Responsibility matters only when people have realistic ways to exercise it
Imagine someone who is willing and able to work.
They want to support themselves and their family.
But the place where they live has few jobs.
A country with better opportunities will not admit them.
Another will admit them only temporarily.
A third will not recognize their qualifications.
What does it mean to tell this person:
You are responsible for sustaining your own life?
The statement may sound reasonable.
But responsibility becomes difficult to evaluate if institutions close the realistic ways in which that responsibility can be exercised.
This is where the idea I call Natural Obligation becomes relevant.
In The World Citizen Revolution, I use the term in a narrow sense:
A person who is reasonably capable of doing so bears primary responsibility for sustaining their own life.
The word primary matters.
So does the phrase reasonably capable.
Natural Obligation identifies where responsibility begins.
But it also raises a second question:
Does a society leave people realistic lawful ways to carry that responsibility?
Responsibility Begins with the Person
Natural Obligation is not a rule of existing law.
Nor is it a claim that I have discovered a universally accepted law of nature.
It is a normative starting point.
When a person has meaningful capacity to act, responsibility for sustaining that person’s life normally begins with that person.
That does not mean everyone must have a conventional job.
A person may sustain life through employment, self-employment, savings, ownership, insurance, cooperation, family arrangements, or other legitimate means.
The principle does not prescribe one economic model.
It asks a prior question:
Who bears the first responsibility for trying to secure the means of one’s own life?
My answer is:
the capable person whose life is being sustained.
Responsibility Requires Opportunity
But responsibility does not exist in isolation from institutions.
If a political order expects people to take substantial responsibility for sustaining themselves, it should also ask whether they have realistic lawful ways to do so.
A person cannot meaningfully exercise responsibility through an option that exists only on paper.
Suppose someone is legally free to work, but there are no realistic jobs available.
Suppose work exists elsewhere, but legal Entry is impossible.
Suppose migration is permitted, but housing, documentation, or professional recognition makes the move unusable.
In such cases, simply repeating “you are responsible for yourself” does not solve the problem.
It may describe where responsibility begins.
It does not tell us whether responsible action is realistically possible.
So responsibility and opportunity must be examined together.
Why Place Matters
This connects Natural Obligation to an earlier argument in this series.
Branko Milanovic’s work on the citizenship premium shows how strongly income and economic opportunity can depend on where a person lives.
Where people live can also shape access to jobs, institutions, and opportunities needed to build an ordinary life.
That means self-sustenance is not only a question of effort.
It is also affected by access to places where effort can realistically produce a livelihood.
This does not mean that everyone has an unlimited right to enter every country.
But it does mean that political borders can affect the range of opportunities available to people who are expected to sustain themselves.
That creates a tension.
A political order can say:
You are responsible for supporting yourself.
But if access to realistic opportunities is sharply restricted by place and legal status, that responsibility claim cannot be considered in isolation.
From Responsibility to Mobility
Natural Obligation does not prove Migration Freedom by itself.
A principle about individual responsibility cannot automatically settle questions of admission, housing capacity, public services, security, or political membership.
But it does make one question harder to ignore:
If people are expected to sustain themselves, how far should political institutions restrict their ability to seek lawful opportunities elsewhere?
This is where Natural Obligation and Foot Democracy meet.
Foot Democracy concerns meaningful political-community choice: not merely Exit, but Entry, residence, practical mobility, and eventually a path toward membership.
Natural Obligation approaches the problem from another direction.
It asks about responsibility.
Foot Democracy asks whether people have realistic alternatives.
Together they expose a basic institutional problem:
Responsibility is meaningful only when people have realistic ways to act.
A Familiar Asymmetry Appears Again
Earlier in this series, I discussed a basic asymmetry in international law.
People possess a recognized right to leave a country.
They do not possess a general right to enter another country of their choosing.
A similar asymmetry appears in the economic sphere.
International human-rights law recognizes the importance of work and freely chosen employment.
But that does not by itself create a general right to enter another country in order to work.
So a person may possess a recognized interest in earning a livelihood while remaining legally excluded from places where suitable opportunities exist.
That does not prove that borders should disappear.
It does show that responsibility and access to opportunity cannot be treated as entirely separate questions.
A theory that emphasizes personal responsibility must also be willing to ask what institutions make responsible action possible—or impossible.
Need, Responsibility, and Shared Burdens
Opportunity does not settle every question about assistance.
Need matters.
But it does not, by itself, identify who must carry the burden.
A parent may owe support to a child.
