Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Make Wal-Mart Government

Try this thought experiment: start with a non-government corporation like Wal-Mart and see if it has political authority – the right to coerce. Of course it doesn’t! Okay, now adjust the qualities of Wal-Mart, one by one, until it becomes government. The Wal-Mart CEOs are elected, okay now can Wal-Mart decide which parents should have their children taken away? The founders of Wal-Mart wrote a constitution, okay now can Wal-Mart legislate what substances an individual consumes? You use Wal-Mart’s services while knowing full-well that even if you didn’t you would still be taxed, okay now is it okay for Wal-Mart to tax you?

It’s hard for me to come up with what quality or set of qualities I could ever transfer from government to Wal-Mart that people would agree bestows Wal-Mart with political authority. When I make Wal-Mart into government it doesn’t get political authority.

If Wal-Mart +/- X = government,
and government = political authority,
then Wal-Mart +/- X should = government authority.

It does not

Political authority is something people believe in while simultaneously maintaining severe moral objections to what is definitively the exact same thing.