Why Obey Anyone?

The drawing ends on the veil of ignorance, a way to choose fair rules for a whole society. This lesson asks the question underneath it: why does anyone get to make rules for you at all, and where must they stop?

Before you start. Ethics & the Good Life ended on John Rawls’s veil: pick a society’s rules before you know who you will be in it, and you will protect whoever ends up worst off. Is Anything Actually Wrong? asked whether “wrong” can be true at all. This lesson takes both as given and asks a narrower thing: what gives a government the right, not just the power, to tell you what to do?

The idea in 30 seconds

The central question of political philosophy is legitimacy: what gives a government the right to rule, not just the power to.
Hobbes argued that without government, fear makes striking first the best move for everyone, the same trap as the prisoner’s dilemma, so people should hand power to one ruler who punishes cheats.
Locke argued that government exists only to protect people’s rights, by their consent, and may be replaced when it betrays that trust; Hume objected that consent you cannot refuse is not consent.
Mill’s harm principle says the state may restrict you only to prevent harm to others, never for your own good; its weak point is deciding what counts as harm.
Nozick argued that if every exchange is free, the result is just, however unequal; the reply is that real starting points were never fair.

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