Why you should vote (and why libertarian non-voters are wrong)

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Before the last general election I wrote a piece about why you should vote and concluded:

So why vote? The answer is simple and it’s the answer your granny used to give. You vote because it’s the right thing to do and because, however insignificant it might be, voting is often the only chance you’ve got of getting something changed. People really did chuck themselves under horses, people really did get killed, people really did strike, march and protest so as to get that right to pick up a stubby pencil and mark a cross in a box once in a while. Don’t get me wrong, if you choose not to bother it doesn’t make you a bad person – you’re not really letting down your suffragette great grandma or the great uncle killed on D-day.

So go and vote it’s your chance to do something. And do it loudly, proudly and knowing that it’s the most significantly insignificant act you can undertake.

I realise that this is probably insufficient as a proper philosophical analysis of voting. But I find the libertarian argument for not voting to be founded on a profound misunderstanding of voting's purpose. Here's Sam Bowman from the Adam Smith Institute (quoted by Chris Snowdon from the Institute of Economic Affairs):

‘If your aim is to affect policy, voting is irrational. If you want to act ethically, voting is irrelevant. Mathematically, the chances of a single vote actually determining the outcome of an election in a meaningful way (that will affect policy outcomes) is infinitesimally small.’

And I guess that, if the purpose of voting was to influence policy, Sam might have a point. But, as we all should know, voting's purpose is the election of a person not a policy. In a representative democracy we use voting to choose someone to go off to parliament because all sixty odd million of us can't fit into the building. Technology will probably make this obsolete (for a description of the problems this might entail go and read Norman Spinrad's 'The World Between') but right now that's not an option. Now if Sam's not bothered who represents him then there's no point in voting - he can make the rational decision not to fuss himself with the minor inconvenience of toddling along to the polling station. But if Sam is bothered then casting his insignificant vote is the only way in which he can influence that choice.

To return to influencing policy, there is a modicum of smugness about the director of an influential think tank talking about how voting doesn't affect policy. After all that director has the means and the capacity to influence policy by virtue of being in charge of a think tank. And the same would go for the chief executive of some large organisation able to invest its PR pounds in lobbying. But spare a thought for Mr Crowther in Cullingworth who doesn't have a think tank and doesn't have the funds to lobby government officials about policy. Voting is one of the very few ways in which that man can have a say on things that matter to him.

Finally there's Eamonn Butler's argument (also cited by Chris Snowdon) that writing a message to the candidates on a ballot paper is better than actually using said ballot for its intended purpose. This is an observation made my someone who has clearly never been anywhere near the counting of votes at an election. As a candidate my access to that ballot would be for a fleeting second while we review spoilt ballots - the returning officer will point out that the writing means the person could be identified and therefore the ballot is invalid before moving on to the ballor with a neat drawing of a penis carefully inscribed in the Tory candidate's box (which is incidently a valid vote for that candidate). Eamonn's message will not be read - he would have wasted his time.

Voting is an insignificant act but not one without purpose or point and collectively those insignificant acts can be significant (Sam and his friends not turning up may result in a government that bans right wing think tanks). There may be a case for alternatives - lotteries, policy panels, military dictatorship and so forth - but, in practical terms, we have to engage with the system we have in place. Because that's an election the result will be determined by those who turn up and vote not by those who don't.

So go and vote folks!

For those interested in creative approaches to marking the ballot here is the current Electoral Commission Guidance on doubtful ballots (pdf|)

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Why are there no right wing sociologists?

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Or for that matter academics in social policy fields?

In one respect this is a 'ha ha ha' sort of question - of course there aren't any right wing sociologists, it's all a load of lefty rubbish after all! But I ask in all seriousness because studying 'society' and developing policies reflecting social concerns and challenges is an important area of enquiry.

And it is overwhelmingly left wing - here's a tweet from Peter Matthews who lectures in social and community regeneration and stuff like that at Heriot Watt University:

I'd suggested that the discipline might benefit from actively recruiting people with a world view that isn't 'left wing' - conservative, libertarian, classical liberal, voluntarist. People whose default position isn't to blame it all on the evils of neo-liberalism or who say (to polite murmurings of assent from peers):

"This article argues that the cuts continue a thirty-year process of redistribution to the rich."

None of this is to say that academics shouldn't believe such nonsense but rather to assert that sociology and social policy would be better for seeking a better balance across the political spectrum - to join the real world rather than live in one where the most right wing opinion is just to the left of the current Labour leadership. The idea that the 'disciplinary basis of social policy' should be left wing explains why so many of us - despite caring deeply about social concerns and public policy issues linked to those concerns - find sociology and 'social policy' to be a load of biased lefty trash not worthy of consideration.

