If I Had Energy to Blog . . .
I’d blog more about libertarians and Democrats, like
and Andrew Olmsted
Also, Andrew Olmsted.
Truth is, I haven’t even read all the above thoroughly yet. But they’re on my list, and there’s no reason you need to wait for me.
Comment by SomeCallMeTim —
June 19, 2006 @ 11:20 pm
I just don’t get how you can be a libertarian and vote for the Republicans after Padilla. I don’t understand how there can be an argument over this. But I’m not a libertarian, and have a pretty naive understanding of the ideology.
Comment by Jason Kuznicki —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:20 am
The question for me is not so much Democrat versus Republican. It’s Democrat versus Libertarian (that is, the Libertarian Party). It’s also Democrat versus stay-at-home-in-protest. The latter makes a surprisingly strong showing: When elected officials act as though we are not, indeed, their bosses, it seems preposterous even to pretend as if we are.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:58 am
Jason, I agree with you insofar as the Rs are the party in power. So, maybe vote D strategically trying for divided government. But I don’t really see any long term alliance as possible with the Ds; there’s just no basis other than hoped-for obstructionism. If it were Ds in power, I’d be advocating maybe voting R just to divide the government.
I certainly do not advocate staying home. Either vote for a Libertarian, maybe a Constitutionalist or some other minor party, or else go and vote but abstain from voting. They know how many people voted, including abstentions, and they care about voting. They don’t care about nonvoters as much. Most nonvoters don’t vote because they are apathetic or ignorant, not because they are too strongly ideological to stoop to it.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 9:17 am
I don’t see how one can be a libertarian and vote for anybody at all, period. Look: I don’t have a right to get together with my friends and determine with them how to dispose of your rights. Any sensible person would call that a conspiracy. Nobody has that right, and there is no sleight of logic morally competent to bring it into being.
I am fully aware of how drastic a departure this is from the American tradition since 1789, and why it will strike some people as completely outrageous. But my touchstone is 1776, and I’m the one talking about freedom. Not ”democracy”. That is something categorically different, and it’s how we got to where we are today.
Aside from that, however, I’m here to tell you that, over the long term, this spreading infatuation with the Democrats is a big, big mistake. It’s so big that you might not see the practical implications in your lifetimes. But I am hard pressed to think of anything more dangerous in what passes for ”pragmatic” politics today.
Comment by Steve —
June 20, 2006 @ 9:37 am
On a wholly unsubstansive note, the responses to Mona’s post at Q and O remind me why I gave up on reading the comments at Hit and Run. You’d think she had run over someone’s dog instead of merely vented her disgust at a bunch of politicians.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 10:19 am
Billy, extreme as ever. It’s a pleasure.
If we were in a situation where there was no democracy, then you’re right - getting together to form it would be morally wrong. Or if we could opt out of the state by not voting, again, voting would be morally wrong. But that’s just not the reality we live in. A democratic process is in place that owns us, regardless of our actions. It interprets all non-votes as support for the system. It doesn’t matter how immoral we find it - it’s there, it’s severe, and it’s not going away.
So what ought we do? Just lie back? That’s the practical effect of ”don’t vote, it just encourages them”.
I don’t see any moral problem with harm mitigation. Consider a situation in which a thief came around your house once a week, and shook you down for $100. Would be it OK as a first step to advocate him only shaking you down for $50? I think so. Thus it seems reasonable to say that voting for someone who will lower total state aggression is morally acceptable.
Now, I realize that doesn’t get us all the way to voting strategically for gridlock. I’m not really sure of the moral status of that, anyway, because I’ve never done it. But let’s take this one step at a time. I am pretty sure that voting defensively for harm mitigation is morally acceptable.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
June 20, 2006 @ 10:45 am
Hi Billy, not all libertarians are natural law libertarians. I myself am most sympathetic to J.S. Mill’s rule utilitarianism, and then empirical economic arguments suggest to me that libertarian rules will be the most effective ones.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 10:53 am
”Consider a situation in which a thief came around your house once a week, and shook you down for $100.”
