead to its gradual abolition. He doesn't give any certainties but he gives hope and optimism. He does use common-sense morality as the foundation for anarchism but that begs the question: What qualifies as common-sense morality and why must we live by it? In order to get answers to that question I would have to read his 2005 "Ethical Intuitionism" which he claims that "(i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know these through an immediate, intellectual awareness, or 'intuition'; and (iii) knowing them gives us reasons to act independent of our desires." I just bought it and will write a review on to explain once I find out.

Huemer has given a very good exposition of the counter-arguments for each of the key premises upon which State legitimacy and authority rest. This is one of the best such works I've ever read (and thus easily deserves the 5 stars I gave it), even I would have liked it to go 'deeper'. Then again, I prefer my economics technical (and this is economics, folks). I bought and read the book knowing that I agreed with all-but-one of the author's publicly-stated priors (we differ on Free Will: I believe it's an illusion, since all actions begin in the subconscious - over which we have no genuine authorship: Huemer believes otherwise - wrongly, in my view). It was disappointing to see no reference to Arrow's Impossibility Theorem (from "A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare", 1950) - which proved that it is generally impossible to form a 'social welfare' function (i.e., "the general will") from aggregating the ordinal preferences of >2 agents over >2 choices. That alone is the 'arrow' (get it?) through the heart of the premise that elections result in 'representative' legislatures, and the fact it's missing is a real shortcoming. Condorcet gets a nod, albeit in the direction of the "Wisdom of Crowds" - which modern network-learning models show is 100% wrong when one influential network node has the power, the means, and a significant incentive, to distort beliefs or expectations. If such an agent exists, it's more like the "Ship of Fools" (and the existence of bookies, churches and politicians proves that the Ship of Fools is the appropriate large-N conclusion). Apart from his flawed work on group decisions, Condorcet was also the source of the hypothesis that Arrow (1950) proved: that ordinal-preference aggregation can result in transitive 'social' preferences, and thus that democratic preference-revelation can not reflect the 'general will' or 'social preferences' or 'what the people want'. So even if politicians as a class wanted to 'make society better off', there is no way to determine if a policy will, or will not... and hence less justification for sticking a poignard in the ribs of those who don't wish to pay for boondoggles. Likewise there is no mention of the Gibbard-Satterthwait Theorem - that all voting mechanisms are inherently corruptible through tactical voting; and insufficient discussion of the 'Social Contract' viewed through the prism of Contract Law itself (such a contract would be unenforceable due to vagueness or terms; the inadmissibility of contracts that presume to bind unrelated third parties; and the absence of verifiable 'acceptance' of a precisely-defined set of terms). In similar vein, I would use game-theoretic arguments to dismantle Hobbes' putative "War of All Against All": it is trivially easy to show that in a dynamic repeated game, private incentives align to prevent the whole 'nasty, brutish and short' schtick. That schtick has been as useful to ".gov" as epicycles were to geocentrism, and is as obviously rejected by subsequent theory and evidence... but Hobbes (and others of his ilk, [cough KEYNES cough]) have stubbornly refused to go the same way as geocentrism. All things considered, my few little gripes relate to the fact that Huemer did not write a 'technical' refutation of everything from the "Public-Goods Amelioration", to 'representativeness', to consequentialist utilitarian arguments against the State... my guess is that if that's ever going to be done, it has to be by someone who is (a) a 'technical', not an 'essay-writing', type of economist (and hence not an academic); and (b) sufficiently well-off that they don't need the book to have any commercial success whatsoever. Challenge... accepted. Working Title: "The Worst Will Rule" (from a translation of a quote by the French philosopher Alain). Due date: Feb 2015.

