Writing about Federalist Paper #2

            I read the Federalist Paper #2, which was published on October 31^st, 1787, and written by John Jay.  The essay starts:

            “Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights, in order to vest it with the requisite powers. It is well worthy of consideration therefore, whether it would conduce more to the interest of the people of America that they should, to all general purposes, be one nation, under one federal government, than that they should divide themselves into separate confederacies, and give to the head of each the same kind of powers which they are advised to place in one national government.”

            Jay clearly states the necessity of government, and clearly repudiates ways of organizing humans without government. John Jay suggests that the states are stronger in a union than in different confederacies or individual sovereignties. He omits both what rights should be ceded to the government and under what conditions. Today, some people argue that taxation is a form of tyranny, but when John Jay states that people must cede to the government some of their natural rights, then the right to property may also be a right that is ceded to the government, at least in some situations.

            On the Articles of Confederation that preceded the writing of the Constitution for the United States, Jay says, “It is not to be wondered at, that a government instituted at times so inauspicious, should on experiment be found greatly deficient and inadequate to the purpose it was intended to answer.”

            In my experience, some problems arise when people think the world should be different. From my understanding, this problem described by David Hume is commonly called the is-ought problem. The is-ought problem is the difficulty of deciding based on the way the world is now, and then moving to the way the world ought to be in the future. For example, some people believe that a right to healthcare or a right to education exists, while other people do not accept those are rights. On the other hand, some people who have money and power, believe they have a right to more money or a right to more power. Finally, as stated in a previous post, the is-ought problem did not stop people from making decisions in the past that changed the present.