He wouldn’t make it through the first week.
Now, we can reduce the comparison of your analogy to principles, but I’d suggest that you just cut your losses.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 12:28 pm
I guessed you’d try that dodge, but it’s easily addressed. He has a gang behind him of hundreds of men who support him completely, that will kill you if you harm him.
Yes, war is one solution. You can morally use defensive force against him. Perhaps you’ll even take several of them with you before they kill you. And in fact, you have this option, right now, for dealing with the depredations of the state. You against the full power of the state.
I note that you are still alive, unimprisoned. I guess, without any real knowledge, that the state takes more than $100/week from you in taxes. If so, then your preference is revealed. Contrary to your assertion, he will make it through the first week, because you have already revealed that you value your life more than $100/week.
In any case, it’s safe to assert that the state is taxing you at least a little, and as a moral issue my scenario changes not a whit if you multiply the amount stolen by 10, or divide it by 100.
I’m making a good-faith effort here to understand where you’re coming from. Go ahead and argue principles if that’s what it takes. I really am curious to understand your reasoning on this. Do you not believe harm mitigation is moral?
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 2:05 pm
That’s your guess, Leonard. Now, let me tell you the facts.
There isn’t much I can do about sales taxes. But I deliberately stopped sending anything to IRS in 1977. Not one dime, not so much as a single line of ink on a piece of paper. Nothing. I’ve been ready to go to prison for my whole adult life, and I still am.
It’s not a ”dodge”. I’m doing the best I can.
And I cannot, for the life of me, understand why, everywhere I turn these days, I see nothing but people begging compromise with slavery.
It’s fucking heartbreaking, and I don’t know any of you people. As far as I look, I don’t see Americans anymore.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
June 20, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
Of course, Billy, a lot of Americans look at your stance and don’t see anything particularly American in it either. You could be the last true American in a sea of turncoats and wimps. You could be one of a vast sea of self-justifying fools selling out the real Americans by inaction. You could be the Dread Pirate Roberts, or the rightful heir to the throne of Baritaria. But the passionate conviction itself doesn’t make it so.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 3:03 pm
”The passionate conviction” of the moral probity of freedom?
You understand that that’s what we’re talking about, right?
There is nothing nothing more American, Bruce.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 3:43 pm
I’m glad you’re getting away with it. Certainly denying the state your money is morally worthy. I’ve thought about becoming a tax protestor before, but I’ve never had the guts.
Years ago, I liked my life too much. Now, I still like it, and I have my family to think of. You might call them hostages in this drama. (I am guessing you don’t have a family that relies on your income.)
But you admit you pay sales taxes. Why? You could go to war over that, too. Simply demand to each and every vendor that they sell you stuff free of tax, and if they won’t agree, don’t shop there. (Sounds difficult, but until you try you don’t know which ones will join you in radical tax avoidance.)
Do you travel through airports and put up with their insulting searches? Do you drive on the roads and license a vehicle? (Or is licensing OK?)
Never gotten a library card at a public library? Sent mail via the USPS? Used the internet? (Just kidding.)
As a moral matter, does it matter whether the thief demands $100 a week, or $0.06 when you buy a loaf of bread?
If not, and you’re not going to war over it - then you are, in a smaller way than me, begging compromise with slavery. But begging you are, nonetheless. You differ from me in degree, but not in kind.
I have a moral justification for my begging: I do it only because I am under duress. From which I follow on with logical arguments about trying to mitigate duress using the only means available to me given my weakness. But you seem to be saying that you do not accept duress as an excuse. What, then?
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
June 20, 2006 @ 3:50 pm
Billy, I mean to say that I find your take on ”freedom” unconvincing, and the absence of apparent interest in other virtues I find equally fundamental confirming. This is not the America I’m looking for, basically, and I don’t actually think it’s an America that follows in the traditions I like best about my country.
I’m not going to make an extended argument here (too much on my plate, including end-of-life care matters), I just wanted to note that I am disrespecting your entitlement to be the one assessing everyone else’s Americanness.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 4:33 pm
”Years ago, I liked my life too much. Now, I still like it, and I have my family to think of. You might call them hostages in this drama.”
