glen e. p. ropella wrote:
the concept of "legitimate power"
is, at best, shaky or, at worst, self-contradictory. Either the power
is there, or it's not. And if it is there, it's not the power that
riles us; it's the actions of the powerful. E.g. many of us have the
power to take another's life. But having the power to do so isn't
wrong. Exercising the power is wrong (in some cases).
To clarify, I meant not only having license to act, but acting.
Another category of powerful people would be those that don't have
license to act, but have sufficient power than no one in the group can
stop them. Another would be socially unsanctioned acts which could be
stopped if detected.
I mostly agree with your other remarks.
Overall, rights don't mean anything outside of a group context. For
example, it can be a right of an IT worker at a small company to have a
computer, while a mother in Rwanda gets denied access to available water
for her family by a local militia (and thus simply has no right to
it). Reason being that in the former case the group context soon
dissolves without the right, and in the latter it doesn't -- that mother
has an inadequate social network, money, weapons, etc. to resist the
militia and the government is indifferent, unaware, or unable to act on
her behalf. To have a right implies that there is some local
equilibrium concerning entitlements that all members of the group can
understand and influence, and that the absence of those entitlements
will disrupt the group.
Marcus
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