Dear Liberty Student,
My sincere apologies for accidentally referring to you as “BrainPolice” at the end of my reply to you. It’s the middle of the night, sorry.
– Jean-Paul
No worries. Lots of people confuse us. Some even think we are twins.
I’ll respond to your lengthy post later.
Dear Andrew,
Your offer some very interesting ideas. I really like the way you are approaching a synthesis of economy with one basic parameter of democracy which is voting. I just wonder if some of the assumptions made concerning “free enterprise” are valid. Please understand that I am not attacking your work as I think it has great potential to offer the world. You should sincerely consider approaching this for a doctoral thesis if you are not doing so already. If we can downgrade the analogy from a hypothetical global government to say a functioning city. You are the man with wealth. You would like one man/woman to be mayor. There is a meddley of various minorities wishing to vote contrary to your candidate (this is ironically similar to factionalism in Republican Rome) and you decide to “buy” their votes and build new roads or a church/mosque/temple or school wherever desired. Your candidate is thus elected and then represents (hopefully in the analogy) your agenda or his agenda which you support. I don’t really see much wrong in that except that it is somehow ringing ethical bells in my brain…I’m not sure if it’s the hour of the night or not, but let me see if I can pinpoint it. How do you gauge for the importance of communication between people? What if there are people who oppose the building of new roads or whatever but yet you still built them? There seems to lack some form of equality in there. I duno…maybe it’s just the rhetoric of “buying votes” which irks me, hahaha. I’m very interested to know more about your idea. Could you please elaborate further? This is an excellent forum to develop your concepts.
The idea of political capital is interesting. Where did you get this from? It’s very similar to the carbon trading schemes currently underway in many countries (recalling Kyoto Agreement). It’s interesting because if one neglects to vote then their will is somewhat lost in that decision, and thus to be fair said person may be able to accumulate votes and put them where they count. However, this may create a somewhat dangerous scenario for corruption. What if somehow special interest groups or political parties etc., got hold of how many votes some people have and try to buy them into something rather evil? haha.
I’m going to write more about this a bit later on, I hope you don’t mind but as you can see my writing isn’t quite up to scratch at the moment due to my eyes closing out of their own volition.
Thanks for your thoughts Andrew, be writing back soon. Feel free to reply in the interim.
– Jean-Paul
Jean-Paul, while I think that your intentions are good, I happen to think that your premise here is naive, no offense intended. I don’t think democracy should be improved or truly can be improved. I think it should be done away with entirely, and that the closest thing to an acceptable “democracy” that I can think of it the market itself (a voluntary consumer’s democracy that is not really majoritarian in nature). I don’t mean to rain on your parade or anything, but I cannot help but disagree with the assumed premises here.
To quote myself (yea, it’s kind of vain, but why should I bother rephrasing what I’ve already written elsewhere?):
"David Friedman once made an analogy between voting for politicians and the way that we “vote” for cars as consumers on the market. Imagine if we voted for cars in the same way that we voted for politicians or governments. No matter which car you vote for, or wether or not you vote for one at all, every single person gets the same car. No matter how you vote, or even if you don’t vote at all, the results are the same for everyone. This is true even if only a small numerical majority of a given population “wins” in the rat-race. In short, there is no individual consumer choice in political democracy. As a voter, you cannot truly boycott the “product” or sell it off as if it were truly yours. You must bear the costs of and patronize or make use of the “product” or “service” (I.E. the government) regaurdless of wether or not you voted for it. There is no genuine option to opt out as a consumer of the state’s “services”. The entire thing is a great big package deal that one has no option to refuse. Even many currently existing unfree markets could be seen as at least have some degree of consumer sovereignty in comparison to states.
This is all aside from the fact that for the most part one’s voting options are restricted from the get go to the “choice” between one Democrat and one Republican, or Labor and Tory. Throughout the primary process, the options are usually whittled down to two canidates. In most contemporary democracies, there is often only two or three main parties that have any significant influence over the state apparatus. Since these parties make up the same overall institution, they end up “colluding” and compromising with eachother to some degree in order to maintain the status quo. While there may be some degree of disagreement and competition between the parties, combined, they ultimately end up still constituting one ultimate party or group of individuals who are directly in control of the state apparatus. Whatever it is that such state agents end up doing, it still ends up effecting every citezen, regaurdless of their vote or lack thereof."
