Voting can change who governs you. It does not mean you consented to be governed.
By Christopher Cook, The Advocates for Self-Government
So, the election is over.
As expected, the Democrats did well. Fatigue from ongoing conflict and economic malaise weighed heavily on the president’s party, as it frequently does in the first midterm after a presidential election.
So, if your candidate(s) won yesterday, what did you actually win?
The Ballot Is a Bullet
First of all, you didn’t win anything. You were given a choice—in most cases, realistically, a binary choice—to pick a candidate you hope will represent your wishes. That candidate is under no particular obligation to do so.
What really happened is that you gathered with a group of others into a voting majority. The goal was to select someone you hope will propose and support laws favorable to the aggregated viewpoint of you and your group.
You yourself cannot propose or vote on specific legislation (setting aside the occasional ballot question). You can only make requests and express preferences. If you and your group contact the representative in sufficient numbers, you might be able to capture his or her attention and make a suggestion.
That said, you and your group did not merely help elect someone more favorable to your viewpoint. You also helped elect someone more hostile to someone else’s viewpoint. You not only want what you want, you also want to prevent someone else from getting what he or she wants.
And it’s even worse than that…
What is really going on (whether we care to acknowledge it or not) is that a victorious voting majority is attempting to impose its will upon the losing minority.
We win. For the next few years, we’re in charge.
Who’s “we,” kemosabe?
There is no we. You and a group of your fellows are trying to force your way of life—your beliefs, values, and objectives—on other human beings. That is what democratic systems are all about … even constitutional republics like ours.
Founders like Thomas Jefferson and the Anti-Federalists were getting closer to understanding the moral flaw here, but they were born a little too early. It took another century of classical liberal thought to really articulate the problem.
Lysander Spooner said it best:
without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practise this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave.
"Master" and "slave" are arguably hyperbolic, but the statement is inescapably true. An election is not the will of “the people.” It is the will of some people, imposed by force upon others. Sugarcoat it if you wish, but that’s what it is.
Congratulations. You won.
The Democratic Failure of Imagination
I have been in this game long enough to know the question that has now arisen in the minds of some readers. How else are we going to do things?
Sorry, but that is not an answer. It is an issue to solve, but it sidesteps the fundamental moral problem with democracies and republics.
I could tell you that other solutions have worked in the past: private law societies that, albeit ancient and imperfect, gave people greater choice in a variety of ways.
I could tell you that most of what people do today is already private and voluntary; that almost everything good that we have in this life comes from private, voluntary activities; and that government—even democratic government—mostly just gets in the way.
I could tell you about the vast body of analysis explaining how private, voluntary solutions can replace what government does, and how they can work at scale in the future. And that they would not only work, but work better.
We could talk about all of this. But it still would not address the moral failing of democratic systems.
The system encourages you, arguably almost forces you, to wield the ballot as a weapon against others. Whether or not you can think of an alternative way of doing things does not alleviate that fundamental failing. By what right do you impose something on other human beings because you cannot imagine another way of doing things?
Democracy is war by other means.
Democracy Is Not Consent
Okay, so you won. Now what?
You’re not making policy. You’re not even in the room. You threw your vote into a gale of ballots, and when they landed, yours was in the bigger pile.
Or maybe you lost. Or maybe you didn’t vote at all. No matter what happened in the election, things are still going to be done to you without your consent.
Even if your candidate won, there is no requirement for him to do what you want.
Maybe his agenda is acceptably close to yours. Maybe not.
Maybe he gets enough of his fellow legislators to sponsor some particular idea you like. Maybe not.
Maybe a piece of legislation you want gets enough support to pass. Maybe it doesn’t. Or maybe, by the time it makes it to a vote, it has been changed so many times and had so many other things tacked on that it is unrecognizable.
No matter which of these happens, and whether you voted or not, you will be subjected to many things to which you do not consent.
We insist upon respect for consent in every other aspect of our lives. Why not here?
Heads They Win, Tails You Lose
What really changes when this person or that person wins an election?
Taxes
Did a higher-tax candidate or a lower-tax candidate win in your area? You will be taxed either way.
Did you agree to that?
