Why I Don’t Vote
It’s not that I have never voted. I have gotten myself registered, and made it to the polls on a few rare occasions. But those times have usually been to vote “No” on some particularly heinous ballot proposition, and not because any particular political candidate seemed like a good choice to me. (Unfortunately, they don’t let you vote “No” on the issue of whether or not you want a given governmental position to be filled at all.)
When asked about voting, I usually answer with a joke. I say something like “Yes, I tried that once, but I didn’t inhale.” Or I tell the person that the first time I voted, all my candidates won but the world didn’t get any better - therefor I decided that I am no good at voting and will leave it to the professionals.
But there are real and serious reasons why I don’t usually vote.
The problem with voting for a given candidate, is that none of the “main stream” candidates ever come close to representing my political views. This leaves me either voting for “main stream” candidate that I think is the lessor of two evils (if I can even figure out which one that is), or voting for some candidate that more closely represents my views, but whom I know has zero chance of winning.
So just what is this “main stream” I speak of, and why am I so far off of it?
Well, take a look at the graph below that shows the current 2008 U.S. Presidential candidates, as well as a few historical political figures, and myself. Actually it doesn’t show all the presidential candidates, only those who are competing in the Democratic and Republican Party primaries. But no other party has won the US Presidency since 1850 (Millard Filmore - Whig Party) and even then it was a two party system as the Republican party was formed in 1854 and the Whig Party disbanded in 1856. So it seems safe to believe that one of these primary candidates will be our next president.
To find out where you fit in on this graph, take the test for yourself at:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/test
This graph charts two axes. The horizontal axis shows economic policy, with Left indicating greater government control over commerce and Right indicating greater economic freedom. The vertical axis represents government control in other areas of society, with up labeled “Authoritarian” and down “Libertarian.” It isn’t particularly scientific, there is no quantifiable relationship between one horizontal unit and one vertical unit, and the vertical axis could probably be broken up into additional axes. But having an easy to look at (two dimensional) picture of various political philosophies, rather than trying to use a single left/right designation, is still a useful qualitative tool.
It’s also fun.
What this graph IS particularly useful for is seeing why I don’t usually vote. Take a look in the bottom right hand quadrant, where you will find me all alone. With a score of approximately (7.5, -6.0), I am far far away from any of the primary candidates. I believe strongly in all freedoms, economic and otherwise, and among candidates for political office this belief is seen to be a significant aberration.
You will notice that the “main stream” candidates really do all appear to be in a single stream. Their positions almost all fall all along a diagonal line (my addition), indicating that for each freedom they believe in on one axis, they believe in greater control of something on the other. (Ron Paul is the notable exception here, and I will talk about him in a bit.)
This clustering along the diagonal line is not necessarily particularly surprising. These are all politicians aspiring to be government employees, and government is, as the name implies, about governing (that is controlling) people. So if there is any governing to be done, something must be fair game for control. If you don’t believe in controlling people in some way, why would you ever seek a political office? What would be the point of seeking power unless your political philosophy allows you to exercise that power?
But in a democracy, you have to get votes if you want the power - and few people are going to vote for someone who wants to completely control their lives. So for every aspect of people’s lives that the candidate believes in controlling strongly, there needs to be some other issue on which the candidate is pro-liberty. A Candidate will then receive votes from those who want more freedom in the areas that the candidate is not interested in controlling, provided they have a lifestyle that is not greatly impacted by the things the candidate does want to control. Furthermore, many voters actually like to see control exercised over other people in areas that do not affect them personally - or where they happen agree with the specific choices that the candidate wants to make for others.
If you are a person who believes strongly in liberty, not just in the areas that are convenient for your own life, but in all areas, and for all people, then there will never be a real candidate for you to vote for. The nature of those seeking power, combined with the nature of the democratic process, makes only those who are close to this diagonal line normally electable.
Now this year is a little different, because Ron Paul is up on the board as a Republican candidate. He is closer, although you will notice, not much closer, to my positions. He still isn’t even in the same quadrant as me, but he certainly is well off of the normal “liberty trade-off line” that all the other candidates tend to be close to - and in the right direction.
And Ron Paul may actually be closer to me than he actually appears (at least in regards to the other candidates) if the two axis are given different weight. As I mentioned above, there is no real link between one unit on the horizontal axis and one unit on the vertical axis. And if I had to weight them, I would definitely put a higher multiplier on the economic (horizontal) axis - I am just not sure how much that multiplier would be.
