Why obey at all?
On the axis: Law and conscience · the ground of obligation
No one signed a contract, and staying in a country is not consenting: one might as well say, with Hume, that one consents to the captain by remaining aboard on the open sea. If neither consent, nor fairness, nor utility grounds a general duty to obey, is political obligation an illusion?
Justification
In the essay Of the Original Contract, Hume criticizes the fiction of a founding social contract: no real government rests on explicit consent, and obedience is explained by habit, utility and common interest, not by an original promise. Political order is a customary fact gradually instituted, which distances him from abstract contractualism without making him an organicist.
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, "Of the Original Contract"
Anchors: Hume · Wolff
leads to: The origin of the social bond