Posted on 11/12/2014 3:56:23 AM PST by Kaslin
When the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago this week, people in the Soviet Bloc gained something even more valuable than a right to vote: a free market.
Democracy is definitely better than taking orders from Communist dictators. But real freedom means doing what you choose as an individual, not waiting for the rest of society to vote on whether you can.
In politics, winners get to tell the losers what to do.
In the marketplace, you buy what you want. I buy what I want. If some people want to buy movie tickets while others prefer to buy clothes for their dogs, neither side needs to worry it will lose a struggle over which option is best.
This election, as usual, there was a big push to get people to go out and vote. Yet most didn't (more vote in presidential elections, but still less than half the population).
After elections, pundits say, "the people have spoken." But we haven't. Often, we just chose politicians we hated less than others.
I'm glad big-spending Democrats lost Congress. But In the grand scheme of things, was that vote such a sweeping endorsement of anyone's political philosophy? The vote, as usual, was pretty close. Often it feels like America flips a coin.
That sounds cynical, but it's not just cynics who have doubts about the democratic process.
Economist and law professor Gordon Tullock passed away the day before the election. But had he lived another day, he still wouldn't have voted last week. He refused to vote, in part because the branch of economics he helped create -- "public choice" -- helped convince him that people behave just as selfishly and foolishly when they vote as when they make any other kind of decisions, but with more devastating effects on other people.
At the Cafe Hayek blog, economist Don Boudreaux writes that it's good if people don't vote because by avoiding politics they "come to depend more on personal initiative and less on untrustworthy, power-craving strangers."
Well said.
We don't suddenly become wiser and nobler when we step into the voting booth. If anything, the decisions we make there are more ignorant and reckless than the ones we make when buying a car.
You probably know more about what kind of car you want than about what sort of laws to impose on your neighbors. It's another reason why most of life is best left to free individuals.
The left treats markets with contempt and political processes as if they're sacred. Then, to explain why politics disappoints, they pretend that money sullies politics.
They're upset because the Supreme Court said money can be spent on ads that inform voters of different factions' views. It turned out that Democrats were the biggest spenders, but that doesn't stop them from complaining that evil Republican tycoons used money to manipulate voters who would otherwise have chosen the candidates decent Democrats want them to.
Republicans, meanwhile, get upset if money is used to bet on things. There once was a wonderful online predictions-market called Intrade. It allowed people to bet on future events, including elections.
Intrade's odds were much more accurate predictions than those made by pundits and pollsters. That's because there is wisdom in large numbers, and because Intrade bettors put real money at risk (unlike pundits and water-cooler prognosticators).
But American regulators threatened Intrade with litigation, and the site closed. There's still another prediction market, based in England, called Betfair, but it's confusing and not as useful to Americans. Shutting down Intrade leaves us all less informed and more dependent on the political elite.
I get the creepy feeling that's the way the elite likes it. They want us to think of our grubby little individual lives -- full of buying and selling, of self-expression and risk-taking -- as something inferior to the exalted political process.
I think our individual lives matter, not just those few moments we spend in the voting booth picking the lesser of two evils to run other people's lives.
That 47%, the bought votes ? Growing them for the dems..
“...those few moments we spend in the voting booth picking the lesser of two evils to run other people’s lives...”
Make that, “...the lesser of two evils to RUIN other people’s lives...”
IMHO
Atomized random aggregates of individual walkers over the societal moonscape will give way to ancient family-clan-tribal rule after the next plague/invasion/caldera explosion.
Yes. Democracy and freedom are two very different things. Democracy is having a voice on how other people will live.
Yes, heads you lose vs. tails your REALLY lose. Romneycare vs. Obamacare.
What I don’t find in this column is what Mr. Stossel thinks would be better than democracy, and why.
I believe that most of us usually vote for the “lesser of two evils” to some extent but I have drawn a line, which I refuse to cross when voting. The candidate doesn’t have to be perfect but he/she must be pro life. To me, there is no greater evil than murdering innocents.
A case in point is the recent gubernatorial election in Illinois where both candidates were pro aborts. I voted but not for either of them.
Other issues are important to me too but abortion is a deal killer.
~~~What I don’t find in this column is what Mr. Stossel thinks would be better than democracy, and why.~~~
Maybe the representative republic system, which we are supposed to have already. Not democracy.
The only candidate that would be perfect is Jesus and he is not running for political office.
I actually don't have a problem with people voting their best interests. We are where we are because people were convinced to vote for the black guy, rather than what was in their best interests, and look at what that brought us.
Let’s be clear in terms. This nation was not found as a democracy, and the founding father’s had a low opinion of democracy.
John Adams: Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
Thomas Jefferson: A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%.
James Madison: Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
John Quincy Adams: The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.
Thomas Jefferson: The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
It's very possible that the last 100 years will be remembered as the beginning of the collapse of a grand experiment -- representative government -- that may be completely incompatible with the human condition.
The Mel Gibson character from The Patriot (Benjamin Martin) summed it up perfectly: "Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? An elected legislature can trample a man's rights as easily as a king can."
Yes, we do have a representative republic system (with the representatives elected democratically), and I have not claimed otherwise. Your gratuitous observation has nothing to do with my post concerning Stossel’s failure to propose a superior alternative to voting.
What you say is true; unfortunately any government will tend toward preserving and enhancing what it sees as its rights at the expense of the rights of its citizens.
I hope the grand experiment does not collapse without being replaced by a better scheme. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that might be, and neither, apparently, does John Stossel.
Your "claim" is implicit in your comment. whether intentional or not.
Your reply:
What I don’t find in this column is what Mr. Stossel thinks would be better than democracy, and why.
It’s already being replaced by a plutocratic system where the country is run by the leaders of major corporations. I’m not sure if that is “a better scheme,” but it’s probably much closer to what the founders of this country envisioned than what we’ve seen in the last 100 years.
That's why, in my comment, I said,"The candidate doesn’t have to be perfect".
I'm not looking for perfection but pro murdering babies is a deal killer.
Voting for the lesser of two evils keeps the greater evil out of power. hopefully one of these elections we’ll get it right. Until then, vote for those who believe in personal freedom and economic liberty.
The government that governs least, governs best.
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