The reason I would give greater political weight to the economic, than to other liberties, is the way political control tends to be exercised in the United States. The country I was born in was founded by a very pro-liberty collection of people, and they created a constitution that strictly limited government powers. However, the loophole that has been used to subvert these liberties over the years has mostly been by extension of something called the “commerce clause,” which gave the Federal Government the power to regulate interstate commerce. Subsequently, with the blessings of the Supreme Court, a very weak argument has been legitimized finding that, since all human action *might* affect interstate commerce, virtually everything you can think of can be controlled by the Federal Government.
Clearly this was not the intended meaning when the Constitution was written, but this is the mechanism by which the United States government has overreached its powers. For example, restrictions on the substances U.S Citizens are allowed to put in their bodies were first enacted through taxes and control on who was allowed to sell those substances. Things that the government can not manage to control directly, it often controls indirectly through controls on related economic transactions. (See my post entitled “Drink Up” for more thoughts on this.)
So, because I have seen that loss of economic freedoms can lead to a loss of all other freedoms, I tend to feel that economic policy is of greater importance to liberty than specific policies on other issues. This makes any candidate’s willingness to try to control us through our exchanges of value a matter of the greatest priority to me in choosing a candidate to vote for.
Looking at the graph above, Hillary Clinton is abut 9 units away from me, John McCain is 10.5, and Ron Paul is 7.0, but if I weight the economic axis as double, then Hillary Clinton is about 11 units away, John McCain is 10.5, and Ron Paul is still 7. (Hint - use the Pythagorean theorem if you want to do this math for yourself) So while Ron Paul is approximately unchanged in my eyes by this re-weighting, you will notice, that it causes my (very slight) affections to switch from Conservative Democrats to Liberal Republicans. But is a 2x weighting the right number? I honestly have no idea, so I don’t know based on this chart (or by any other means I have been able to figure out) whether I should be voting democrat or Republican when offered only those two choices.
Of course Ron Paul would answer that question for me this year, if he were actually to be nominated by the Republicans. But that is not likely to actually happen. Therefor I will never get a chance to cast a vote for him unless he continues his run without a major party nomination. That is not too unlikely, as he is not really a good Republican candidate by any normal measure, and he did run for President previously as the Libertarian Party candidate. But even with him running as a semi-strong third party candidate, that leaves me right where I usually am - either voting for no one, or voting for someone who has no real chance of winning the election.
And that is why I don’t vote.
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Explore posts in the same categories: U.S. Politics
June 29th, 2008 at 9:34 am
Have you ever heard about Asimov’s “Freedom of the Bathroom” theory? Here’s what he had to say about it:
I will use what I call my bathroom metaphor. Two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have the freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, and stay as long as you want, for whatever you need. Everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, “Aren’t you through yet?” and so on.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Isaac_Asimov
This may be the reason why so many politicians fall on that diagonal, believing that giving people freedoms in some respects means that they will lose freedoms in other respects. It may be an entirely realistic way of seeing things, and it may be completely unrealistic to think that you can keep having your cake and eating it, too, as it used to be like when the limits of growth hadn’t been reached yet in a comparatively recently discovered country, with lots of natural resources and a lack of human resources…
July 17th, 2008 at 3:38 am
I don’t think this analogy applies. The division of freedoms into two orthogonal axes by the political compass seems quite unrelated to the idea of allocating scarce resources.
The fact that most politicians either want to control your economic activity, or your personal habits, but not both, does not seem explainable based on the idea of us not being able to “having our cake and eat it too”, since the different freedoms being offered are in no way related. However, it seems very explainable by the idea that those who seek political office like to control people, that people will only allow some degree of control over them, and that different politicians and people will have different ideas about which liberties seem the most importent .
July 19th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Well, if we wish to stay within this now somewhat strained metaphor then I would say the that twenty people in an apartment taxes all sorts of freedoms, and those elected into power try to manage to allocate the resources in different ways. The ones who constrain personal freedoms go by the philosophy that the people who are most conforming to their lifestyle choices are the most disciplined, and that it is the disciplined people who should be put in charge of the bathroom time the most, because they would know best how to manage it.
Those who follow a more egalitarian philosophy say, we don’t care what you do with your life and how successful you are as a result, we give you as large a bathroom time slot as everyone else. We don’t require you to conform to other standards as long as you conform to your bathroom time alotment.
That’s because most people have an innate idea of fairness. It just takes into account different variables to determine what is fair. George Lakoff is great in explaining the differences between these polarly opposite ideas of fairness.
Authoritarians, on the other hand, would claim that it’s up to whoever is in power to distribute the bathroom time as fairly or as arbitrarily as they choose. That works better and better the fewer bathrooms are available and the more hopeless it becomes to allocate what little bathroom time is left into a meaningfully useful time for everyone anyway.
