Allowing women and people with no property to vote hurts liberty

[Snowflake]

@CrazyCoot

1. Allowing women, in particular mothers, to vote is damaging to liberty because women are more likely to think in terms of ‘the children’ and therefore vote to maximize security, or at least the illusion of it, at the expense of liberty. If I’m not mistaken the Nazis got a lot of their support from scared young German mothers.

Scared people are easier to hoodwink than others. Reformulate this to say “scared people”, rather than women. And then go back and say that anyone who isn’t an anarcho capitalist shouldn’t be allowed to vote, so the rest of us can vote the voting system out of existence.

@CrazyCoot

2. Giving people without property the right to vote results in the electorate voting for the wealth of others.

This may be a wise restriction in some circumstances. Not politically though. Privately, consider that it would be absurd to allow non-residents to vote in decisions for an apartment complex (if the owner wanted to resolve some conflict via voting).

Although I would say that giving group A the ability to attack group B and disallowing group B’s self defense (democracy) will result in wealth transfer from B to A. Its pretty simple…

[Stephen_Forde]

@ CrazyCoot

I think you’re on to something. The franchise, so long as we have one, should be as restricted as possible. In any natural hierarchy, males tend to occupy positions of authority, so the enfranchisement of women was egalitarian in nature. Also, before 1815, the franchise was restricted to only a small percentage of men by highly restrictive property requirements. Since then, we’ve seen what happens as the franchise is expanded.

[chrispy]

@CrazyCoot

Please focus on these two example rather than on the issue of whether voting itself is threatening to liberty.

I don’t really think it’s fair to put the question this way. I could ask “what’s two plus two, given that the answer isn’t four?” And the question would be equally nonsensical. But if you assume that government itself is legitimate, it seems clear to me that everyone who is expected to act according to the government’s laws should have a say in what those laws are. In other words “No representation” is superior, but “no representation without representation” comes a close second.

[CrazyCoot]

@chrispy

@CrazyCoot

Please focus on these two example rather than on the issue of whether voting itself is threatening to liberty.

I don’t really think it’s fair to put the question this way. I could ask “what’s two plus two, given that the answer isn’t four?” And the question would be equally nonsensical. But if you assume that government itself is legitimate, it seems clear to me that everyone who is expected to act according to the government’s laws should have a say in what those laws are. In other words “No representation” is superior, but “no representation without representation” comes a close second.

This thread isn’t about the validity of government. Just wondering if that if we are going to have a state then would restrictions on voting help liberty.

[Conza]

Against Woman Suffrage by Lysander Spooner

… [H] [Y]

[charliehorse]

If by more people voting the result is less coercion, then more people should vote. If by more people voting the result is more coercion, then more people shouldn’t vote.

These two statements are absurd. They rest on two faulty philosophies: consequentialism, and empiricism. As Misesians, we know why they are false.

You don’t want us to talk about voting itself as a threat to liberty, but that’s what a principled, libertarian approach would require us to talk about. I don’t know what else to say. It’s like you’re asking us to talk about how to regulate the federal reserve, without questioning the validity of its existence. There is no way to regulate it. It, like the voting system we have, should not exist.