Voting, the initiation of force?

[Duart]

Is voting the initiation of force through proxy?

 

 

If voting makes you complicit to the governments immoral actions, (taxation at the point of a gun for example), then does an individual who votes have any 'right' to property rights. 

 

As an example, a lifetime government employee who votes has a savings account. The source of this accounts value is made entirely through the support and subsequent payment of and from government, a gang with a monopoly on violence. 

 

Does this person have property rights over the money or does it belong to the tax payers that it was stolen from (impossible to redistribute back). 

 

 

I guess the question follows, if you flipped the anarchy switch tomorrow, would this person have any moral claim over their cash?

[Jer]

 

Is voting the initiation of force through proxy?

 

 

If voting makes you complicit to the governments immoral actions, (taxation at the point of a gun for example), then does an individual who votes have any 'right' to property rights. 

 

As an example, a lifetime government employee who votes has a savings account. The source of this accounts value is made entirely through the support and subsequent payment of and from government, a gang with a monopoly on violence. 

 

Does this person have property rights over the money or does it belong to the tax payers that it was stolen from (impossible to redistribute back). 

 

 

I guess the question follows, if you flipped the anarchy switch tomorrow, would this person have any moral claim over their cash?

 

I am not sure what the answer is but I think the vast majority of Americans get some benefit from the state and there would be a multi trillion dollar pile of money that needs to be unredistributed and it would be practically impossible to find out who deserves it. Do you think it would it make a difference how the person votes? I'm firmly in the "don't vote" camp, but the Ron Paul ethic is to vote against taxes and then accept the money when it still passes.

[shirgall]

Under Robert's Rules, one of the critical components of an organization deciding on issues is that the entire organization must accept the decision once it is is made. For any organization lacking focus or getting too large this critical aspect is gone. You instead get factionalism and the use of the rules of order to force apparent consent instead of using them to fairly obtain good decisions.

 

At a national scale, probably even at a state or county scale, the process of voting is so undermined that it really doesn't mean much, and most people know this. Voter turnout for presidential elections, for example, never got much greater than 80% in the late 1800s, and more often than not is closer to 50%, and the presidential elections draw more people to the polls than the "off season" elections.

 

People registering their opinion has pretty low moral content. If you have voted any time since 1990 do you feel responsible for the droning of a United States citizen teenager in Yemen, where there was no declared war? You probably hate that it happened, but it didn't really matter how you voted, or even if you voted, did it?

[AncapFTW]

When I first heard someone say that, I thought about it.  This lead to the question "How is voting for more freedom "using force to violate someone's freedom"?"  If, for example, I vote to legalize weed, how am I using the government to commit violence against others?  I'm not stopping people from restricting its use on their property.

[Duart]

Thanks for your thoughts!

 

Yeah, I see the problem of degrees of responsibility when voting (minimal when diluted by the number of votes and the limited options available). And as you pointed out Jer, someone might vote republican/conservative for a reduction in government size but wind up with the opposite result when they come to power. 

 

The thought behind this followed from the struggles of starting up a business. I've been an FDR, libertarian and anarchist supporter for years but never realised the full extent of the difficulties that the state creates. It seems like literally everything has some arbitrary, usually expensive bar to entry or control imposed. What makes it worse is that everyone I know either agrees or benefits in the case of professional accountants for example. 

 

Running a business with a good moral ethic in this climate seems impossible. I struggle to find any respect for the assumed property rights of people who support and benefit from it. 

[autowagon]

I always say, voting is an endorsement of violence.  It doesn't really initiate anything it just endorses that violence gets used to 'fix' things.  That's why it's so diffiult for anarchists to supply 'solutions' or 'fixes' as alternatives because there is no real fix, but the current one is just violence.  Our current solution is to throw a hammer at the problem till it quits asking for a better answer.

[Jer]

When I first heard someone say that, I thought about it.  This lead to the question "How is voting for more freedom "using force to violate someone's freedom"?"  If, for example, I vote to legalize weed, how am I using the government to commit violence against others?  I'm not stopping people from restricting its use on their property.

I don't think voting for something to be made legal would be described as using force, but some people argue that you are giving legitimacy to an illegitimate authority just by voting. i.e. simply casting a vote is accepting that the government has dominion over you or something along those lines.

I was convinced to not vote by "don't waste an entire day informing yourself and going to the polls for something with a .00001% chance of making any difference."

[DaviesMa]

It could be argued that a voter is merely trying to control the direction of coersion in a coersive system and since he cannot leave this system, voting himself priveliges is self defence. To be very simplistic, if 10 people put 1 pound/dollar into government and each voted to get as much as possible out, they would all get a dollar back. In a representitive democracy of millions of course, this is hugely diluited and distorted but the principle could still apply.

 

The average voter is most likely not even aware that they are a part of coersion, as they probably believe in the social contract, so if you are not aware that the goods are stolen, can you be morally responsible as a thief?

[Jer]

It could be argued that a voter is merely trying to control the direction of coersion in a coersive system and since he cannot leave this system, voting himself priveliges is self defence. To be very simplistic, if 10 people put 1 pound/dollar into government and each voted to get as much as possible out, they would all get a dollar back. In a representitive democracy of millions of course, this is hugely diluited and distorted but the principle could still apply.

 

The average voter is most likely not even aware that they are a part of coersion, as they probably believe in the social contract, so if you are not aware that the goods are stolen, can you be morally responsible as a thief?

The problem IMO is you have to do a few hours of research at the minimum to be informed about all the things to vote on. The monetary value of your individual vote would be far less than 1 penny per hour of research time.

 

Go to work, watch a movie, take a nap... I could think of 100 things I'd rather do than stand in line to "do my duty". I am just hoping they'll go away if we ignore them

 

edit: Regarding the 2nd part I think many leftists/statists are pretty explicit in their desire to extract money from "greedy hoarders" who would prefer not to pay and cheer when tax evaders get sent to prison. In that sense I think voters and activists can be morally responsible for advocating the initiation of force against peaceful people. Although, I don't know what morally responsible means in this context like I don't think we have any right to self defense against random voters. Maybe "morally aware"? They're just jerks...