'...a gripping page-turner. With an engaging style and sharp wit...' are among the first words of the first editorial review currently on amazon's page for this book. Oh cruel fate that I believed those words! Having, with an increasing sense of duty, slogged through to the end, I can only conclude they were written as a delicious prank, or a throwaway by a friend of the author compensating for an inability to find time to read a worthy tome. Sadly, despite the book's considerable strengths, its merits did not include being a page turner with style and wit. Michael Huemer is an anarchist philosopher. Like most anarchists, he is struck by the compelling virtue of anarchist ideas and their value for healing our world. Unlike some anarchists, he also seems well aware of how completely crazy anarchist ideas can seem to the uninitiated. Being perceived as crazy doesn't help communication, even if you are right. This careful, sober and sedate presentation can strike nobody as crazy, though the quiet presentation cloaks incendiary ideas. This book's strength is not in its ability to grip the reader, nor in new concepts, for the ideas it raises are discussed in great detail in many other places. Rather the book's value is in its up to date presentation of the core elements of the anarchist canon and the care Dr. Huemer has taken to present those ideas in ways that would be accessible to the average intelligent adult, without condescending or sacrificing clarity and rigour. I marked many of Dr. Huemer's formulations to use in my own conversations. Dr. Huemer is also at scrupulous pains to understand opposing arguments and present them, not as straw men, but as the way they'd want to be presented. He is then polite and almost apologetic as he demolishes them. While many anarchist authors burn with enthusiasm, the electric power of their ideas sparking off the page, Dr. Huemer has tried hard to keep things calm. Converts will be disappointed if, in reading this book, they hope to repeat the power and impact of reading works like Friedman's 'The Machinery of Freedom', Rothbard's 'The Ethics of Liberty' or almost anything by Hoppe. [quick check and, the extensive bibliography at the end of the book has Friedman and Rothbard, but no mention of Hoppe.] If anything, the service provided by Dr. Huemer is in a state of the art presentation of anarchist ideas in a manner so routine and so scrupulously fair as to be completely non-threatening to non-believers. I regret the decision to publish this worthy book through an expensive, academic publisher. The price, probably triple what it should be for the eBook version (I bought the kindle version), will further reduce this book's reach and impact. That is unfortunate, for this work of careful craftsmanship and value deserves a wider reach.

Michael Huemer has delivered the most persuasive and comprehensive refutation of the supposed legitimacy of the state. This book should revolutionize libertarian argumentation. Lysander Spooner provided the arguments that originally persuaded me that the state was illegitimate in principle. He did it most succinctly in his essay _No Treason VI: The Constitution of No Authority_ . Spooner started by observing that the state did things which everyone would recognize as crimes if performed by any non-state agent, and then went on to show that the state had no valid contract with most individuals that could overcome this objection. Spooner was specifically refuting the notion that the U.S. Constitution had any moral authority, but the argument clearly had general application to any state. This is also the core of Huemer's argument, but Huemer strengthens the argument in two crucial ways: First he lays a stronger foundation and then he systematically addresses and refutes all the most popular attempts to justify state authority. Huemer shores up the foundation of the argument by adopting weaker, less sweeping premises - this is one of his crucial insights. Rights-based libertarians typically argue from moral premises like the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) which is usually held to mean that aggression is never justified. That was also essentially Spooner's position. As Huemer has said, "The problem with this view is that it's false." It's easy to imagine unusual situations where aggression is justified and even a single counter-example refutes a supposed principle. But you don't even need to agree with Huemer on that point: Even if you think the NAP is correct or salvageable you will still strengthen your argument by starting from a weaker premise, like "Aggression is unjustified in normal circumstances". Doing this leads to stronger arguments because the weaker premises are less controversial. Many reject the NAP as a general principle because they can think of situations where they don't believe it applies, but few of them think it is justified to forcefully interfere with the life, liberty, or property of another in normal circumstances. And you can't reasonably expect someone to be persuaded by an argument if they don't accept it's premises. A weaker premise is more easily accepted and harder to deny. Almost everyone agrees that no private individual would be justified in compelling others to pay for services they had not agreed to pay for, in normal circumstances. The burden of argument is thus shifted to defenders to of supposed legitimate state authority - they must now demonstrate why the situation with respect to the state is different and how it overcomes the normal presumption that such behavior is unjustified. Huemer then persuasively demonstrates they can't do it. It is typically held that the state may legitimately do things that private individuals may not, because the state has legitimate authority, which entails a right for the state to compel and a duty for the individual to obey. Huemer shows that authority is in principle "content independent" at least to some degree, meaning that the right to compel and the duty to obey are supposed to apply even when the state is wrong. For instance, you are supposedly obliged to pay your taxes even if the state is charging you too much for services rendered, and the state is supposedly entitled to collect. Where is the justification for such presumed authority? Huemer addresses all the most popular arguments for justifying it: Explicit, implicit or hypothetical social contract, argument from democracy, argument from equality, consequentialist arguments, rule consequentialism, and arguments from fairness. Huemer methodically demonstrates how all of these arguments fail to justify political authority. The final argument to justify authority is that, without some such authority, society would be highly unstable and would likely descend into violent chaos. Huemer takes this objection seriously and devotes the latter half of the book to showing that the balance of evidence strongly supports the conclusion that the conditions of society would improve under anarcho-capitalism, not deteriorate. In this, he builds on arguments presented by David Friedman in _The Machinery of Freedom_, among other sources. This is a radical book that doesn't seem at all radical as you step through it. While Lysander Spooner strongly engaged his reader's emotions when appealing to moral sentiments, Huemer diligently eschews any appeal to strong emotion. Huemer may clinically observe that certain things the state does are outrageous, but he never appeals to outrage. With Huemer, all you get is patient, dispassionate reasoning and that makes this book seem far less radical than it is. Huemer persuasively reaches radical conclusions from uncontroversial premises, buttressing his argument with appropriate empirical evidence along the way. The book is written in clear language that a layman should have little trouble understanding. No part of his argument is complicated or difficult to understand. There is much more of value in this book, I've only sketched out the framework of his case against the state. Buy this book if you're interested in the best arguments for liberty.

