{"id":938,"date":"2025-08-27T19:13:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T01:13:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=938"},"modified":"2025-08-27T19:13:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T01:13:06","slug":"hope-for-good-suffer-the-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=938","title":{"rendered":"Hope for Good, Suffer the Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\">Critique of Rousseau&#8217;s <em>Social Contract<\/em>, part 13<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<iframe id=\"odysee-iframe\" style=\"width:100%; aspect-ratio:16 \/ 9;\" src=\"https:\/\/odysee.com\/%24\/embed\/%40MarginalNonHermit%3A3%2Frousseau-pt-13%3A0?r=8gvoByECHNgc2BfQ5o91oxf89bpi1Ui4\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">In this part, we&#8217;re covering Book 3, Chapters 9, 10, and 11. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Full show notes <a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/part-13.pdf\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Chapter 9 is Rousseau&#8217;s assessment of &#8220;The Marks of a Good Government,&#8221; and as you might expect by this point, it&#8217;s vague and not very helpful. He notes that different people might like different styles of government, and then lumps all &#8220;goodness&#8221; into &#8220;population.&#8221; Not the best arguments, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Chapter 10 doubles down on the self-contradictions, because Rousseau then claims that, although he has earlier argued that larger population makes monarchy more appropriate (and also that monarchy is most appropriate for wealthy States\u2026), that also the consolidation of government into a smaller number of high-level magistrates is a sign that the government is degenerating and will soon die off. His &#8220;population&#8221; measure is then turned into a &#8220;proof&#8221; that governments must eventually die. However, as you can see, this is a rather circular argument.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Finally, in Chapter 11, Rousseau talks about the collapse of States, but not in a way that&#8217;s helpful to anyone under a tyranny. He believes it is man&#8217;s purpose to make States last as long as possible, and since the distinction between good and bad government is so vague, this inevitably leads to bad governments being clung to longer than they ought to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">This video is available on <a href=\"https:\/\/odysee.com\/@MarginalNonHermit:3\/rousseau-pt-13:0\">Odysee<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/fh8-xzkU9r8\">YouTube<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bitchute.com\/update_video\/ZmIN3TZ6AX63\">BitChute<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Return to the <a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?page_id=769\">Table of Contents<\/a> for this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">References:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">My critique of Kropotkin&#8217;s The Conquest of Bread<br><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?page_id=767\">https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?page_id=767<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">The previous part, where Rousseau&#8217;s assignment of all traits of government on the axis of &#8220;population&#8221; is also a problem<br><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=930\">https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=930<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Rousseau on the form of government as a function of population<br><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=917\">https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=917<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Locke&#8217;s distinction between Usurpation and Tyranny<br><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=694\">https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=694<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/declaration-transcript\">https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/founding-docs\/declaration-transcript<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Another Rousseau self-contradiction: earlier he said the State cannot be separated into parts<br><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=854\">https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/?p=854<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Intro quote from Lysander Spooner in No Treason No. 6<br><a href=\"https:\/\/praxeology.net\/LS-NT-6.htm\">https:\/\/praxeology.net\/LS-NT-6.htm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"\">Intro music courtesy Pixabay<br><a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/music\/main-title-just-a-regular-day-123252\/\">https:\/\/pixabay.com\/music\/main-title-just-a-regular-day-123252\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critique of Rousseau&#8217;s Social Contract, part 13 In this part, we&#8217;re covering Book 3, Chapters 9, 10, and 11. Full show notes here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,4,2],"tags":[246,86,269,60,19,85,236,72,270,199,202],"class_list":["post-938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-philosophy","category-political","category-video-link","tag-critique","tag-freedom","tag-jean-jacques-rousseau","tag-libertarian","tag-liberty","tag-philosophy","tag-political-philosophy","tag-politics","tag-social-contract","tag-study-guide","tag-voluntaryism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/marginalnonhermit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/thumb-13.png?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938\/revisions\/939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marginalnonhermit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}