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.
This is getting repetitive now. I understand your words perfectly, but feel your rationale is flawed. That is the bottom line for me here. No, voting, as a single act, does not affect an election. But unless people vote for candidates that support liberty, only politicians who take liberty away will hold power.
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 isn;'t that the entire poing of political parties>? GROUPS of peopel acting in concert?
I am not suggesting surrender; I am simply suggesting that people look at other options, because voting has proven to be fruitless.
Then offer another option.
There is no responsibility to vote.
Again, I could not disagree more. There is not REQUIREMENT to vote, but there certainly is a responsibility to do so.
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.
I never suggested that you thought people SHOULD NOT learn about candidates. But you DID argue that they don't, when I said that that is the goal we should strive for. And that is what that particular point was based on. You argued that people do not have the desire to spend the time to learn about candidates, and I'm asking why you think they will be more interested in learning about ideologies.
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.
You keep saying that, but I've yet to see a real plamn for an alternative. Education and entrepreneurship are totally worthless in an environment where the value generated by them can be taken away from you buy those in power. Both of these things are valid needs for a positive future, but not as a substitute for voting.
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.
Tell that to the people of the Balkans and Somalia.
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.
ANd how come that society is not around today? If it really worked, it should have stoiod the tests of time and or invvasions.
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.
That's the point - anarchy does not promote stable society. Sooner or later, it always leads to infighting,. civil war and either complete distruction or weakening to the point where the country in question becomes easy pickings for an external invasion.
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.
And if someone decides to walk over them? Then what?
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.
If the govermnment has no standing federal army, then how is it supposed to prevent such collusion? Your own sentence here undoes your argumetn - "the power to enforce it". That means a standing army stronger than the combined forces of those who would collude.
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