Part of the entire idea of a democracy or republic is that government is only legitimate when it comes with the consent of the governed—and yet no one consented to the governance or laws made before they were born!
In political philosophy, this is not what it means to consent to be governed. Most social contract theorists would argue that by virtue of living within the society/state, you have implicitly consented to being governed. That is the nature of the social contract. As such, in being a member of that society, you consent not just to all laws being passed, but all laws previously passed. Further, this idea of an explicit consent doesn’t make sense, eg. if someone wants to avoid being subject to a certain law, they cannot simply not ‘consent’ to it.
For a democracy to be legitimate in the sense that you describe it is a truism. According to these social contract theorists, the democracy by definition comes with the consent of the governed. Additionally, there are other methods of obtaining legitimacy, such as justified coercion and right to rule.
That is not to say that your overall point about Sunset Clauses is invalid, but I feel this section subtracts rather than adds to your reasoning. From my perspective, you have already offered suitable reasoning to support your view in the benefit section not to require a section on the philosophical sense.
I’d like to add that this is an interesting article and I’m interested to conduct some more research on some of these suggestions.
“implicit consent” sounds like the exact opposite of “consent”
If we taboo the words, “consent” means that someone said “yes”, or nodded, or signed a paper. How specifically is “implicit consent” different from “the person disagrees, but doesn’t really have much of a choice”?
What do you need to do so that people finally stop saying that you “consent implicitly”? Some say that you should leave the society. But anywhere else is a different society; what if I don’t consent to any of their rules? And by the way, according to this logic, the popularity of ideas like seasteading and Mars colonization seems like a quite strong evidence that many people actually do not “consent implicitly” even in the passive way, but it is difficult to find an alternative, but they are working on it. It’s like when you tell someone to leave an island if they disagree, and they say “give me a few hours, I am building a boat”, I would interpret it as meaning that their preference to leave the island was obvious from the moment they started building the boat, not just when the boat finally left the shore.
Unless “implicit consent” is just a convenient legal fiction, i.e. a lie that makes things simple for the people who matter.
Your point about it being difficult to leave society is one of the most common objections to social contract theory. However, you have misunderstood what implicit consent is. This article offers a clear explanation of what explicit and implicit consent are. I recommend reading it in full, but I’ll quickly draw out the most relevant sections.
Explicit agreement: This occurs when you explicitly communicate that you agree to something. For instance, if you say, “I will give you $5 for a hamburger”, and they bring you one, you have explicitly agreed to pay that amount for it.
This is the form of contract that you spoke about as “consent” above.
Implicit agreement: This occurs when your actions or inaction implies that you agree to something. For instance, if you ask a server at a restaurant to bring you a hamburger, it says “$5” on the menu, and they bring you one, you have implicitly agreed to pay that amount for it.
This is what is meant by implicit consent. Implicit consent is different from the person disagreeing because they still take the action they would if they explicitly consented, from which it can be deducted that they do consent. By ordering the burger, it can be known that you consent to paying for it. If the waitress brought you the burger and you denied to pay, this would be ridiculous as you consented to pay when you ordered it. Does this make sense? To not consent would be to not order the burger in the first place.
There is also a third kind explored in the article, hypothetical consent, which might be worth a read. I do acknowledge your question on ‘what people need to do so that people stop saying you consent’ is difficult to answer, but it is one of the most central questions in social contract theory. As such, I don’t have a single answer for you, but I hope this was able to clear up a little what ‘implicit consent’ actually means. If you’d like to discuss more on what this barrier of consent is, I’d be happy to discuss further.
The problem with “implicit consent via acceptance of services” is that if someone takes you as a slave, unless you choose to starve to death in protest, you have “implicitly consented” to slavery by eating the food they gave you. This argument proves too much; it legitimizes not only governments but also slavery.
For the record, I am not an anarchist, and my objection against violating someone’s consent is not absolute. From my perspective, we live in a universe that doesn’t care about our freedoms or happiness, and sometimes there is simply no perfect solution, and trying to make people happy in one way will only make them unhappy in a different way. So I see consent as an important—but not absolute—thing. If building a functional society requires occasionally violating someone’s consent, I guess it should be done, because the alternative is much worse. But it should not be done cheaply, and we should not pretend that it didn’t happen, which is what the social contract theory is trying to do, in my opinion.
I understand what you’re saying. I wasn’t familiar with the exact definitions of the political theory you cite.
