Via Liberation Frequency:
Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don’t believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before. An agent is usually held accountable to his principals. If you do not know the individuals who voted for you, then you do not know for whom you are acting, nor to whom you are accountable. If any body of persons has delegated to you any authority, the disposal of any right or part of a right (supposing a right to be transferable), you must have received it from the individuals composing that body; and you must have some means of learning who those individuals are, or you cannot know for whom you act, and you are utterly irresponsible as an agent.
Voltairine de Cleyre
I guess this is the unintended [?] consequence of separation of powers. The “government” itself is a diffuse organization with no official, identifiable center, sort of like Al Qaeda. But is this impossibility of identifying agency not also characteristic of the Invisible Hand? The Invisible Hand is said to be an agent, whose actions are the “aggregate” of certain actions of the “individuals composing that body” (or that hand, anyway), but seek through the executive suites of businesses, the day-books of the merchants or even the grocery lists of the millions, and find, if you can, the Invisible Hand. I have always said the Invisible Hand is amoral. Perhaps I should also describe it as irresponsible and unaccountable.
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