I read this shortly after reading Most Dangerous Superstition, which is itself a solid collection of arguments against statism. I enjoyed this title because it goes a bit more in depth concerning many of the more academic arguments propping up the belief in "authority" and government: such as moral obligation to obey, social contract theory, defining characteristics of modern states, and much more. I highly recommend this work and I've now read several other of Dr. Huemer's works.

First of all I would definitely recommend this book as an introduction to anarcho-capitalist ideas. Virtually no need for prior knowledge and mostly calling for moral intuitions rather than formal concepts. The author succeeds in writing in straightforward language, without getting tangled up in long and formal definitions. He even admits at a couple of points that certain specific problems do not seem to have an obvious solution, but that his model of capitalist anarchy still appears the better. The main part of the book -as the title suggests- is about discrediting the whole concept of government. Huemer sees no reason why some people, even if endorsed by an overwhelming majority of the electorate in a modern liberal democracy, could have a moral right to rule others. The elephant in the room is property rights, particularly to land, which Huemer for some reason barely touches upon. The right to one's own labour (i.e. no forced taxation) is far easier to agree to than the exclusive, eternal right to a piece of land. If you can argue morally for a communal ownership to land (with the right of exclusive use under certain conditions, e.g. land tax, inheritance tax) then government is already beyond Huemers argument, which is a major flaw of the book. The other main part of the book tries to show that capitalist anarchy would lead to a better society at large than any existing liberal democracy. I understand that libertarians (the majority of earlier reviewers, it seems) will nod their way through this part, but Huemer's aim was probably not to preach to the already converted. In general he manages to show a socialist like myself that capitalist anarchy will probably not fare much worse, and perhaps even a bit better than liberal democracy. But that just doesn't seem a weighty enough argument to turn society upside down. Huemer explains at length how politics and burocracy evolve inherent bad qualities, such as resistance to (positive) change. He is basically right, but puts far too little emphasis on all the good people in the systems that constantly fight against this, making the end result agreeable to most of us. An irony of fate would have it that drug policy is a main example of bad policy which does not change even when proven bad. During the few years since Huemer sent his book to press, there has been major changes, and more are definitely coming. Liberal democracy works, after all ;)

Eine Seltenheit im Bereich der politischen Philosophie: klar, verständlich, gut strukturiert. Huemer geht von einfachen, allgemein akzeptierten ethischen Grundannahmen aus und demontiert den Glauben an den Staat.

In my opinion, this is the best book to introduce people to libertarian ideas. Although I was already sold on libertarianism before reading, it left no doubt in my mind that philosophical anarchism is correct, and that an anarchic social order isn't as far fetched as is usually thought. The first part of the book deals with pretty much every possible justification for the state, including the notorious social contract theory. Reading through this will arm libertarians with very strong arguments to deploy against statists in internet discourse. My only nitpick would be that Huemer sometimes spends too much time on a certain topic when his point is already well made (like on Christiano's defense of democracy). Nonetheless, I strongly recommend picking this up.

Easy to follow and logical disputation of other people's right to tell you what to do.

Cuestionar el concepto de la legitimidad del Estado( lo que respalda su autoridad o derecho a coercionar que da a sus sujetos el deber de obeceder) es una tarea difícil. Es probablemente el meme más arraigado en la sociedad contemporánea, y poca gente se plantea una cuestión tan directa. ¿Cómo no va a tener autoridad un policía o un juez? En este libro, Michael Huemer destroza sistemáticamente toda teoría que tratan de dar justificación a la autoridad estatal y plantea cómo puede llegarse a una situación mejor. Totalmente recomendado.

yeah i had to buy it. came in good condition and probablt a good book if you like anarchism