Just a nice piece by one of my favorite contemporary writers.

Democracy Takes Too Many Lunch Hours
by Jeffrey A. Tucker

It's political season, and I know this because my own neighborhood is festooned with political signs that say things like:

Joe
STEVENS
District Attorney

Mark
MAYBERRY
Family Judge

And so on, but they do not just say this once. If you are fan of STEVENS or MAYBERRY you apparently see the need to post not just one or two signs but ten or twenty of them on your property, creating negative externalities for all to see.

Now, keep in mind that this is a neighborhood ruled by one of those "covenants" that prevent me from parking a car outside its garage or painting my front door the wrong shade of gray. But when it comes to telling me for whom I must vote, there are no restrictions on anyone. To complain would be unpatriotic.

For example, I'm certain that if I posted a sign that said:

McDonald's
ANGUS BURGER
best lunch in town

it would be taken down immediately, and I would get a nasty note from the "homeowners' association." If I persisted in advertising products that might actually do some people some good, and giving them actual useful information to improve their lives, I would, at some point, be run out of the neighborhood.

Here's the problem from my point of view. I don't know these people who are running for these offices. I don't even know their platforms or the issues. Heck, I don't even know what jobs they are supposed to be doing.

Some of the signs attempt to summarize what these people stand for. One guy says he is for "courage, justice, and conservative values" while another says that he stands for "equality, efficiency, and fairness," and I'm more or less for those things too. But I'm clueless about what these principles mean in this context.

In any case, everyone knows that politicians do whatever they want to do once they get elected. Mr. Fairness might suddenly become Mr. Justice once he rises to the occasion. We have no guarantee of anything. We can't get our votes back the way we get our money back from Wal-Mart if the clock we bought doesn't work.

So I'm looking at this pathetic situation and realizing something about myself: I'm the classic uneducated voter. I'm the nightmare of the teacher of the high-school civics class, the kind of person who shouldn't even be allowed to vote. That is fine by me since I won't vote anyway, given that the chances that my vote could swing any election are about one in a billion.

I could change this disgraceful situation. I could research these jobs and look into each of the candidates. I could go to their websites and Facebook pages and find out more. Of course, it isn't enough to trust what a politician says, anymore than I automatically trust any advertisement for any product. I should probably ask around and talk to their friends and associates and do a detailed investigation. Then of course I would also need to find out what a "family judge" does and what it should do and what the real issues are here.

But what are the alternative uses of my time? I have some "teaching company" CDs on medieval history that I've been wanting to listen to. I've been putting off volunteering my time to build a website for a local singing group. There are a ton of books that I'm behind in reading. I need to be better about calling my mother on a weekly basis. Oh and I've been meaning to do that online tutorial on making sourdough bread; that looks like fun!

Each of these alternate pursuits will pay off in a real way. I'll become smarter, more talented, and have a better character. What does researching politicians and their jobs get me? Nothing whatsoever, except the approval of currently disapproving do-gooders. The only thing I can do is march around with a sense that I'm an "educated voter" with one vote that counts for next to nothing, since, after all, the weight of my vote is the same whether I am educated or not.

What's more, even if my vote counted and my newly acquired knowledge amounted to something, it is not entirely clear what I should be doing with the knowledge or the vote. It is very likely the case that I will end up supporting someone who is probably awful for the job, if only to prevent someone more awful from taking the job. This is pretty much how I've felt in every presidential race during my lifetime. It's been a contest between the two levels of threat.

This is a dangerous situation. Let's say I end up keeping the worst threat at bay. Still, the next-to-worst threat then takes power with a "mandate" and that's when the trouble begins.

And this is precisely the problem with democracy. On the surface, it seems like a marketplace of consumers buying products, albeit political ones. The reality is that nothing checks out. We don't get what we buy. What don't know what we are buying. We don't know what the thing we are buying is supposed to do. What are we really buying? We are expending no real resources on the purchase other than our time.

Oscar Wilde said that socialism annoyed him because it took too many evenings. Similarly, democracy takes too many lunch hours.

