Since manifestations of one person’s power over another can violate the principle of self-ownership, libertarians view them with extreme suspicion. However, any principles are merely a model of behavior, and a model never describes reality in its entirety. Therefore, in a number of cases, power over people is permitted by libertarians.
Usually, libertarians consider manifestations of power over a person to be justified (that is, they recognize the right to exercise them) if, in the opinion of others, they are aimed at the well-being of the object of power, provided that the object themselves, in the opinion of others, lacks such power. This right forms the basis for the unpunished manifestations of parents’ power over children, children’s power over incapacitated parents, various emergency medical interventions, the prevention of catastrophes, and so on.
In situations where libertarians doubt whether the object of power truly lacks the ability to independently care for their own well-being, their moral norms dictate intervention to ascertain the extent of the person’s capacity and their own conceptions of their well-being. If it turns out that the manifestations of power contradict these conceptions, libertarian morality requires that such manifestations of power be recognized as illegitimate and, if possible, stopped.
Another variety of power over people, the exercise of which is recognized by libertarians, stems from the permissible ways of acquiring property rights and resolving conflicts described in previous chapters. Thus, libertarians recognize the use of power to defend their justified property claims, including the compulsory collection of fair compensation for damages.
Thus, libertarians find themselves facing a purely utilitarian dilemma. On one hand, the exercise of power may be justified to eliminate injustice. For this action, the power of the one eliminating the injustice must exceed the power of the one committing the injustice. On the other hand, if the possessor of superior power begins to commit injustice themselves, even greater power will be required to eliminate it.
There are two ways out of this dilemma. The first is to endow the best people with superior power—those who are best at fighting injustice and who, due to their moral qualities, are not inclined to commit it themselves. This is meritocracy. The second is for power to be as decentralized as possible; then, to eliminate any sufficiently serious injustice, a situational alliance of several power holders will be required, dissolving immediately after the injustice is eliminated. This is anarchy.
Let us consider both approaches.