And libertarians are the people who say that whoever gets to the bathroom first gets to choose for how long they remain inside or when they choose to sell or lease their possession of the bathroom to others. That worked fine when there was and abundance of bathrooms and bathroom times available and works more and more badly the fewer bathroom minutes there are averaged over people…
The whole issue can be sidestepped only by finding ways to build more bathrooms, preferably inside more apartments, or alternative ways to go potty. (That would be where the oceans come in or space elevators into the vastness of geostationary orbit and beyond or other ideas of expansion…)
July 22nd, 2008 at 12:52 pm
You hit the answer at the end of your post: If you don’t like the bathroom situation, MOVE!
The economic arguments you are making presume that the actors are powerless: That they cannot find a better place, that they are glued into this situation. That is a horrible characterization of human nature.
We are able to get up and do something else. Creativity trumps scarcity.
PR
July 28th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Hitler should be right next to Stalin he was also a socialist/communist, he just wanted his communist state for Aryans only. Communists use these kinds of propaganda terms and maps against conservatives all the time, it is a pure bs.
It doesn’t matter as all groups are merging into a world communist state anyways so they are getting their wishes.
Oh and putting Hillary on the right? The map is such bs propaganda. It even puts Huckabee closer to Hitler then Mccain.
July 29th, 2008 at 5:52 pm
@Ool
You note that the libertarian solution to your “bathroom” problem works fine but breaks down if resources are decreased. I don’t disagree, the market will definitely fail when trade is not producing the resources people need. However, I disagree that the authoritarian solution works better as resources are decreased. I believe it breaks down even faster - that is, does more overall harm. But it will certainly look like an attractive solution to those that believe that they can muster the necessary force to steal what they need.
The moment the market breaks is the moment where one group decides that the best move is to seize the resources from others, whether they wear bandit masks while doing this or do so openly by claiming right of some greater authority. The longer everyone can continue to play fair, the better the chances that the situation will improve before serious damage can happen to many.
Furthermore, you note that innovation is the way out of a decreasing resources scenario. Well it is authoritarianism that stifles innovation.
Any innovation that might increase resources is actually a threat to existing authority that is justifying its power in “this time of emergency.” Claiming that there is not enough to go around (and that someone else is trying to get more than their fair share) is a classic way to get people to accept authority, and innovation that creates more real wealth is therefore, often the enemy of authoritarian thinking.
Do you believe that we are in a shrinking resources scenario now? If so, could it be that you have been convinced of this by people who want to claim authority over you?
August 1st, 2008 at 5:14 am
I don’t think it’s the peak oil advocates who wish to claim authority over me. They’re just pointing out the obvious—that demand is outstripping supply. The ones who claim that there’s a greater environmental crisis involving global climate change may wish to impose authority, but I’m as little a fan of theirs as I’m a fan of the “let’s not have brakes in our cars because obstacles on the road will naturally brake us” laissez fair capitalists.
But then there are also the people who have been steadily claiming that there is no energy crisis at all and that there is plenty of oil around to keep things moving as they used to who have been grabbing the most authoritarian power of them all, introducing a war on an abstract concept, claiming untenable executive powers, re-introducing torture and the detaining of people without a fair trial, lining the pockets of their cronies with tax dollars while letting the common infrastructure go to hell…
So as far as the real world is concerned, it is actually people who say everything is hunky-dory on the energy front who are the most visibly authoritarian types…
September 14th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
The authoritarian types will always try to scare you with something. If any particular authoritarian is telling you that “everything is hunky-dory on the energy front” then they will be telling you that you need to cede control to them for some other reason - foreign aggression - terrorism - some of your neighbors are actually evil monsters - or whatever it is that they think will work. But even the worst liars can also tell the truth, so whom is telling you what is not a good way to evaluate a proposition - logical thought and experimentation is all we have to go on.
On the issue of peak oil, I have seen what seems to be a lot of hype concerning what will happen as we run out of oil and claims that we are running out of oil faster than we really are. This is of course quite natural; claims that are more dire will always receive more attention and be repeated more often because they are more interesting.
We may well be running out of oil, even running out fast, but that isn’t really a problem. As we run out of oil, we will find other sources of power, and they will eventually be better and cheaper. The faster we burn through the oil, the faster this will happen. The market of human desires and innovation will provide the sources of energy that people want, provided central authority does not stifle innovation.
Laissez fair capitalists are quite happy to have breaks on their cars, so long as the choice to apply them is left to the individual drivers, rather than having a button that gives some central authority the power to remotely lock breaks wherever and whenever they think it is best for their job security to abruptly stop all traffic.