Not that this little jotting in a blog read only by the occasional aficionado will change any thing but perhaps sociology would benefit from some right wing thinking, a few conservative pebbles in its leftist sandals?

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So folk music is conservative after all!

“Almost everything appertaining to the circumstances of a nation, has been absorbed and confounded under the general and mysterious word government.  Though it avoids taking to its account the errors it commits, and the mischiefs it occasions, it fails not to arrogate to itself whatever has the appearance of prosperity.  It robs industry of its honours, by pedantically making itself the cause of its effects; and purloins from the general character of man, the merits that appertain to him as a social being.”

But we are so much wiser now than Thomas was. The champion of liberty paved the way, we're told, for the progressive view of government. Indeed, the very men who promote the idea of governmental good see Thomas as their man - a man of the left.

So when a grungy folkie pops up speaking, in his own way, the language of Thomas Paine, the left are shocked - not quite to silence unfortunately:

Browsing on a music messageboard earlier today, I came across a thread devoted to Frank Turner, which linked to an interview he gave last year. Turns out his libertarianism and belief in the power of the people to resist oppression aren't of the leftist sort. They're of the rightist sort.

How dare this man be in such a trendy profession as folk music and not be left wing! How dare he say such things as:

"What I think we should do instead is concentrate on ways of minimising the impact on ordinary people's lives and allow them to get on with their lives and not be bothered by the state. Then you've suddenly got a range of things to talk about that are achievable. Like everything from not having ID cards and trying to dismantle the surveillance system we've put together in this country on the one hand, trying to remove government from peoples lives, social services. Letting people be freer, health and safety, whatever it might be."

Perhaps Frank lacks Thomas Paine's eloquence but he's saying the same thing. Government isn't a good thing but, at best a necessary evil, something to be tolerated at the fringes of our lives not the centre of everything.

Regardless the whole episode cheered me - a particular fan of folk music despite its reputation for leftiness. And in the comments to that Guardian piece I found a still more curious comment about folk music:

I've said this in other threads before but there is something horrifying, fascist and awful about this neo-folk music that is like the worst of Nazi return-to-origins propaganda. The Mumfords and the horrifying affectation of a pastoral netherworld with their neo-folk clothing. Even if the musicians themselves were lefties, the music has such a strong conservative streak that it cancels out any progressive views. In a way it's easier to pick on this one musician but conservatism in music is a bigger subject than his tweeter views. 

I must admit to a little grin at this observation as a right winger who likes folk music. And who recognises that, in the end, the idea of land, soil and the national culture are (unlike national socialism but that's a different story) distinctly conservative in feel and sentiment. Kipling would have loved the sentiment, if not the sound of grungy folk music:

His dead are in the churchyard—thirty generations laid.
Their names were old in history when Domesday Book was made;
And the passion and the piety and prowess of his line
Have seeded, rooted, fruited in some land the Law calls mine.

Not for any beast that burrows, not for any bird that flies,
Would I lose his large sound council, miss his keen amending eyes.
He is bailiff, woodman, wheelwright, field-surveyor, engineer,
And if flagrantly a poacher—'tain't for me to interfere.

"Hob, what about that River-bit ?" I turn to him again,
With Fabricius and Ogier and William of Warenne.
"Hev it jest as you've a mind to, but"—and here he takes command.
For whoever pays the taxes old Mus' Hobden owns the land.

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Nannying Fussbucket of the Week: Oliver Kamm and the world's first 'libertarian ban'

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I find it quite humorous that Mr Kamm lays claim to being a 'libertarian' yet, in the same breath, can support proposals to ban smoking. That's right folks, dear old Oliver proposes the world's first 'libertarian ban.

It seems that our friend Mr Kamm is quite taken with the idea - proposed by some nutty local politician in Tasmania - that we should ban the sale of tobacco to people born after the year 2000, forever.

It seems that Oliver thinks it OK - and 'libertarian' - for one individual grown up to be allowed to buy something while another individual grown up isn't. Now leaving aside the need to require ID for purchases (another great 'libertarian' idea), Oliver seems to believe this is a remotely enforceable policy. Nobody is going to buy cigs legally and hand them across to someone else, there's no chance of anyone smuggling cigarettes into Tasmania in boats and trucks and planes. And the cops have so much spare time they can add another endless (and pointless) battle against the crime of personal choice.

Somehow, I think Oliver Kamm fails on the 'I'm a libertarian' front. He's just another nannying fussbucket.

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Halifax has a libertarian commune?

Or maybe it's a place of brutalist architecture?

Or where the neighbours don't speak to eachother?

Perhaps an anarcho-capitalist haven?

