The Values-Vote Myth

[R.A. Hettinga]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

At 6:25 PM +0000 11/6/04, Justin wrote:
>65m/141m = 46% of registered voters voted for Bush

Of course, you can invert the math and say the same about Kerry, plus
Bush's 3-something million margin, I'm afraid. Hell, Rush said
exactly the same thing on Friday. :-). Numerology doesn't win
elections, I'm afraid.


Remember, boys and girls, government itself is the not-so-polite
fiction that the highwayman is acting in our best interest at all
times if we pay him enough to leave us, individually, alone.

So, as Brooks indirectly proves, rather than blathering here, or
elsewhere, about "values", or "equality", or "fairness", or
"justice", or other lofty nonsense, electoral or otherwise, look at
how well a given *culture* and its implicit force-control mechanism,
does *economically* for its citizenry (a parasite doesn't kill its
own host, and all that...), besides just being able to kill more and
better soldiers on the other side of the battlefield is actually
putting the cart before the horse.

The fact that increasing personal liberty results in such higher
per-capita income, and thus the ability to project force than
reducing liberty does isn't necessarily the same level of
metaphysical mystery as the fact that some kinds of mathematics
predict reality, but it's close enough for, heh, government work.

Someday, hopefully, financial cryptography will reduce transaction
costs by actually *increasing* privacy (see math and reality, liberty
and income, above), the *economic* rationale for force-monopoly will
go away, and *then* we can all exhume Lysander Spooner, prop him up,
and talk about constitutions of no authority, or whatever.

Cheers,
RAH

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 8.0.3

iQA/AwUBQY1vN8PxH8jf3ohaEQKyGACbB6XlMBht53x48ugBvJQqOUJ/4P8AnRlX
4M/JvqrHdU9LvnTlrEilGzoK
=D4M9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'