A contract may create an obligation.
A person who causes harm may owe compensation.
An insurance system may have accepted responsibility for a risk.
A political community may create tax-funded systems of social protection.
These additional obligations require their own justification.
Natural Obligation therefore does not eliminate shared responsibility.
It only establishes a starting point:
where meaningful capacity exists, personal responsibility matters.
But primary responsibility is not exclusive responsibility.
Responsibility begins with the individual. It does not necessarily end with the individual.
Responsibility Is Not Abandonment
This distinction is essential.
A newborn cannot sustain themselves.
A person with severe disability may not be able to do so.
Illness, old age, care responsibilities, unemployment, disaster, or structural barriers can sharply reduce practical capacity.
A person may make serious efforts and still fail.
Responsibility is therefore not the same as blame.
The principle is not:
If you are poor, it is your fault.
Nor is it:
If you need help, you have failed.
Natural Obligation should not become a simple test of whether hardship resulted from “choice” or “bad luck.”
People can need support without having acted irresponsibly.
Capacity matters.
Circumstances matter.
Institutions matter.
Shared Institutions Still Require Justification
Modern political communities organize shared responsibility through taxation, insurance, healthcare, education, pensions, disability support, unemployment protection, infrastructure, and other public institutions.
These arrangements impose real burdens.
But compulsion does not automatically make them illegitimate.
Nor does a worthy goal automatically make every burden legitimate.
The relevant questions concern justification:
What is the purpose?
Who benefits?
Who pays?
How are burdens distributed?
Can residents participate in changing the rules?
Are rights protected?
Is the institution sustainable?
Natural Obligation therefore does not tell us that taxation is wrong.
It does not tell us that every redistributive program is justified either.
It asks us to justify burdens as seriously as we justify benefits.
What Natural Obligation Does Not Mean
Some limits should remain explicit.
Natural Obligation does not mean self-sufficiency.
It does not mean that receiving assistance is wrong.
It does not mean that people with limited capacity are morally blameworthy.
It does not abolish parental, contractual, associative, or public obligations.
It does not prove that compulsory social systems are illegitimate.
It does not authorize forced labor.
And it does not mean that choosing a political community amounts to consenting to every future tax, regulation, or policy.
Natural Obligation is a starting point for thinking about responsibility.
It is not a complete theory of justice.
Conclusion
Natural Obligation begins with individual agency.
A person who is reasonably capable of sustaining their own life bears primary responsibility for trying to do so.
But responsibility cannot be separated from the world in which people are expected to act.
Jobs are distributed unevenly.
Legal status affects opportunity.
Borders affect mobility.
Capacity differs.
Relationships create obligations.
Communities create institutions.
Some risks cannot be carried by individuals alone.
So a theory of responsibility eventually becomes a theory about opportunity.
And once opportunity depends partly on where people are allowed to live, work, and build a life, responsibility also becomes a question of political freedom.
Responsibility is meaningful only when people have realistic ways to act.
Notes
In The World Citizen Revolution, Natural Obligation is an authorial normative concept used narrowly to describe primary responsibility for self-sustenance where meaningful capacity exists. It is not presented as an established rule of law or a universally accepted doctrine of natural law.
The term should not be confused with John Rawls’s discussion of “natural duties,” which includes duties toward other persons and just institutions. The term as used here has a narrower and different function.
Natural Obligation should also not be confused with a simple luck-egalitarian rule under which people are denied assistance whenever hardship is connected to choice. Responsibility does not eliminate concern for capacity, vulnerability, structural barriers, or human need.
Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes the right to work and free choice of employment. Article 6 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes the right to the opportunity to gain a living by work freely chosen or accepted. Neither provision, by itself, establishes a general right to enter another state in order to work.
Natural Obligation is supplementary to the institutional architecture of The World Citizen Society. That book’s arguments about mobility, membership, rights, fiscal coordination, and social protection do not depend on Natural Obligation as a necessary premise.
Further Reading
For political-community choice and usable mobility, see Foot Democracy and Migration Freedom.
For the role of location in economic opportunity, see “Branko Milanovic and the Citizenship Premium”.
For the limits of using individual choice to justify political burdens, see “Rights Before Choice: Why Neither Majorities nor Mobility Can Override Basic Rights.”
For the original discussion, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Revolution, especially the discussion of Natural Obligation and social rights.
For the institutional framework, see Toshiyuki Nishimura, The World Citizen Society: Political Freedom, Democratic Choice, and the Institutions of a New Society.
