Locke's Views on Legitimacy of Government

809 Words4 Pages
This essay will briefly explain Locke’s views on what a just and legitimate government is, and then relate the current Hong Kong political situation to some ideas from Locke’s treatise. Before illustrating what a just and legitimate government is, I shall first investigate why people leave the state of nature and give their freedom out as well as being willing to be ruled by a government. In the state of nature, all the people are born under the principle of equality. People enjoy absolute freedom that they are free to do whatever they like as long as they do not violate others’ rights. They enjoy their right to life, property as well as punishment. No one is born as a slave to obey what is expressly allowed. However, this state of nature seems to raise several problems that urges the formation of a political institution. The first is economic inequality. As the imperishable property of money and the selfishness of people, some people try to accumulate the wealth while some people cannot get enough. This creates economic inequality, which leads people to become irrational and think they are more valuable than the others, which violates the law of nature. Therefore, a medium institution or power is desired for preventing the problems of economic inequality and helping to allocate and distribute the resources evenly to the people. This is one of the aims of the government. Second, punishment is difficult. Theoretically, the punishment should be proportional to the degree of the crime the offenders have committed. However, how to design the punishment becomes a big issue. People may punish in a subjective manner according to their mood, feeling or prejudice. Therefore, it seems to be better to elect a third party to be in charge the punishment. This is another reason for why people leave the state of nature. Because of the two above-mentioned problems,
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