Before you say yes, ask yourself if you would still pay the tax if it were voluntary. Are you voluntarily paying for a service you value, like you would in the private sector? Or are you paying because you’ll be locked in a cage if you don’t?
We’re arguing over whether a government should seize, by force, 38 percent of your money or 52 percent or whatever other number. When was the last time you asked yourself whether government has a moral right to take any of your money?
After all, if you threatened people with violence if they didn’t hand over a portion of their property to you, you’d be committing a crime, both morally and legally. What makes it okay when the government does it?
War
Maybe Team Blue won. Maybe Team Red did. That’s not the difference between war or no war. It is the difference between war in this place or war in that place. There is never no war.
Politicians, bankers, and contractors benefit from war. They can outsource the expense and the death to you, and so they do.
That doesn’t change whether or not your team won. Only the enemies and means change.
Entitlements
When was the last major government program that sunsetted? Politicians mostly just maintain the status quo. Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are going to destroy the economy no matter which team wins. It’s a matter of when, not if.
Add in all the pensions and other unfunded liabilities, and the debt is close to the GDP of the entire planet. We are on a runaway train, and the cliff is getting closer. Did you agree to board that train?
Inflation and money
Did you consent to have your money debased to the point where inflation is robbing you of real purchasing power and hard-earned savings?
Is it even your money—did you consent to have central banking or fiat currency in the first place? Try to start your own free-market currency and watch what they do to you.
In fact, point to something—anything—that government does that you consented to. Not things you agree with, but things to which you actually consented. Go on. I'll wait.
No, Virginia, the Social Contract Is Not a Contract
We must acknowledge, with humble respect, that the concept of the “social contract” was an important step forward in our development. Rather than simply accepting imposed rule as the natural state of things, the social contract was an attempt to explain how people might get together and agree to form legitimate governance.
The concept itself is sound, but the American government fails the test. All currently recognized governments on Earth fail the test. There has been no actual agreement among people. Systems are simply imposed upon everyone in a given area. None of us signed anything.
These social contracts are thus neither social nor contracts.
A contract, in order to be legitimate, must meet the criteria for valid consent. None do.
Our consent has not been voluntary. We never agreed to any of this. We are compelled by force and presumption, just as in any monarchy.
Even in 1787, only a handful of humans signed anything. Everyone else was just forced to wonder, “What sort of government have you given us?”
Our consent has not been explicit. Our approval is never sought, nor is it deemed necessary. We are simply told that our consent is “tacit” or “implied.”
The terms to which we have putatively consented are not specific. They are open-ended and ever-changing.
Imagine selling your house for a specified amount of money. A year later, the buyers return and tell you that you also agreed to give them your car, when you clearly did not. No one would consider that to be a contract.
This so-called contract is in no way transparent. There is no set of clear conditions that we read and to which we openly agreed. Nothing witnessed. Nothing signed, sealed, or delivered.
In such conditions, informed consent is impossible. Governance is imposed upon babies who cannot know the terms, nor are they given a chance to sign anything or opt out when they come of age. Nor is anyone capable of reading the tens of millions of words by which they are supposedly governed. That is not a contract.
Finally, our consent is not revocable. There is no termination clause. There is no means by which to withdraw consent. Anyone who attempts to secede and form their own experiment in governance, even solely on their own property, will be attacked and possibly killed. A contract with no legitimate escape is a slave contract.
In your private dealings, you expect to give and receive valid consent. If this expectation is violated, a crime has been committed. You get none of this with any government.
Nothing Governments Do Is Consensual.
Nothing.
Team Blue can call me a reactionary, a Nazi, or a kitten-stomper for daring to speak one ill word about “democracy.” (Of course, watch what happens to democracy every time the left accumulates sufficient political or military power.)
Team Red can call me a radical pinko commie for daring to speak one ill word about the system bequeathed to us by the American Founders.
But no team of any color can explain how any of this is actually consensual.
It’s tough for me to offer congratulations to the winners of this election, when condolences are so clearly in order for all of us. But I will try nonetheless…
Congratulations. You managed to select a few of the people who will act as our overseers on a giant nonconsensual tax farm for the next few years. Savor the victory.
