Use Your Right Not to Vote, Canada
Monday, May 2, 2011 at 1:02PM Ed Bugos here. Jeff is en route from the Casey Research conference in Florida to Canada for the Saskatchewan Investment Conference and so I man the controls of the TDV ship today.
I am sure Jeff will have some comments on the big news of the day, the reported killing of Osama bin Laden. Until then, it is national election day here in Canada and I wanted to add to Jeff's commentary on Friday and hopefully persuade a few Canadians to abstain from the political process.
Don't vote. That is a right too. The objections to this idea typically fit into one of the following categories:
1) it is our duty - our forbearers and contemporaries have died for the right to vote
2) if you don't vote you can't complain about who is elected
3) if you don't vote you don't care
In practical terms it is irrelevant. Your vote does not count. How many times do we have to see politicians push unpopular legislation through to realize this. Unless you have influence over more than your vote, whatever you say at the ballot box is inconsequential - and this is most true where, like today, the options are all nearly the same…and you are simply voting for the lesser of evils. The one that, as someone once said, "charges you the least blackmail for leaving you alone". It would be downright awful if our forbearers and contemporaries fought and died to uphold the right to vote. For as F.A. Harper wrote in contrasting freedom with democracy:
"Willis Ballinger's study of eight great democracies of the past — ancient Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, the First and Third Republics of France, Weimar Germany, and Italy — reveals… …that liberty perished peacefully by vote of the people in five of the eight countries" - http://mises.org/mobile/daily.aspx?Id=5173
As for not having the right to complain about who governs me without my consent? C'mon.
Not that we should run from our problems. In matters of politics one often can't.
But it need not be through the ballot box. One can exercise more influence with the stroke of a pen or by uploading a video these days…or even by changing just one person's mind one exercises more influence.
There is something intrinsically wrong with voting for something you don't fundamentally agree with just due to a strategy, like the lesser of evils - unless you can organize other votes around the same aim. But then you are trying to deal with the world's problems via political means - an avenue that has only corrupted the best of us.
So go out there and change the world by abstaining from the political process altogether.
Exercise your right not to vote. It is not a privilege (to vote)…it comes with no real perks.
Voting is at best a form of consent to whatever your rulers happen to be doing, which makes the voter the one who should not have the right to complain - especially the voter who voted in the winning party.
I'll leave it to George Carlin to basically state all of what I stated above, in a much wittier and more entertaining way:
Reader Comments (4)
ED is right, voting is an exercise in futility. The parties are ALL socialists, they only differ in degree. Wasn't it one of the writers or signatories to the U.S. Constitution, maybe Jefferson or Washington, one of the early Presidents who said that "once people discover that they can vote themselves free money the destruction of the republic is assured, or words to that effect.
Th simple truth is that nothing is by definition "FREE" somebody pays and ultimately we all pay for our personal irresponsibility. The fact is that NO government can give anybody anything they do not first take away from someone else, and eventually there is no "someone else" to take it away from, so they mortgage our children's future by borrowing DEBT MONEY from private bankers to try and fulfill enough of their promises to get re-elected.
Whoever promises the most gets elected, so in outdoing each other telling the people what they want to hear they DIVIDE the votes based on personal biases so that nobody is able to govern effectively even if they wanted too. If a party seeking power handed each potential voter a copy of HAYEK'S book; The Fatal Conceit - The Errors of Socialism I might vote for them, even contribute to pay for the books.
The simple fact is that the more people work for government and/or receive handouts, welfare, food stamps, pensions, or for whatever other reason are beholden to government, the less self reliant and responsible they become or teach their children what they need to know to stand on their own two feet. The "soak the rich" mantra simply destroys the very goose that lays the golden egg and eventually the distribution vultures have nothing left to distribute.
The arrogance of politicians is well excemplified in the NDP.s Jack Layton who says; "I will hire more doctors and nurses, I will give you better pensions etc. so I guess he must be a billionaire if HE is going to provide all this largess for the masses he hopes will vote for him. His greed and lust for power is simply being transferred to unsophisticated voters who are dumb enough to believe he can conjure up these supposed benefits out of thin air.
TAX those nasty greedy corporations (who just pass the increased tax cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for their products) NEVER would they consider the simple fact that if they did not take the money from people in the first place to finance all their socialist dreams, employing 10's of thousands of bureaucrats to shuffle paper to re-distribute the booty to their favourite recipients, just maybe people would LEARN to become more self-suffient and rely on themselves to do the right thing and act responsibly.
Government is not the answer to our problems, over zealous, over regulated, bureaucratized government is the problem that is destroying free enterprise, free markets, self reliance and entreprenurship that creates the jobs the country needs to thrive and prosper. Central planning by a bunch of eggheads has never worked and never will work because it is in opposition to our basic human nature.
Hilarious post ( made me laugh ). And I have a degree in economics, but still find your blog very interesting and a great read!!!!. You are an Economist now with all your online studies !!!!! Reminds me of myself writing a few papers in 1993 at Queen's.
I hope you are doing great Jeff. Call me if you visit Vancouver and we can meet up for coffee.
All the best,
Mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bn-zPaOOSQ&feature=related
Looking forward to your blog about the death of Bon Laden.