How would people on this board respond to the following arguments?
1) Allowing women, in particular mothers, to vote is damaging to liberty because women are more likely to think in terms of 'the children' and therefore vote to maximize security, or at least the illusion of it, at the expense of liberty. If I'm not mistaken the Nazis got a lot of their support from scared young German mothers.
2) Giving people without property the right to vote results in the electorate voting for the wealth of others.
Please focus on these two example rather than on the issue of whether voting itself is threatening to liberty. If you believe there isn't much difference in terms of damage to liberty between property owners, non-property owners, and men and women in terms of voting please explain why.
I will say that my position is not as clear cut as the arguments I've presented, but I felt tha simplistic points would allow the greatest room for debate.
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.—Karl Kraus.
I expect to get a few responses like that.
I do not think that I can support this idea. I do not believe it to be just. People who live under a set of laws should either have the right to vote for the people to change them and/or be able to participate in a direct vote on those laws. (so long as government exists)
Your idea could very well have the opposite consequence of what you intended. Meaning that enough pig headed men vote to take away many women's negative rights. Abortion could be outlawed. Raped women could be treated like criminals as they are in many backwards societies. Women could effectively never be thought of as adults again.
Keep in mind that adding people to the voting roster is not always against liberty. I seem to remember that the war draft ending not too long after the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18.
One 1, the issue isn't women, it's stupid people. They come in all sexes, gender preferences, colors, heights, etc. In fact, if there's any validity to the bell curver then there's more male idiots than female. Females have been the brunt of the Inane or Stupid Voter label as a matter of history and paternalism, not as a matter of necessity or validity. No, the problem is voting in general. A political vote presupposes the use of government force to get the minority to comply. Hence the issue isn't the classes people allowed to cast votes, it's the context of the vote and how it affects others. A 'vote' of No on good or service X on the market, even to the extent that it leads to X not being produced anymore due to a drop in demand, leaves me no worse off than I was prior to those votes. For political votes in a democracy, it's implicit the minority will be worse off, and that they will be punished even to the point of death for trying to resist being made worse off. So, even if you presume women are child centered some how and voting for their kid's best interest as if that were mutually exclusive with freedom, the problem isn't their marginal preference for child safety over freedom but the government machine that enforces their marginal preferences categorically on everyone else should they win the majority.
CrazyCoot:Giving people without property the right to vote results in the electorate voting for the wealth of others.
The problem there is all people own property: themselves. And all people can no potentially own property too, at least in the US and all western countries I know of. So Property Owner is a class all people technically belong to, and even if you exclude self ownership as qualifying, all people are potential property owners. And, as before, the problem is not the class of voter but the votes themselves. Political vote result is the categorical enforcement of the marginal preferences of some on all. Marginal votes, choices on the market in other words, while they certain do affect other people, do not leave them implicitly worse off. Even if I like Sprite but demand drops such that Sprite is no longer produced, I am still all the wealthier for the Sprite I have purchased and consumed to date and no poorer for Sprite I did not purchase and no longer have a chance to since it was never mine to begin with. Sprite, no longer being available, is no longer where I allocate my soda budget. However, my budget is still allocated to my highest preference given the available choices. That's simply not the case in the political system. There you are made worse off by the votes of others.
No to build upon that, why then would Property Owners, as in land owners, traditionally think non land owners shouldn't vote? My guess is because the land owners knew damn well the monopoly of force they enjoyed and likely used to screw over non land owners, and also knew damn well that given the same power the non land owners would screw them over to the best of their ability. The unseen or unmentioned option is: why doesn't everybody stop trying to screw everyone else over and just deal with each other freely rather than always showing up to a negotiation with a gun under the table? The expansion of the voting franchise is indeed a history of the expansion of the power to use the government to screw people. However, there is nothing noble in restricting that power to this class or that class be it Men or Land Owners, and there is everything noble in getting rid of that power, period.
Anything could be property (owning a pencil, self ownership). It is a completely legalistic term. As far as land property owners can only vote; that is a very old antiquated notion that has no credibility. It subsidizes owning land that may otherwise be worthless (think of our current collapse), it would also exclude huge chunks of the population that live in large cities (that may pay more for renting an apartment than you pay for owning land).
I won't even address the woman issue, other than you can target any group and come up with reason for them not to vote.
Yes. After a basic voting population adding more people to the voting pool simply adds to the expansion of the welfare state.
So what are you gonna do about it?
Would you repeal the 15th and 19th amendments?
Maybe voting (Democracy) is the problem. Very few "Democracies" began as such. The decreasingly free nations of the UK and USA did not start as democracies (Rule by a mob) but as "Republics" Both modified their governments over the years to include more democracy and thus damaged their forms of government beyond repair. In the USA the average citizen was not allowed to vote for president and the state legislatures picked the senators. This forced power to state governments out of the hands of organized mobs called political parties.
