State to gain subsidies and other special privileges for themselves or from imposing compulsory cartels on their own members?
In short, Calhoun does not push his path-breaking theory on concurrence far enough: hedoes not push it down to the individual himself. If the individual, after all, is the one whose rights are to be protected, then a consistent theory of concurrence would imply veto power by every individual; that is, some form of “unanimity principle.” When Calhoun wrote that it should be “impossible to put or to keep it [the government] in action without the concurrent consent of all,” he was, perhaps unwittingly, implying just such a conclusion.[1] But such speculation begins to take us away from our subject, for down this path lie political systems which could hardly be called “States” at all.[2] For one thing, just as the right of nullification for a state logically implies its right of secession, so
- ↑ Calhoun, A Disquisition on Government, pp. 20–21.
- ↑ In recent years, the unanimity principle has experienced a highly diluted revival, particularly in the writings of Professor James Buchanan. Injecting unanimity into the present situation, however, and applying it only to changes in the status quo and not to existing laws, can only result in another transformation of a limiting concept into a rubber stamp for the State. If the unanimity principle is to be applied only to changes in laws and edicts, the nature of the initial “point of origin” then makes all the difference. Cf. James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, The Calculus of Consent (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962), passim.