A little gleam into why I’m opposed to political democracy and don’t accept the premise of this thread. There is a lot more to my criticism of democracy than this, but this (the lack of genuine consumer choice and the package deal nature of the political process) is a vital aspect of it. Of course, this whole conversation in this thread is kind of akward because half or more the people you’re dealing with here are free market anarchists, so we don’t really support any formal political system to begin with.
Hi, thanks for your reply.
No offense to you or Nietszche, but this seems like an incredibly dishonest view of truth. To say that the truth can be bended to one’s will as long as it is expedient, I think overlooks the fact that the truth is true whether it suits our purposes or not. I think this is actually similar to a utilitarian argument. A utilitarian would argue for a political system that suited his needs and achieved his desired ends. The means, to a utilitarian, are irrelevant. It would seem this is similar, in that as long as the means meet some sort of criterion of usefulness, the means for achieving these useful ends, become automatically “true”, even if in reality the means are despicable.
As for my definition of democracy, I generally define it as “Majority rule” by proxy. The idea that one group having more numbers than another somehow invalidates the minorities’ choice is a highly collectivist concept which I oppose. This is where I would like to make a distinction between choice in a democracy, and choice on a freemarket. To use a metaphor: Democracy is when Bob, Joe, and Steve vote on different cars. Bob and Joe vote for a MBW, while Steve votes for a Honda. Thus, since Bob and Joe have a 67% vote, they impose their choice of car on Steve, whether he wants it or not. The free market however, is where no matter who votes for what, everyone gets what they want: Bob and Joe get their BMWs, and Steve gets his Honda. This is such a crucial distinction that I cannot stress it enough - the market will allocate resources in accordance with niche markets for minorities, while democracy (majority rule) will trample over minorities.
Lastly, I think you have misunderstood what I meant by the moral double standards in democracy. I think that morality is objective (Read Stef’s book “Universally Preferable Behaviour” at http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/ it’s free). Thus, I was not referring to different systems of ethics, such as Sharia law or english government law, neither of which are consistent, or objective in any way. What I meant by moral double standards, was that while it is widely regarded by society that individuals murdering or stealing is wrong, this does not seem to apply to governments. Government can steal (taxation, when involuntary, is theft) and murder (dressing up men in uniforms and giving them badges doesn’t suddenly make them immune to morality), such as when tax protestors get arrested, and if they resist arrest, will be shot. This level of violence is akin to the mafia extorting, with the crucial difference that the vast majority believe it is perfectly ok.
This is what I was referring to. The government, by virtue of some form of Social Contract (see this link for a 5 minute disproval of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNj0VhK19QU), claims to have some sort of higher moral authority, and allows itself to do what no individual would be able to do without being jailed. All government programs rely on taxation (which, by definition is involuntary, else it would be called donation) and tax funds are essentially blood money. Now theoretically, if governments allowed citizens to not pay their taxes, and allowed freedom of competition in all the services they provided, they would become moral institutions. Unfortunately, at that point the government ceases to adhere to its own definition, and simply becomes a firm.
Edit: apparently the cars example has already been brought up 
Given the choice between being beaten with the gold or silver bat for the next four years which would you chose? Err…make that figurative bat.
You don’t have a say about the system per se but you can hopefully enact the lesser of two evils. The immorality isn’t in the voting itself but in the system which forces you to chose which master lords over you. They gain no legitimacy from you voting since it is a purely defensive action on your part in response to their coercion and theft, your only real choice is to vote for the person who engage in the least amount of aggressive acts.
If a ruffian walks up to you on the street and says ‘your money or your life’ is it immoral to vote for your life over your money? Has this vote legitimized his actions?
