But you do it all the time. If someone tells you something in confidence, you explicitly agree to respect their privacy. If you sleep with someone, you implicitly accept that the other won't broadcast the shape and size of your genitalia to the world. If you run into an acquaintance in public, you implicitly agree not to broadcast each other's whereabouts to the entire world. What's so difficult about the concept of privacy?

at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number?

That question makes no sense: the magic number, if it exists, is one. If you want to fully understand why, you probably should pursue a multi-year education in international law.

government does not have greater rights than individuals

Governments don't have rights at all, so this is true. Governments have sovereignty and mandates instead.

[government] does not determine morality

Indeed it doesn't. But it does formalize and encode morality, in the form of laws. So rather than railing against this law as if it violates your tummy, maybe you'd be better served to understand the morality of the society whose government is drafting this law?

The government illusion is powerful

This is why you are downvoted, I think: you are expressing your feelings about government from a state of perpetual learned helplessness. The very idea that "the government is us", which is the core concept of democracy, seems alien to you. I know that this affliction (the feeling of not having a say in how your country is governed) is particularly prominent in the US, but it gets a bit old and trite to see commenters spouting their dysfunctional relationship with their own government onto every story, as if their traumas are universal truths. It's just noise, and adds nothing to the discussion.

> But you do it all the time. If someone tells you something in confidence, you explicitly agree to respect their privacy. If you sleep with someone, you implicitly accept that the other won't broadcast the shape and size of your genitalia to the world. If you run into an acquaintance in public, you implicitly agree not to broadcast each other's whereabouts to the entire world. What's so difficult about the concept of privacy?

No I don't. I may _respect_ another's privacy, but how can I grant that right? What authority do I have to grant a right to another? You are mistaken considerate behaviour for some magic/godly ability to grant rights.

> If you want to fully understand why, you probably should pursue a multi-year education in international law.

There is nothing in law that can explain the mechanism whereby one individual can grant a right to another. Well, perhaps you can say contract law can achieve something like this - eg if I already have a right (eg of freedom of movement) and then I sign a contract with another to say I will only exercise that right if they allow it.

But there is no implied contract that can be valid. No individual can assume that they do have the ability to allow others the right to freedom of movement. The contract would need to explicit - ie you would need to have signed it. Yet this is how government works.

You did NOT provide consent to government. Nothing was signed, yet the government assumes your are subject to its laws. There is no basis for this. (Arguably you do 'buy in' when you vote, but you can also withdraw).

If 'government' is a collection of individuals that believe they should be governed by the consensus of the group, ensure their laws and management structure is adopted by others that are outside the group, that self-govern? There is no moral right. Without consent there is only force.

> But it does formalize and encode morality, in the form of laws.

For sure it does not formalise nor encode my morality. Does it encode yours? Personally, I would not restrict others freedom of movement if they are not harming others. I would not force to accept my authority of their body (eg via mandatory vaccines).

> you are expressing your feelings about government from a state of perpetual learned helplessness. The very idea that "the government is us", which is the core concept of democracy, seems alien to you.

Government has nothing to do with me. It sees fit to inflict its 'laws' on me - but there is no morality to this, only force. It is a helpless situation though, that is true. I am a victim - as most other people really do believe in this illusion. They do not accept my right to govern myself. Even though I am not harming them (ie I am acting morally) they do see fit to act immorally against me - they will force me to act as their government has deemed fit. Eg they will force me to pay tax or force me to take 'medicine' despite my choice, or prevent me from going where I want, etc. Legality has nothing to do with this as government can write laws to make this legal

Government is a beast based in force - and has nothing to do with rights and wrongs. It is the mechanism of an elite class to manage people collectively and has - via education - has kidded us into believing the mechanism they control somehow relates to individuals.

The illusion is so strong most of us believe it is actually right to force others to do what it says!

> The question then, is at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number? And on what basis does a government have greater rights than the individuals it purports to represent?

is a nonsense argument and it is the crux of the rest of your argument.