I think its rather non-controversial that if you allow non-tax payers to vote that they will vote to maximize taxation on others.
Peace
The Late Andrew Ryan:Yes. After a basic voting population adding more people to the voting pool simply adds to the expansion of the welfare state.
The voting pool is the welfare state.
The vote itself is the problem. That is, the problem is not who is or is not allowed to vote, the problem is that there exists this "coercion machine" called government in the first place. The moral problem of deciding which are better or worse ways to aim the coercion machine and who to victimize with it is trivial compared to the moral problem of the machine's existence.
Clayton -
xahrx: The Late Andrew Ryan:Yes. After a basic voting population adding more people to the voting pool simply adds to the expansion of the welfare state. The voting pool is the welfare state.
That's my point. If we can shrink the number of peope who have a need the manipulate and expand the welfare system then we can keep the welfare state as small as possible, or have as few people on it as possible.
Define property.
I own a bunch of stock of a bailed out and heavily subsidised corporation. Am I a property owner or a non-property owner?I own a house which I bought from my salary at Blackwater or alternatively the DEA. Am I a property owner or a non-property owner?
I own a bunch of slaves. Am I a property owner or a non-property owner?
bloomj31: So what are you gonna do about it? Would you repeal the 15th and 19th amendments?
No, although a repeal of the 17th would be good. My concern about women voting is really not about women in general, but mothers. And the imposition of the poll tax might not be a bad idea.
CrazyCoot:1) Allowing women, in particular mothers, to vote is damaging to liberty because women are more likely to think in terms of 'the children' and therefore vote to maximize security, or at least the illusion of it, at the expense of liberty. If I'm not mistaken the Nazis got a lot of their support from scared young German mothers.
And men are more likely to vote for war.
CrazyCoot:2) Giving people without property the right to vote results in the electorate voting for the wealth of others.
Those with property seem to vote for the wealth of others as well. For example, TARP.
Sorry, but the claims seem pretty baseless to me.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
ClaytonB: The vote itself is the problem. That is, the problem is not who is or is not allowed to vote, the problem is that there exists this "coercion machine" called government in the first place. The moral problem of deciding which are better or worse ways to aim the coercion machine and who to victimize with it is trivial compared to the moral problem of the machine's existence. Clayton -
Agreed.
But the focus of this thread is on the inane and trivial
*puts on flamesuit*
But seriously, I think the way to avoid this problem is with a republic, a democracy that can't vote on everything. So for example you couldn't vote to actually take someone else property. That sidesteps the issue you see I believe.
twistedbydsign99: *puts on flamesuit* But seriously, I think the way to avoid this problem is with a republic, a democracy that can't vote on everything. So for example you couldn't vote to actually take someone else property. That sidesteps the issue you see I believe.
So we substitute mob rule for oligarchic rule?
Well, if you're going to have a system of government then perhaps it would be better to have it ruled by natural elites such as myself rather than a bunch of smelly poor people.
@ CrazyCoot
I think you're on to something. The franchise, so long as we have one, should be as restricted as possible. In any natural hierarchy, males tend to occupy positions of authority, so the enfranchisement of women was egalitarian in nature. Also, before 1815, the franchise was restricted to only a small percentage of men by highly restrictive property requirements. Since then, we've seen what happens as the franchise is expanded.
CrazyCoot:Please focus on these two example rather than on the issue of whether voting itself is threatening to liberty.
chrispy: CrazyCoot:Please focus on these two example rather than on the issue of whether voting itself is threatening to liberty.I don't really think it's fair to put the question this way. I could ask "what's two plus two, given that the answer isn't four?" And the question would be equally nonsensical. But if you assume that government itself is legitimate, it seems clear to me that everyone who is expected to act according to the government's laws should have a say in what those laws are. In other words "No representation" is superior, but "no representation without representation" comes a close second.
This thread isn't about the validity of government. Just wondering if that if we are going to have a state then would restrictions on voting help liberty.
Against Woman Suffrage by Lysander Spooner
.........
If by more people voting the result is less coercion, then more people should vote. If by more people voting the result is more coercion, then more people shouldn't vote.
These two statements are absurd. They rest on two faulty philosophies: consequentialism, and empiricism. As Misesians, we know why they are false.
You don't want us to talk about voting itself as a threat to liberty, but that's what a principled, libertarian approach would require us to talk about. I don't know what else to say. It's like you're asking us to talk about how to regulate the federal reserve, without questioning the validity of its existence. There is no way to regulate it. It, like the voting system we have, should not exist.
I Samuel 8