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Re: was Graywolf post# 6417

Wednesday, 07/02/2003 2:34:51 PM

Wednesday, July 02, 2003 2:34:51 PM

Post# of 6491
I couldn't disagree more. It is entirely rational to consider that if every person currently practicing the apathy that you are promoting were to vote for someone besides the big two, there WOULD be change.

Again, you do not seem to understand my point. Individuals act; groups do not. When deciding whether or not to vote, individuals weigh the costs and benefits of their actions. As an individual, does the benefit I get from driving down to the voting booth and wasting a half hour of my time outweigh the costs? Clearly not, if we consider that one vote does not make a difference. Thus, it is irrational for an individual to vote, so long as his only purpose in voting is to change the outcome of the election. Economists and political scientists have suggested other reasons why people vote in order to explain this seemingly irrational behavior, but all agree that voting for the sole purpose of changing the outcome of an election is completely irrational.

To repeat, I agree that if everyone who doesn't vote decided to vote for a third party, there would be a big change. But groups do not act; only individuals act. It is not in any individual's interest to waste time doing something that has costs but no benefits.

But change will not occur if I and everyone else surrendur.

I am not suggesting surrender; I am simply suggesting that people look at other options, because voting has proven to be fruitless.

. Change will only occur if MORE people start taking responsibility for their country and voting, not less.

There is no responsibility to vote.

Problem is, your arguments against trying to get people to learn about those they are voting for works against your education theory too.

Good lord this is getting frustrating. You completely misunderstood the point of rational ignorance. I am not trying to prevent people from learning about political issues and candidates; I would love to live in an imaginary world where everyone found politics interesting even though they had absolutely no control over the democratic process as individuals. The point of rational ignorance is not to convince people to be ignorant, but to understand why people are ignorant about political matters, and why it is entirely rational for them to be ignorant. The car-vote example was intended to demonstrate why this is so. People will spend time researching different cars when they get to choose the car they get as individuals. But if car purchases were decided by democratic vote, very few people would waste time researching cars because their individual vote will not make a difference.

If the people are too lazy to learn about politicians whose faces they see on TV every day, how much effort do you expect them to put into educating themselves on libertarian principles in general?

Which is why my primary message that I want to spreading is that voting is fruitless and that we should look elsewhere to solve our problems. This does not require an effort to understand, nor does it require any effort to research.

Human nature. There are mercenaries working all over the world

If this past century has proven anything, it is that powerful governments and militaries are much more dangerous than any private mercenaries. Anarcho-capitalism relies on the same assumptions about human nature that the rest of economics relies upon: namely, the rational pursuit of self-interest.

I have yet to see one nation anywhere that has created the utopian environment you speak of through private armies.

I already mentioned the example of medieval Iceland. David Friedman has written extensively on the competitive supply of defense services and anarchistic character of this society.

Look at Somalia and the Balkans. Warlords and private armies. Hardly a free society.

Hardly stable societies either. No one here is suggesting violent revolution or military juntas. Such countries are poor examples of a failure of gradual changes.

For another example of a country with an almost non-existent military, look at Switzerland. By not pissing other countries off through foreign intervention, Switzerland has been able to avoid the massive military spending plaguing most other countries.

Further, if the argument is that private police forces will eventually collude, then the obvious solution is to limit the sole role of government to preventing such collusion. With such an anti-trust law, and the power to enforce it, there is little need to socialize the entire protection industry.

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