Tank man in Tiananmen Square: Checking collective privilege since 1989
Collective Privilege is the idea that collectives (states, corporations, unions, clubs, genders, races, ethnic groups, religions, etc) have accrued to themselves through legislative/regulatory action, force majeur, "culture", or history, superior privilege over and above natural born persons that is in contradiction to the legal principle that groups only exist as creations and servants of people, and not their masters. Thus, Collective Privilege is unjust, unconstitutional, and a violation of human rights.
Origins of Sovereignty[]
It is an accepted axiom of western liberal political thought that all legitimate government action and authority exists only as it is delegated from and consented to by the people, that the people, as individuals, are sovereign, and that the state is merely their servant.
This principle has been accepted for almost 300 years since the time of Locke, and has also been affirmed by classical liberals such as John Stuart Mill, as well as anarchists like Stirner, Artaud, and Nietsche.
Hobbesians, who assert that individuals must submit themselves to a sovereign to rule over them due to the so-called natural inclination of the human animal to barbaric and brutish behavior when free to engage in unrestrained competition, are the countervailling example, and Hobbesianism is the primary origin of the rationalizations of statists/collectivists.
Thomas Jefferson explained why the US was founded on the principle of individual sovereignty: "I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Privilege[]
Privilege is the idea that in human society, some groups benefit from unearned, largely-unacknowledged advantages that increase their power relative to that of others, thereby perpetuating social inequality. Privilege is generally invisible to those who have it, and a person's level of privilege is influenced by multiple factors including race, gender, age, sexual orientation, and social class, and changes over time.[1] Privilege has many benefits, including ones that are financial or material such as access to housing, education, and jobs,[1] as well as others that are emotional or psychological, such as a sense of personal self-confidence and comfortableness, or having a sense of belonging or worth in society.[2] It began as an academic concept, but has since become popular outside of academia.
Collective Privilege, therefore, encompasses the idea that ALL groups that achieve an identity, organizationally, corporatively, or merely culturally, benefit from unearned and largely unacknowledged advantages over individuals that increase their power relative to that of individuals, and that political reversal of the principle of the natural person as master of his or her person to one of servitude to the collective, is the source of social ills and inequality. Collectives keep individuals subject to the group ideology via propaganda and initiations of aggression in order to perpetuate the groups power and existence.
Collective Privilege of cultural/ethnic groups, like women and minorities, persist in promoting ideologies of victimhood among their members in order to enforce the individuals loyalty to the group at the cost of their self-interest and self-respect.[1][2]
For organizated/incorporated groups, like for-profit registered companies, associations, unions, etc. the group persists in coercing individual members into self sacrifice for the good of the organization as a whole, and its leadership in particular. Incorporated groups enjoy specific statutory benefits over and above those of an individual, including tax-free status[3], liability limitations[4], regulatory protectionism[5] and barriers to entry[6] against foreign or domestic competitors, etc.
State collectives, however are the most onerous beneficiaries of collective privilege, in that they arrogate to themselves authority to regulate and tax the behavior of their supposed superiors, the individuals, under penalty of imprisonment, fine, or death, even with regards to the individuals enjoyment of his or her natural rights. They claim to be protecting the individual, while denying any legal responsibility or liability to do so.[7]