I said it more than ten years ago, Leonard.
I went to war with New York State of driver’s licensing twenty years ago. One judge wanted to put me in Attica for a year and half, and all the statutes said he could do it, too. I did all my own legal work and the ADA finally moved to drop all but the two bottom charges. I paid a two hundred dollar fine and wrote it off to tuition: I learned — first hand — that the courts were utterly fraudulent and that wasn’t the way to go.
Since then, I pick the best fights that I can. Like said: I’m doing my best.
Look: I can understand duress. (I’m the one who’s sat in jail, man. I don’t need anyone to paint these pictures for me.) But when I look around, I don’t see anyone even talking about freedom anymore. Oh, they like to use the word, but it’s just noise.
The fucking least we could would be to use it honestly, or just put it away simply admit that we’re not interested in it.
Like Baugh, and not like the people who originally lit what was once the light of the whole world.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 5:15 pm
OK, you understand duress. Then you can understand the idea that your life, your life! is worth more than $100/month.
Right?
So we’re back where we started. I am under duress. You’ve advocated one way to deal with it - war; fight the system and keep fighting until… well, in your case, they get really close to actually fucking you. Then you knuckled under their threats. In my case, I believe they can and will screw me badly enough to get me comply, so I’ve never tried to fight it. I’m very, very clean. Neither of us has yet really gone to war. (By which I mean, drawing the line and refusing to budge, ever, which in my world means fighting to the death, Dregalike.)
So maybe, maybe, your heroic stand did something. Perhaps a few of those present in that courtroom learned something from your defense. But as far as I can tell, it didn’t change anything. Not in the nation as a whole, certainly. And neither has the tax protest ”movement”, if that’s we might call it.
So you’re offering me a strategy that might, maybe, work if by some magic tens of millions of people simultaneously took it up, and pressed it to the point of a revolution.
I do not think that likely. The problem of conversion is hard enough, much less coordination. If you can’t convert people here, at a libertarian site, to a hardcore ”revolution-or-bust” philosophy, how will you possibly make converts from the ignorant, dull-witted middle?
So what else can you offer?
This whole thing with voting, is a discussion of another strategy: working within the system. I don’t hold much hope for it in terms of actually reversing the damage. But I do have some hope that it might serve to slow down the endarkenment. And it has one huge advantage over revolution: it doesn’t require miraculous coordination.
Isn’t that worth something?
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 5:31 pm
Leonard? let me bite this to the bone:
Would it convince you of the value of freedom if I went to Washington and set myself on fire on the Capitol steps?
What on earth would it take? Would my life suffice as price of admission? Is that how far I have to take it before you start thinking about it?
No, sir: what you’re pitching is not worth a damn. Let me point out to you that if our grandfathers had started rejecting the things that we now deplore, on principle, then you and I would not be talking about merely mitigating the destruction. And the principles would not be so far gone that you get the shakes when you see someone like me, who remembers them and understands what they really mean to human life.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 20, 2006 @ 6:17 pm
Billy, does your state have an income tax? Do you pay it? Does your county have a property tax? If you own property, do you pay it?
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
June 20, 2006 @ 6:34 pm
I’m glad that Billy explained true American-ness to us. It evidently means: no taxes. I wonder why the American Revolutionary slogan was ”No taxation without representation”? Seems like they could have saved space by cutting off the last two words.
Comment by Glen Raphael —
June 20, 2006 @ 6:40 pm
Billy is right. The purpose and result of voting is to express your consent to the outcome of the election process, not to make a positive change in the world.
To cast a single vote (out of thousands or millions) for the candidate who is ever-so-slightly better at claiming that, if elected, he might consider applying his efforts in a direction you might slightly favor over that of his opponent - that’s a weak broth indeed. A recipe for change, it’s not.
”Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.” — Thoreau, _Civil Disobedience_.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
Glen, I hold that voting expresses preference for the person you voted for. Not for outcome of the system. After all, the system will continue regardless of how, or whether, you vote.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:44 pm
Billy, you’re assuming for some reason that I’m not convinced of the value of ”freedom”. Now, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by that — and I prefer ”liberty” myself — but I’ve read you for years, and I know that your heart is in the right place.
Mine is too. I am convinced. A goddamned libertarian! Liberty: good! How about that? You don’t even need to set yourself on fire.
I can guarantee you I’ve thought plenty about it, too. And I’ve decided that my life is worth a lot to me. And you know, from your testimony above, I think you made the same decision.
You’re making out as if I don’t want liberty - and maybe I don’t as much as you. I’ve never pushed it to the point where the state almost crushed me. I’ll accept that as testimony to your desire for liberty probably being greater than mine. But that hardly means I don’t want liberty.
I yearn, man. I dream. I’m sure you do, too.
To put it more bluntly, maybe I do ”get the shakes”. Maybe I’m a wimp, compared to your macho (if futile) obstructionism. Maybe I’m a veritable pussy. But I’m still just about the most sympathic listener you’re likely to get. So, what do you advocate me do? You’ve admitted that you’re not ready for all-out war. So why should I, a less manly man, go to war and be destroyed?
We’re still back at zero, with the whole matter of working the system just hanging there. Ripe fruit. You can talk to it if you want.
You can talk about our grandfathers all you want. One of mine was a socialist. Bad on him. We’re still here. We’re still now. We face what we face. What do we do?
I have some ideas. What about you?
Comment by Gary Farber —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
”Do you drive on the roads and license a vehicle? (Or is licensing OK?)”
Actually, I’m also interested in the question of driving on roads paid for with tax dollars, but refusing to pay taxes.
And similarly taking advantage of any other benefit, service, or material object, paid for at least partially with tax dollars. Every call the police or fire department? Sign a contract that the courts might be called upon to enforce? Walk on a public sidewalk? Abide by a traffic light? Breath air regulated by anti-pollution laws? Drink water regulated by same? Eat food regulated by FDA regulations?
And so on.
Do any of these things while objecting to the system that provides them, rather than rejecting the benefits and leaving the country, is not hypocritical how?
I hear Somalia is hot this time of year, but one wouldn’t have to colloborate so much with the State, perhaps.
Comment by Gary Farber —
June 20, 2006 @ 8:51 pm
”So, what do you advocate me do?”
Not write that sentence.
Unless your name is ”Bizarro.”
(Smiley.)
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 9:00 pm
”Actually, I’m also interested in the question of driving on roads paid for with tax dollars, but refusing to pay taxes.”
Which taxes, Farber? Have you read this discussion? There are lots of them that I haven’t been able to avoid, and I’ve already said so. Don’t come on like you’re not getting your share from the cannibal-pot, sonny.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 20, 2006 @ 9:03 pm
”I’m still just about the most sympathic listener you’re likely to get.”
Around here, maybe.
”So, what do you advocate me do?”
To begin with, I would ”advocate” that people should start thinking and speaking in terms of principles. It’s only a start, but nothing serious is ever going to happen before that.
Comment by Walt —
June 20, 2006 @ 9:47 pm
Billy, isn’t it possible that there are other people in the world with principles, but they draw different conclusions from them?
Comment by Heffalump —
June 20, 2006 @ 10:02 pm
I am fully aware of how drastic a departure this is from the American tradition since 1789, and why it will strike some people as completely outrageous. But my touchstone is 1776, and I’m the one talking about freedom.
Ah, 1776, the grand old days of chattel slavery! If only they knew how good they had it back then, before the institution of true slavery - the ultimate tyranny of federal income tax! Now we can only shed a single silent tear for lost dreams and days gone by and somehow - somehow - struggle to go on.
I heard that the government’s apparently been torturing the mentally disabled in an attempt to make the president look good, and that there’s been some forty thousand Iraqis killed since the start of this war, but really, when you compare that to the jackbooted oppression of the Department of Education it just pales altogether. I’d go out and vote to replace these people with candidates who aren’t torture-happy protofascist thugs, but I’m much more concerned about sending the message that I condone the welfare state. Oh well.
