What “group”? I don’t recall any “group” saying anything. In the towns I’ve lived in, individuals all make their own individual decisions, and prices go up or down, and products get reordered or discontinued, and stores stay open or close, based on the aggregate of all that individual action.
P.S.
“Fair”? What’s “fair”? And, who gets to decide that?
Were the options limited by force of another acting individual? Or through “reality” (aka “just the way things are”)? Are you going to argue that your choices in transportation are “involuntary” because you don’t have the option of teleportation?
First of all, we have to remember “society” doesn’t have a will…only individuals do. (I realize you didn’t use the word “society”, but it helps make the point. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the phrase “will of the people” so long as it is understood to mean the overall aggregation of individual decisions.)
Second, as bad as that example is, yes. Ultimately it is the people who determine those choices. The people by and large go along with the electoral process that produces those two candidates, as well as the process that picks between them. It’s much like how Milton Friedman spoke about the ultimate reason we have inflation…
You see, ultimately we have inflation because the people want it. They make it politically profitable for those in government to keep on printing. All people would have to do to get it to stop is the same thing they would do to make any change take place in government.
Now it’s important to note, I mention your example is a bad one because you are talking about governmental elections…government by definition is force…so it is quite difficult (impossible, in fact) to completely divorce involuntary action from any aspect involving government. In other words, it’s kind of a loaded example to use a government institution to try and prove a lack of voluntary action. Yes, to an extent the people are voluntarily choosing to be governed this way, and are voluntarily going along with the way in which those governors are selected…for if the public at large decided it didn’t like the current system, they could easily change it. However, anyone who doesn’t agree with the system is forced to go along with it if not enough other people agree with him enough to change it.
If you wish to argue a “limited choices = involuntary” point, you would need to pick a private market institution. Showing a government institution limits choices and then trying to use that as evidence of a lack of voluntary choices is a fool’s mate. You don’t even need the the “limited choices” part. You would just say “government results in non-voluntary arrangements” (something which of course everyone knows already anyway).
“Chosen through evolution” sounds like voluntary action to me.