I wonder what would happen if all the non-voting anarchists went out and voted for Bob Barker (or whatever) as a purely defensive measure against runaway statism, it wouldn’t give the election to St. Obama since they wouldn’t have voted for McBush if the Libertarian candidate wasn’t running and it may just give the pols a wake-up call that there is a growing counter-movement against their democratic socialism.
Perish the thought of using all the means at your disposal to try to enact change though…
You know, I may vote for the second time in my life this year. Or maybe third.
I don’t believe in the lesser of two evils per se. If there was a decent choice in my elections, I would vote, if for nothing else than to encourage better choices.
I’ll never understand that. It’s so heroic to not vote, but meanwhile, the non-voters keep paying their taxes and following the law. I guess it’s easy to make a stand when you don’t have to risk anything. I imagine all of the non-voters would vote if it was required by law. Wouldn’t want to resist the state or confront it’s tyrannies.
Yes because the conduct of a few seems to concretley represent all other’s associated?
All of these arguments are already addressed in the original article, including the voting as self defense claim, which is a weak last resort argument made by some libertarians who erroneously take Lysander Spooner out of context to support voting when clearly Spooner’s arguments were describing the whole democratic process as a sham. In either case, my case against voting is 99% a practical one, not ethical. I barely even begin to make anything remotely resembling an ethical argument.
Your original statement is precisely one of my arguments against voting, you’re making the case for me by comparing it to choosing which gun to be shot with or which color bat to be hit with. Such a “choice” is meaningless to me: I don’t want to be shot or clubbed! Until you stand up and demand not to be shot or clubbed in the first place, you’re not striking at the root. As for the lesser of two evils argument, it is precisely such a bad ideology that drove so many people towards libertarianism in the first place and I’m not sure why any libertarian would cling to such a notion. As for the idea of participating in the process of democratic socialism in the name of opposing democratic socialism, pause and think about what you’re saying for a moment. There are just way too many internal contradictions involved in this.
The reason why I put in “then why do you vote?” is that I clearly see the contradiction in rhetorically going on tirades about how much you hate democracy and then voting and proceeding to make practically all of the cliche democratic arguments in favor of voting. I’m tired of this inherently self-contradictary attempt to have it both ways, as if all of the criticisms of democracy does not at least partially apply to oneself when one personally plays the game of the political process in a modern democracy.
If anything, it’s voting rather than non-voting that is a labor-saving device and demonstrates that an individual does not want to take the risk of direct action themselves. Imagine, instead of having to club so and so over the head yourself, you can secretly/anonymously cast a ballot to have someone else do it on your behalf (at least allegedly). It’s a high time preferance and low personal risk thing. Viewed in this light, it’s also quite cowardly, to be able to hide behind the ballot in such a way.
Well, it is actually taking Rothbard’s argument in context when he make the argument about voting as an act of self defence.
Do you pay taxes while opposing taxes? Do you drive on government streets while opposing government streets?
It’s a silly argument. If you think your life will be made better by hiding your head in the sand while your neighbors decide how much of your income is justly yours then by all means continue to follow the path of non-internal contradiction.
Yeah, sure, if they left you alone then this would matter. But they don’t.
Your very inaction is an implicit agreement for the status quo.
Please, no ankle biting today. I’m wearing a new pair of socks. [:)]
Yes, please continue with this line of reasoning. That not voting is actually courageous. That when people are inevitably clubbed by the state, it is better not to try to prevent it, but to sit at home, arms crossed pretending it is not happening. Good one.
Your analogies are simply nonsensical. You are not actually actively preventing what the government does or doing anything for that matter by voting. For all you know, the government will go on to defy what you voted for or against, and this is most often the case. Voting does not lead to representation, its effects are inherently not representative of the decisions that the individual would have otherwise made for themself. Please stop comparing voting to direct actions when it is an incredibly indirect thing, and for the millionth time stop speaking as if the absence of voting is the same thing as absolute inaction.
First of all, once again you are engaging in an error in assuming that the only alternative to voting is “inaction”. Stop this. I have had to repeat this to you many many times in many many threads. You should very well know that one can substitute one action for another and I shouldn’t have to repeat this and address this bad line of reasoning every single time that this topic comes up.