Comment by Leonard —
June 20, 2006 @ 10:15 pm
OK, my principles are that coercion of innocents is immoral. I’ve talked about principles for years. And that’s fine, as far as it goes. Maybe I’ve converted someone or two.
Maybe not.
But that’s not the only thing open to us, or at least, I don’t think so. And neither are we making any headway, as far as I can tell. We can talk about principles, and we can act (as long as it’s moral) to attempt to mitigate the damage the state causes.
We should seek to reduce it, and ultimately abolish it as much as is possible. Both within the system, and without, if we can get away with it without violating anyone’s rights.
Thus, I think you should vote for people who you honestly believe would try to reduce the overall amount of state coercion of innocents.
Gosh, I’m back to #3.
And I’m still waiting for you to answer my honest questions. We are embedded in a machine. It presses. Can we vote to mitigate its depredations, or not?
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 8:00 am
”I think you should vote for people who you honestly believe …”
There is a well-known road, Leonard. We all know where it goes, and we all know what it’s paved with.
Sincerity is not enough.
”Heffalump” — I would remind you that slavery, as a political institution in the United States (there’s a clue there, son), was established in 1789. You know what happened that year, right?
Thanx for playing.
Comment by Leonard —
June 21, 2006 @ 9:06 am
Billy, you trimmed my criteria for voting. Am I to conclude from that, that you believe all criteria are equal? That in your opinion I can vote for Hillary Clinton with exactly equal meaning and moral culpability as I might vote for Ron Paul or Harry Browne?
You wanted principles. Yet you won’t state yours. What libertarian principle forbids voting with the intent of, and good assurance of, mitigation of evil?
Your argument (such as it is), is just a statement about history and our understanding of it. The USA of 2006 is a bad outcome. Granted. So what?
You cannot deduce anything from that, other than something has gone wrong. I’d call that something democracy run wild. Democracy in general only lasts until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. But you seem to want to draw the conclusion from our experience that voting doesn’t ”work”.
Let’s go there, shall we? Let’s assume that somehow the actions of libertarians have been important in this historical drama, that it might have turned out differently if we had acted differently.
I realize that sincerity is not enough. Because I’ve been sincere about voting for liberty, and look where all my voting has got us.
Then again, I’m sure you’re sincere, too. And look where all your non-voting has got us.
We’ve both existed for a good span of recent history. From the POV of the system, many more people have acted like you (non voting: 50% of the population or so) than I (voting for liberty: 2% of the population). Who’s more to blame? Which strategy is more likely wrong?
Comment by Heffalump —
June 21, 2006 @ 10:59 am
I would remind you that slavery, as a political institution in the United States (there’s a clue there, son), was established in 1789.
OOOOOOOH, YOU GOT ME! If those blacks had been enslaved by slave-owners living in an anarchy, why, things would’ve been entirely different!
But now here suffers poor Billy, under the heavy yoke of the payroll tax. I am sorry, and with all due respect, but equating the existence of the state to slavery - actual, real-life, chains-and-whips-and-the-Middle-Passage slavery - is like equating a mildly irritating traffic jam with Dachau. It’s precisely this sort of hyperventilating, do-nothing self-martyrdom that’s made most of the world want nothing to do with libertarians in the first place.
There exists far, far greater tyranny in the world than anything which you have endured or will ever have to endure, and the fact that you refuse to engage in even the smallest, token act to oppose some of that real tyranny shows your true colors.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 11:02 am
”Billy, you trimmed my criteria for voting.”
In my very first post here, Leonard, I stated my objection to voting, at all. Now, that’s as comprehensive as it gets. I can understand how some people might lose sight of it, even as often as I say it. You say that I don’t state my principles. Well, I did.