I do think that it’s reasonable to be bound by laws made before one was born, but only to a certain extent. Society changes over time, and over a long enough period of time I would argue—philosophically—that the society that passed the law is no longer the society I was born into. (And yet the law is still binding, because the law doesn’t have an expiration date.)
That being said, thanks for the reply, and I appreciate the feedback!
In political philosophy, this is not what it means to consent to be governed. Most social contract theorists would argue that by virtue of living within the society/state, you have implicitly consented to being governed. That is the nature of the social contract. As such, in being a member of that society, you consent not just to all laws being passed, but all laws previously passed. Further, this idea of an explicit consent doesn’t make sense, eg. if someone wants to avoid being subject to a certain law, they cannot simply not ‘consent’ to it.
For a democracy to be legitimate in the sense that you describe it is a truism. According to these social contract theorists, the democracy by definition comes with the consent of the governed. Additionally, there are other methods of obtaining legitimacy, such as justified coercion and right to rule.
That is not to say that your overall point about Sunset Clauses is invalid, but I feel this section subtracts rather than adds to your reasoning. From my perspective, you have already offered suitable reasoning to support your view in the benefit section not to require a section on the philosophical sense.
I’d like to add that this is an interesting article and I’m interested to conduct some more research on some of these suggestions.
“implicit consent” sounds like the exact opposite of “consent”
If we taboo the words, “consent” means that someone said “yes”, or nodded, or signed a paper. How specifically is “implicit consent” different from “the person disagrees, but doesn’t really have much of a choice”?
What do you need to do so that people finally stop saying that you “consent implicitly”? Some say that you should leave the society. But anywhere else is a different society; what if I don’t consent to any of their rules? And by the way, according to this logic, the popularity of ideas like seasteading and Mars colonization seems like a quite strong evidence that many people actually do not “consent implicitly” even in the passive way, but it is difficult to find an alternative, but they are working on it. It’s like when you tell someone to leave an island if they disagree, and they say “give me a few hours, I am building a boat”, I would interpret it as meaning that their preference to leave the island was obvious from the moment they started building the boat, not just when the boat finally left the shore.
Unless “implicit consent” is just a convenient legal fiction, i.e. a lie that makes things simple for the people who matter.
Your point about it being difficult to leave society is one of the most common objections to social contract theory. However, you have misunderstood what implicit consent is. This article offers a clear explanation of what explicit and implicit consent are. I recommend reading it in full, but I’ll quickly draw out the most relevant sections.
This is the form of contract that you spoke about as “consent” above.
This is what is meant by implicit consent. Implicit consent is different from the person disagreeing because they still take the action they would if they explicitly consented, from which it can be deducted that they do consent. By ordering the burger, it can be known that you consent to paying for it. If the waitress brought you the burger and you denied to pay, this would be ridiculous as you consented to pay when you ordered it. Does this make sense? To not consent would be to not order the burger in the first place.
There is also a third kind explored in the article, hypothetical consent, which might be worth a read. I do acknowledge your question on ‘what people need to do so that people stop saying you consent’ is difficult to answer, but it is one of the most central questions in social contract theory. As such, I don’t have a single answer for you, but I hope this was able to clear up a little what ‘implicit consent’ actually means. If you’d like to discuss more on what this barrier of consent is, I’d be happy to discuss further.
The problem with “implicit consent via acceptance of services” is that if someone takes you as a slave, unless you choose to starve to death in protest, you have “implicitly consented” to slavery by eating the food they gave you. This argument proves too much; it legitimizes not only governments but also slavery.
For the record, I am not an anarchist, and my objection against violating someone’s consent is not absolute. From my perspective, we live in a universe that doesn’t care about our freedoms or happiness, and sometimes there is simply no perfect solution, and trying to make people happy in one way will only make them unhappy in a different way. So I see consent as an important—but not absolute—thing. If building a functional society requires occasionally violating someone’s consent, I guess it should be done, because the alternative is much worse. But it should not be done cheaply, and we should not pretend that it didn’t happen, which is what the social contract theory is trying to do, in my opinion.
I understand what you’re saying. I wasn’t familiar with the exact definitions of the political theory you cite.
I do think that it’s reasonable to be bound by laws made before one was born, but only to a certain extent. Society changes over time, and over a long enough period of time I would argue—philosophically—that the society that passed the law is no longer the society I was born into. (And yet the law is still binding, because the law doesn’t have an expiration date.)
That being said, thanks for the reply, and I appreciate the feedback!