Secondly and more importantly, even if we accept the false premise that simply not voting inherently constitutes “inaction”, implicit consent is a morally bankrupt concept and the idea that a lack of action equates to direct moral responsibility for whatever goes on in the world is absurd. For example, this would imply that “we are all murderers” for not going out of our way to directly help defend people thousands of miles away who are being slaughterd, or by simply not giving one’s stuff away to others for free willy nilly one is somehow morally responsible for other people’s poverty. Furthermore, if you apply this line of reasoning about “implicit consent” consistantly then a chattel slave “implicitly consents” for not running away or rising up against their master and seizing back the fruits of their labor. This is victim blaming.
Of course, that’s not analogous to voting in that the act of voting (especially for a master) directly does nothing whatsoever to overthrow or defy one’s masters. A slave is not “free” or any less a slave if every few years he gets to have a vote on who their master is, and if they’re lucky they get to vote to get one less beating per day or a 1% increase in their food rations.
Actually I don’t think either the voter or non-voter “implicitly consents” to whatever the government happens to do, because voter and non-voter alike have no real direct control over political affairs to begin with. I do think, however, that the voter nonetheless indirectly enables the process while the non-voter does not.
Yes, please continue to miss the point the not everyone agrees with your views. That when all those that you generalize are clubbed by the state, not all have the reaction of a child in denial, sitting at home, arms crossed pretending it is not hapenning.
That some might see not-voting as a personal affirmation of their own views, and/or one of the first things one can do (easily) in defying the state, while holding no illusions that simply not-voting makes it go away, or for other reasons entirely, including the possible case of just merely just barley enacting one’s apathy while living in a glass house.
I’d rather ankle bite than oversimplify & generalize. Hope those new socks came with a warranty [:O]
I just recycled your lousy analogy. Sheesh!
So you are saying that all politicians, all laws, all policies, all taxes and all enforcement officers are equal. Very interesting.
Yeah, well for all they know, I am defying them right now! HA!
Why should I stop? I’ve seen no evidence to refute my propositions. If voting is not a direct action, then surely not voting is also not a direct action. Are you trying to confuse me?
If everyone agreed with my views, then I wouldn’t have so many ankle-biters now would I?
Right, because they are doing… (fill in the blank for me please)
Well that’s not completely honest now is it? You only tolerate oversimplification and generalization when BP or someone of your ideological commitment is doing it. You only challenge it when someone who doesn’t form your “thought group” does it.
Perhaps I have made errors by oversimplifying or generalizing, but you are in no position to call me on it.
No. I am saying that the very nature of voting in a representative democracy is indirect. I am saying that voting does not gaurantee representation, that once someone is in office they can theoretically do anything, that the very fact that they are in an ivory tower away from you makes it a sham, that it is impossible for them to represent the vast array of disagreeing individuals who they allegedly do represent even if they tried to, that the very nature of the process eliminates your genuine choice as a consumer, that institutional agents of the institution have bad incentives, that the empirical record of libertarian politics spells total failure, and so on. I am saying that the act of voting is not direct action, one is not actually directly exercising decision-making power with respect to the institution.
Same with non-voters.
No. I’ve repeatedly presented plenty of logical arguments to demonstrate that it is fallacious to assume that the only alternative to voting is “inaction” as if one cannot very well substitute other means or actions and that the very nature of the political process involves a vast gulf between the citezen and those who actually control what amounts to an ivory tower, none of which I’ve ever seen you directly address. I’m not trying to confuse you, I don’t think you fully comprehend my position and have an emotional investment in disagreeing no matter how many pages of arguments I throw at you.
Huh?
Who are you talking to? I’ve never had this conversation before.
That has to be the worst analogy to ‘implicit agreement’ I have ever seen. Your whole premise is based on the assumption that the vote can’t change anything because the masters will just ignore it.
The ‘we are all murders’ and poverty claims are nothing but strawmen.