This is the part where I would just get mean if I were dealing with some idiot commie weezil, but I think considerably better than that of you. But you’re wrong about this. It’s right up there at the top. Please go read it again and think about it. For instance: it is quite false to compare voter apathy in ”recent history” with what I am talking about, which is also the furthest thing from apathy. I have a very serious interest in voting, in exactly the same way that I’m interested in any behavior inimical to rights.
You’ve got this all wrong, and that comparison is simply not true.
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 1:16 pm
”If those blacks had been enslaved by slave-owners living in an anarchy, why, things would’ve been entirely different!”
Sez you. Not me.
You can try to put words in my editor, punk, but they’re not true and the’re certainly not mine.
Comment by Gary Farber —
June 21, 2006 @ 1:27 pm
”…sonny…son…punk.”
You may wish to reconsider your notion of how to persuade people. Or not.
Comment by Walt —
June 21, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
There weren’t any slaves in the Americas before 1789?
Comment by Heffalump —
June 21, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Sez you. Not me.
If you weren’t making that claim or something rather analogous to it, then I honestly have no clue what the point was of your bringing up that ”slavery, as a political institution in the United States (there’s a clue there, son), was established in 1789.” Seeing how slavery existed well before the government of the United States did, the generous interpretation would be that you were making some veiled reference to the state’s sanction of slavery (as opposed to just another jibbering non sequitor). But the point remains that before that state existed, and independent of its actions, slavery existed, and remains a palpable example of the fact that tyranny is not the sole province of governments. Individuals and property-owners can dig in their jackboots as well as anyone, and have - and it was the big bad federal government, imposing its will on states and property-owners throughout the Old South, that ended the greatest tyranny in American history.
Comment by Leonard —
June 21, 2006 @ 4:04 pm
Billy, you restate #4. So let me reiterate #6. I won’t rewrite it; just scroll up.
I would like to clarify your non-voting stance a little. The reason I am unclear is that back in #4, you say that the reason you don’t vote is that rights are not subjects for democratic decisionmaking. Fine. I understand that (and understood it) perfectly.
But contra #33, your concern for rights-violation does not rule out all voting. Just voting which you believe may result in rights-violations. Right?
For example, consider a referendum on the following question: ”tomorrow is National Feelgood Day”. You could morally vote on that, right?
Here’s another example. Let’s say the state holds a referendum, in which the sole question at issue is: ”all laws against victimless crimes are abolished”. Given that there is at least one law against victimless crime, isn’t voting on that one OK?
Now we come to the fun one. Assume that there’s an existing capitation tax of $100/week. The state holds a referendum, in which the sole question at issue is: ”the capitation tax level shall be $50/week.”. OK, or not OK?
I claim it is morally acceptable to vote ”yes” or to abstain, but it is morally unacceptable to vote ”no”. Observe how it is context-dependent. The exact same referendum held with no taxes would invert the moral meaning of the votes. (Abstaining would still be morally acceptable, though unwise IMO.)
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
Leonard:
”Billy, you restate #4.”
That’s right. So, please don’t say that I ”won’t state [my] principles,” because it’s not true.
”…your concern for rights-violation does not rule out all voting.
For most of my life, I have voted early and often for Major League Baseball All-Stars. But we’re not talking about anything like that. Look, Leonard: in discussions like this, I expect people to keep their contexts in order. For one big-deal thing, that informs me that they are actually, actively, thinking about the discussion. Ricochets into things like ”National Feelgood Day” can be rationally (not arbitrarily) excluded from a discussion of voting on things that necessarily imply unilateral applications of force. Now; I think you can sort out the difference.
”Let’s say the state holds a referendum, in which the sole question at issue is: ’all laws against victimless crimes are abolished’. Given that there is at least one law against victimless crime, isn’t voting on that one OK?”
Absolutely not. Only a fool would open a question like that to majority opinion.
Comment by Leonard —
June 21, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
The ”victimless-crime” referendum assumes democracy as we have it, namely, that the question is already open to majority opinion. Some fool already opened it to majority opinion. Care to reconsider?
And if still no: would you vote for a Constitutional amendment adding ”The Congress shall make no law against victimless crimes”?