This is what Bryan Caplan means when he talks about the myth of the rational voter. There is really no such thing because it is not really possible to make rational decisions in this morass. And as Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted, the core of the problem comes down to the absence of private property in the democratic exchange. There are no clean lines that permit us to be accountable for the decisions we make or they make. For this reason, democracy ends up as nothing more than a public relations gimmick for gaining and keeping power.

As we approach the big voting day, all these candidates start reaching for the big guns and stirring up voters into a frenzy. We are told that if Bob wins, he will unleash unfathomable amounts of immorality and disaster. If Joe wins, he will be the cause of the collapse of civilization as we know it. Then one or the other takes power with the sure knowledge that he had darn sure keep that threat that got him elected as a living part of the political culture, lest he lose an issue that swept him into office. He thereby instantly forgets about all election promises except for the backroom deals with his financial backers.

This system cannot work. Eliminate the jobs and you eliminate the candidates and the whole wasteful apparatus. Our neighborhoods will no longer be soiled by these ugly and manipulative signs. Those of us who wallow in ignorance will walk with our heads held high.

Nice posting ... and there's a lot of truth in it. I've been reading the campaign signs around here, and it doesn't take the oily 'political class' types long at all to stick their finger in the wind and then figure which way it's blowing - and these are the people running for 'leadership' positions. Now, with the rising ascendancy of the 'Tea Party' movement and its corollary values, the pols are playing 'magpie' and picking up the 'bright shiny things' in the language. Buzzwords that just appear as if by magic are 'Conservative' and 'Republican' - to note the most frequently-used descriptors. They're hoping that, since many are new faces (the 'bright shiny penny'), no one will do any serious homework or research their positions - in many cases, they're too new to have 'positions'. They're doing the equivalent of the college decision-making process about which socks to wash: Throw 'em all at the wall - wash the ones that stick. Voters won't be able to tell the difference. They either won't do the necessary research, or they'll believe the 'bright shiny' language and uncritically accept that, if he says it, it must be true (a/k/a, 'If I say it, they will vote') ... Tucker may be onto something wider than he suspects about him being the 'classic uneducated voter' ... we may all be in that category for a number of different reasons before too long ... And then 'democracy' will live up to its literal translation as 'the rule of the mob' ...

But you miss the real culprit, human nature!

Allow me to present a possible tangent for you to look at the short comings of a democracy.

It was a quote of a Benjamin Franklin: "When the people find they can vote themselves money,

that will herald the end of the republic."


Guess what, we (the people) did JUST That!!!

(I know you didn't! Trust me! I am just on a roll!! )


And the DNC plays on that thinking.

We are here to help you.

You deserve welfare.

We can give you security for your retirement.

We can help you have kids!

NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!


And all these stupid Yahoo (not the web site) Liberal Pansy Sock Puppet Stroking IDIOTS refuse to look at how their ideals work in other countries like GREECE and ENGLAND. Both countries are largely socialist. Greece has 1 in 3 people working government jobs. England is about to begin defaulting too. Europe is falling apart. France is just not quite melting down but they are also having a lot of problems as well! EVEN BELGIUM! And yet Liberally minded people who feel more government is good cannot see what more government has done elsewhere.

Face it folks, we may be America but welcome to the real fing world. Without personal accountability there is no greatness in our nation! Without responsibility to our own first we cannot even think for a moment we can help others. More complicated systems consume a lot more money and waste more time and make things horrible to enforce and administer. Setting standards and then enforcing them to meet political whim is BS!

This is not about politics. It is more about the lack of common sense among Americans.

Dude, please do one thing for me. I know it may seem a waste of time but you need to vote. If you don't you are just going to be like all the other people who get pushed around and do nothing until you are pushed off the side of a cliff! Don't let your voice be silent, vote.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Even one voice of dissonance to the dysfunction is better than none! With mine it is one more than the other guys! With enough of us getting into the mix we may just turn this around one day.

That is my hope for the future. Not Obama, Not the GOP or the DNC. Not even the Tea Party!