Why We Can’t Vote Our Way to Freedom

for hundreds of years freedom reigned as a preeminent value in Western civilization and with the abolition of slavery in the mid 19th century the tide of Liberty seemed destined to overpower those forces looking to hold humanity in the chains of servitude by the early 20th century however this trend was quickly reversed as governments began to exert control over ever more areas of life today there is little one can do without the state or what Nietzsche called the coldest of all cold monsters either taking its cut dictating how its to be done or at the very least watching and recording our every move we should not despair however for power still resides with the people or so we are told being fortunate enough to live in democracies we choose our leaders and so determine our fate but how much power does the ability to vote really give us major elections especially for those who favor freedom appear to be nothing but a choice between evils the lesser of which is often difficult to discern rather than real choice perhaps we only have the illusion of choice perpetual war high taxes mass surveillance stifling regulation corporate welfare the inhumane war on drugs and an increasing move towards censorship of all those who fail to toe the status line seem inevitable no matter who is elected those who still have faith in the system will claim that we just need to vote the right people into power people willing to end the abuses of the state this view however tends to diminish or completely overlooks the existence of powerful forces which make it far more likely that morally corrupt power-hungry individuals who favor the growth of the state will rise to the top the worst among us not the best are most likely to rule in modern democracies many factors contribute to this unfortunate state of affairs in primary among them is the type of person most likely to enter the field of politics for politics like all professions is more attractive to some people than others one does not choose to become an emergency room doctor if they are uncomfortable with the sight of blood and likewise one is unlikely to enter politics if they are uncomfortable with the nature of modern political rule what too then is the nature of this rule first and foremost government is an institution that relies on the use or threat of force to achieve its ends but while government has always been coercive in nature the degree to which coercion or state power has been accepted as a legitimate in a society has fluctuated over time the West for many years was built around the ideal of limited government free markets and other social institutions free of the coercive nature of the state reviewed as crucial elements in a stable and prospering society no longer is this the case the script has been flipped instead of governments being limited in what they are permitted to do it is now the state that greatly limits what we as individuals can and cannot do this expanded role of the state and the immense power at its disposal attracts like a moth to a flame the most power hungry among us political power is unfortunately seen by many as the only power worth having and those with the greatest thirst for power see the state as the best vehicle for satiating their desire it should not be surprising that most political candidates openly campaign on the expansion of the state for state power if victorious becomes their power not only does modern politics attract the power-hungry but to make matters worse it attracts power-hungry individuals of an excessively narcissistic and conceited temperament those who enter politics by and large prefer the reign of intellect to the reign of Liberty they are men and women who believe they should be granted the use of state power to remake the world according to their vision rarely is it acknowledged that what this entails is a replacement of the spontaneous order generating processes of the social world which coordinate the plans of individuals with a single plan devised by politicians and bureaucrats and enforced with the use or threat of violence why the transfer of decisions asks Thomas Sewell from the individuals and organizations directly involved often depicted collectively and and personally as the market to third parties who pay no price for being wrong should be expected to produce better results for society at large is a question seldom asked much less answered the presumption held by most politicians that they are somehow wise enough to reorder the vast complexities and emergent orders of the social world according to their own plans is the height of conceit FA Hyack called it the fatal conceit for went to its extreme has occurred in the socialist experiments of the 20th century it leads only to impoverishment suffering and death but while politics may be dominated by power-hungry men and women whose conceit leads them to view all social problems as requiring political solutions devised by them this does not preclude individuals who may sincerely wish to decrease the power and abuses of the state from entering politics the problem however is that immense barriers stand in their way not only are most Western nations dominated by a handful of political parties who have no intention nor incentive to shrink the state but these same parties control and manipulate the voting process in ways which are greatly to their favor furthermore those willing to cheat and lie in their efforts to get to the top are always at an advantage over their more honest competitors in the modern game of politics truth honesty and integrity do not pay it is far easier to rally the masses around grand visions and false promises even if such a visions are impossible to implement or would have devastating side effects a candidate who speaks the truth who tries to convey to the masses the unsustainability or destructive nature of many government programs is far less appealing reality pales in comparison to the fantasies put forth by most political candidates another element of mass elections which favors the morally corrupt is the fact that emotional appeals to hatred for one's opponents are extremely effective in rallying political support this plays right into the hands of power-hungry demagogues who in their myopic quest for victory will use any technique to win no matter how destructive to the fabric of society Vladimir Lenin understood the power of hatred and negativity in garnering political support my words he wrote were calculated to evoke hatred aversion and contempt not to convince but to break up the ranks of the opponent not to correct an opponent's mistake but to destroy him but even if a well-intentioned individual slipped through the cracks beat the odds in won a major election there is the open question as to whether he could resist the corrupting influence of the modern state for not only would the power at his disposal likely corrupt him but he would be forced to can and with massive amounts of pressure from unelected bureaucrats crony capitalists and the many others who enriched themselves at the trough of state power while some may continue to hold out hope for a political savior perhaps a different approach is needed government oppression or social predation in general is at root a function of disparities of power with a more equal distribution of power the morally corrupt and evil elements of a society can do far less harm but when one group or set of institutions becomes far more powerful than the rest of society abuse is inevitable whether we live in a democracy monarchy or under a dictatorship voting is unlikely to diminish the disparity in power created by the growth of the modern state the past century has been full of elections but over the same time the power differential between the state and citizen has only grown a more effective approach for returning freedom to an increasingly unfree world may be found through the development and promotion of technologies and social and economic institutions that are free from the cold hands of the state but unless the immense concentration of power held by the few that pull the strings of government is greatly diminished it may not matter which of the candidates paraded before us we elect for as HL Mencken recognized nearly a century ago we really only have two choices in modern democracies we can elect a demagogue or what make him called Adama slave under democracy he writes two branches reveal themselves there is the art of the demagogue and there is the art of what may be called the demo slave the demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots the demo slave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself every man who seeks elective office under democracy has to be either the one thing or the other and most men have to be both no educated man stating plainly the elementary notions that every educated man holds about the matters that principally concerned government could be elected to office in a democratic state save perhaps by a miracle you

Channel: Academy of Ideas

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Keywords: academy of ideas, voting, freedom, political rule

Id: n8ETV2MzHuY

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Wed May 23 2018