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 6:19 pm
No.
And;
No.
Let me ask you a question: are you a man of your word?
Comment by Leonard —
June 21, 2006 @ 6:41 pm
Yes.
I have nothing more to add on the whole business of voting. We are at an intellectual impasse.
Naturally, if you want to interrogate me as I have you, turnabout is fair play.
Comment by Jim Henley —
June 21, 2006 @ 7:14 pm
Billy, you may have missed my question of yesterday: Do you pay New York State income tax? Do you pay any other New York State taxes besides the sales tax? Property taxes, frex?
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 21, 2006 @ 8:49 pm
Jim: no.
Here’s one implication of all this. I am never going to own real estate. And I will certainly never have a wife or children.
No hostages.
Leonard –
I would like you to consider two prospects.
1) The general question of ”victimless crimes” comes to a vote. (Let’s suppose that such a thing could be distilled to everyone’s satisfaction. This is a nearly impossible supposition for me in a time when just about everybody is just making shit up as they go along, but let’s play it.)
2) You cast your vote against any such laws, but the vote goes against you.
Now: what’s your move?
You know that people who’ve never hurt anyone are going to go under on this deal: it’s flatly immoral, and you know it. But you cast your lot with the outcome of the vote, and your conviction in the matter didn’t matter. Everybody else voted to outlaw ”victimless crimes”.
Do you just accept the fact of a politically instituted immorality and live with it? (Perhaps with your head on the block someday?) Just because everybody else said so?
Or; do you go back on what can only be taken as an implicit agreement to abide the decision a priori, now that the thing has violated your conviction?
Do you understand the dimensions of this?
Comment by Leonard —
June 21, 2006 @ 11:33 pm
Billy, morally speaking, no vote on a matter of rights changes anything. Victimless crimes were ”legal” before a vote, and it was immoral to coercively interfere with them. After a vote, perhaps the victimless crimes are ”illegal” — but it is still immoral to interfere with them. Rights do not change with the whims of men.
Morally speaking, there is no, and can be no, implicit nor explicit agreement to violate someone else’s rights. You and I can hold all the votes we want, but morally we may bind only ourselves with those votes, not anyone else.
So, to answer your first question: my move is probably whining about the outcome of the vote, rabble rousing pointing out that victimless crimes are not crimes, libertarian agitation to attempt prevent the law from being enforced, and attempts to get a new vote within the system hoping for the right outcome.
I do not accept polically mandated immorality, in these senses: I do not hold such a law as binding on me, or anyone else (unless they show clearly by speech or action that they voted or would have voted ”yes”). Generally, I will refuse to uphold the law except under duress.
I do live with it, however. I’m not giving up on living just yet.
As for ”going back on it”: I never ”cast my lot” with the outcome of the vote. I never gave my word. I could not, morally, do so; for that is equivalent to writing a contract that binds third parties. It’s a criminal conspiracy. To even hold a vote on a matter of right (assuming enforcement is at all possible), is a moral transgression. If I were asked about holding that vote (perhaps in another vote?), I would say no, you cannot hold that vote.
Of course, votes happen regardless of what I think about them. Given that a vote will happen, and given any morally acceptable outcome to the vote, then it is not immoral to vote in it, so long as you vote for one of the morally acceptable outcomes. My ”no” vote is strictly defensive, an attempt to prevent those with power from violating people’s rights.
It’s also not immoral to attend a vote, while not actually choosing any of the options if none of them are acceptable. I do this all the time, for races that only have a Democrat and Republican in them (and Greens too, if there’s one of them). I’ve never heard of a state where you have to vote one way or another on any given race or issue.
If voting was voluntary — that is, if I could opt out of the vote and as a consequence the voted-on issue would not bind me — then I would be willing to consider the vote a form of contract, and accept it as valid. (My strategy then would be to not vote, thereby keeping my own rights intact.)
Comment by Billy Beck —
June 22, 2006 @ 7:33 am
I’m not going to characterize that, Leonard.
I’m pretty sure that I’m done here.