The answer to when adding a grain of sand to other grains of sand becomes a pile of sand is not 'never' even if there's no obvious dividing line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

Where does government get its authority from then?

I say it is from force, and that the force comes from many individual's false belief that government is right to do as it does.

Eg, if you find you don't agree with what government does, can you withdraw? Say you don't agree with government starting a war in another country, and decide not to pay taxes, will you go to jail?

Most people do see that there is no choice, that it is based in force. However, they will also try to rationalise their acceptance of the force, and in so doing propagate the beast.

Morality is a rough one. Most people who study ethics and metaethics do follow moral realist positions, but positions under that umbrella are manifold. When you look outside of moral realist positions, there are even more positions.

So, the government doesn't govern morality, but even the people who study it can't form consensus.

> Governments can of course write laws to justify whatever they like, but these laws themselves need to align with morality to be 'right'.

Your problem isn't with rights or governmental egregores, it's with an inability to reconcile a morality with the turtles-all-the-way-down-esque social relations that summon said egregores.

Until your moral claims can said to be true, then my rights could contradict yours, and it might not be reconcilable. Here someone smarter than me might even consider that the job of government is to reconcile the infinite, inconsistent beliefs, and to give some basis of "rights."

The moral claims I make are innately true to all individuals. You can pretend that government has the right to do that which you cannot do to another individual, but you would be wrong.

You can do what you like as long as you are not harming another.

A collection of people do not/cannot have greater rights than an individual. An individual cannot grant another a right eg to privacy. An individual can respect anothers right to privacy. Or he can disrespect that privacy. If he does disrespect that right, that individual has done a wrong.

This same method applies to groups. If 10 people decide to disrespect an individual's privacy, this is still a wrong. There is no number, no implied convention that can make disrespecting privacy the right thing!

You need to convince me and ethicists, first because I could introduce you to some error theorists who would say otherwise. It's literal he-said, she-said with people choosing to believe what they want to believe in. Whether they base this in the categorical imperative or the bible.

To make it 100% clear what point I'm trying to make is this: you can't just make a normative statement or that your morals are globally valid. When you do so, you say X ought do Y. So you need to prove that "ought". Why ought X do Y? And what makes that normative claim applicable outside X?

> You can pretend that government has the right to do that which you cannot do to another individual, but you would be wrong.

I was never interested in doing so, just in saying that anything you consider to be a moral fact isn't verified.

> You can do what you like as long as you are not harming another.

Andrey Chikatilo would expand this a bit. So would Dahmer.

Of course one can think of oneself as being outside the power of government, and that is very powerful. Then some principles such as human rights are naturally seen as inalienable and independent of what any government says/legislates/enforces. Such independence of thinking and actions from the government is sometimes a highly moral position, like when people in Europe helped hide and save Jews from Gestapo.

But morality is not universal, people have different views, and the government and its tools are still there, they can threaten and hurt people. So many will usually choose to comply with the government restricted version of human rights, as long as it's bearable.

>The question then, is at what point do a bunch of people become a government? What is the magic number? And on what basis does a government have greater rights than the individuals it purports to represent?

To me and likely yourself the answer to this question is Never, the government never has more rights than the individuals

The US was (and I stress was) the last nation on the planet where this idea had even small roots in the ground as a foundational principle of governance, sadly that has been lost and any of those roots that may have been left were yanked out of the soil at the start of COVID.

Today the rule is "The needs of the many, outweigh any rights of the individual"

Yes, many people think this nowadays. I think because they did not experience the downsides of this or it is not relevant now.

I think most people tolerate manifestations of this quoted idea to some extent now, when it makes sense to them or it is close enough, and is bearable, like some of the pandemic restrictions.

True, this sets up a dangerous precedent, but I don't think it's certain most people completely bought the quoted idea in general. With some of the less sensible restrictions and mandates, many people realized just how wrong is to take that idea as gospel for every possible situation.

Perhaps not ethically or morally or whatever.

But that only matters in a philosophy classroom.

In the real world, they are.

HTH!