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Both the state and the public fail in their own ways, and it can be due to legitimate difficulty or cynical dishonourableness.
A simple example is speed limits. We accept a state regulated limit on our freedom to not drive faster than say 70mph so that our journeys are safer than they would be otherwise, and at the second order they're more efficient too (less road closures due to pile-ups). Our freedom was reduced in exchange for those benefits, but we retain the greater freedom to change or remove that limit via the democratic process. Yet some people still choose to defect from something as easy as not speeding.
There's a difference between failure to deliver on the social contract and failure to honour it. Say we gave the police £200 to patrol a motorway and eliminate 100% of speeding. They would inevitably fail to deliver, point out it's not a realistic target and reasonably request an increase to the budget. But if we gave them £200 million and there was no improvement in their performance it would be reasonable to assume that they're not trying.
On the other hand say we offered a homeless person a subsidised house so that they could get back on their feet and become independent. If the house was cold, damp, and next to a factory pumping out toxic smoke they might have understandable grounds to reject the deal and go back to sleeping rough in the posh part of town where the air is sweet and the begging is easy. But if the house was plain and adequate with access to suitable work nearby and it turned out they sold the copper and then turned it into a combination knocking shop and trap house it's hard to justify trading away more social goods of state expenditure and the loss of potential responsible residents to enable further defection.
In short the rights and privileges we experience as freedom come with responsibilities and associated costs. We, as public and the state, are free to renegotiate the costs and benefits rather than suffering them by diktat or anarchy but we are responsible for exercising good faith in upholding the agreements. The N-word screamer wants the freedom to defect at will and neglects to realise his stance implies other people's freedom to blast a combination of spam advertising and malicious slander back at them. The anarchist/libertarian neglects that zeroing out the state monopoly on violence and legitimacy re-opens a competition which leads back to where they began only de facto instead of de jure.
I don't recall agreeing to that, and I'm fairly sure all the other people doing 80 on I-80 didn't agree to it either. There is no dishonor per se in breaking the law, only disobedience. The law is the output of a sausage machine, not a freely-entered agreement between governed and governing.
You and all the other drivers tacitly accepted those conditions when you applied for a licence to drive on the state's roads. You're free to walk at whatever speed you like.
The democratic sausage machine aspires to the freedom to be user serviceable, the other sausage machines don't. It's not like you can get away from the butcher.
Certainly I did not.
Suppose I'm driving without a license? Does that mean I am free of other traffic laws?
I need not ascribe moral authority to the butcher, and I do not.
It's not moral authority, it's regular authority. A tyrannical monarch could write a law that says "all gold belongs to the king" with no reference to morality.
I don't understand what you're driving at, if you'll pardon the phrasing. My starting point was that we're not free in the west/democracy, we're free-er, and that there is no radical freedom where we can do whatever we like under any system or lack of system. That's omnipotence.
I feel this is straying further from my central point but what kind of christmas cracker cereal box licencing body grants licences that don't require abiding by the rules? It doesn't make sense to me. If they don't require abiding by the rules what's the point of a licence? It would be no different to not needing one. The first rule of licence club is "you need a licence". The second rule is "if you don't have one you're not authorised to do it". The third rule is "if you break the rules you lose your licence; refer to rule two".
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