Topics Law

Question Is it fair for the government to impose something onto people that they did not want or ask for, while still expecting them to carry the burden of it? For example in 2015 the government mandated that all TV stations stop broadcasting in analog and broadcast exclusively in digital. The result of this was billions of dollars wasted in PSAs and handing out converter boxes, millions of portable TV sets ending up in landfills, and many low income families left without TV. The cost of all of this was ultimately left to taxpayers, while the government made 19 billion in spectrum auctions. In other words, the government gained a massive benefit at the expense of the citizens. Can one justify breaking a law that causes more harm than good? Lets say that I am operating a TV station in a rural area with a lot of mountains and bad weather, in which a digital signal would have poor reception. Would I be justified in broadcasting an analog TV signal in this area, even though I am legally prohibited from doing so? As consumers in a free market society, do we not have the right to make these decisions as the circumstances would necessitate. After all, we (more often than not) know the conditions we are dealing with more than the government.

Accepted:
September 27, 2017

Comments

Lots of questions there. I'll

Lots of questions there. I'll offer three comments.

The first is that if citizens simply get to pick and choose the laws they follow, then we don't have laws at all. The question of what makes government coercion legitimate is a big one, and I'm not a political philosopher. But if governments are ever legitimate, then it will also be legitimate to prevent people, by force if necessary, from simply ignoring laws they don't like.

The second comment is about this:

In other words, the government gained a massive benefit at the expense of the citizens.

I'd suggest there's a confusion here. The government isn't a private corporation. Money that "the government" has is money that the State has, and, if the State isn't corrupt, the government (the institutional embodiment of the State) uses the money for the benefit of its citizens. It's not stowed in secret bank accounts that government officials can draw on for their own benefit.

Finally, is it ever justified to break a law that does more harm than good? It may be, though the State will still have a prima facie justification for prosecuting the lawbreakers. This goes back to the first point: some citizen may believe that some law does more harm than good. But a "state" that leaves these judgments up to individual citizens will not be a state at all. Some people may have enough faith in human nature to believe that anarchy is a better alternative than the State, even if the State is a functioning modern democracy. Most of us aren't convinced, however interesting and difficult problem providing a good theory of the State may be.