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You mights as well say "reassert the primacy of democratic politics over physics"

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I'd never heard of Dr William Partlett, so he fits his own description of "obscure scribbler". However, if he is to fulfil his mission - defined as "overcoming the left-right divide" - he'll need to do better. In truth, Dr Partlett's overcoming the left-right divide is about challenging what he calls but doesn't define or describe. "libertarianism". Apparently the "libertarian right" is intellectually dominant which comes as a surprise to this old liberal.

But the weakness of Dr Partlett's argument is as nothing besides his confusion about economics. Now my understanding is that economics is a field of study focused on how scarce resources get distributed, how people respond to incentives and how the "wealth of nations" comes about. And I do not see that economics is the sole preserve of the "libertarian right" - not if Paul Krugman is anything to go by at least!

So when Dr Partlett says:

Despite a strong mandate and wide discussion of a new FDR-style “New Deal”, President Obama has made only halting attempts to reassert the primacy of democratic politics over the forces of economics.

...he is rather missing the point about economics - after all the "New Deal", whatever we may think of it, was an economic development programme. And, whatever choices governments make none of this changes the reality of economics - those actions may work, they may fail but the underlying rules of supply and demand, utility and such, the toolkit of economics, still apply.

We might as well reassert the primacy of democratic politics over physics.

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Where have all the bloggers gone?

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Since it has become all the rage to discuss why all those libertarian swearbloggers have disappeared from the world of blogging I thought maybe to add my tuppence worth of comment. I was going to set it all to music - perhaps adapting Pete Seager's immortal words:

Where have all the bloggers gone, long time passing?

Where have all the bloggers gone, long time ago?

Where have all the bloggers gone?

Gone from the Internet every one

When will they ever learn?

When will they ever learn?

To be fair, the (ever-so-slightly-smug-and-self-satisfied) comments in CiF and elsewhere do point to one truth:

We no longer have a mendacious, incompetant, nannying and offensive government under the direction of perhaps our worst ever prime minister.

And it’s pretty hard to be so cross with David Cameron – such a nice bloke (although my close friend and colleague Huw feels very differently about David’s sidekick, George).

But there’s another reason. Sheer boredom.

It seems to me that there’s a natural limit to the blogging game – assuming that it’s done for personal satisfaction, pleasure or, of course, as a safety valve for explosions of rage. We can only make the same point so many times before we begin to feel like Douglas Adams’ bowl of petunias.

If the only thing you feel motivated to blog about is the total uselessness and stupidity of government (and, dear reader, you will know I have some sympathy with this position) then eventually you’ve actually said everything there is to be said – that governmental uselessness has been described over and over again - in technicolour and in detail - and, if the folk out there haven’t got it yet, they are clearly lacking in little grey cells.

Now I can hear you thinking. Surely, there will come a new cadre of aggressive, sweary bloggers dedicated to the overthrow of the “Coalition”? Surely left-wing bloggers will take up where the right-wing bloggers left off. And maybe those left-wing bloggers will be more libertarian in outlook? Maybe. But maybe not – and here’s why.

Obnoxio, Constantly Furious, Mr Eugenides and others were angry at what the Government was doing to their lives. It was the cameras, the speed restrictions, the food rules, planning regulations, police behaviour, smoking bans and obscene levels of punative taxation. It was the personal aggrandisement, the quangocrats, the inflated salaries, the lack of accountability, the waste, the vain belief that there is ever any justification from stopping something just because you disapprove of it.

These were direct attacks by the Government on the bloggers' lifestyle, their choices. And this was what motivated the outpouring of anger and bile.

Some left-wingers might be so motivated but most – I suspect – will talk instead of how the bad “Coalition” is affecting the lives of others. And the anger displayed is a faux-anger compared to the indignation of attacks on me and mine. The emphasis will be on shroud-waving and the weilding of begging bowls rather than a defence of individual rights - or more importantly the individual rights of the blogger concerned.

Were left-wing bloggers to adopt the stance of attacking attacks on their lives – well they'd stop being left-wing bloggers and become….

…a new generation of right-wing, swear bloggers.

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MYOB or Why I'm a Conservative not a Libertarian

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There’s a great deal to be said about libertarianism – although it would help if those advocating it would make up their minds as to what it all means. And, as I’ve described myself as an occasionally intolerant libertarian, I guess there comes a point at which to explain why – despite the appeal of that creed – I remain a conservative.

I am – as all good conservatives should be – a sceptic. After all it was a Conservative prime minister who wrote “A defence of Philosophic Doubt” and we are led to the view that (as H. L. Mencken put it): “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong”. Libertarianism – like Marxism, socialism and assorted other –isms is one of such solutions.

The second reason is that people – how to we put it – need a modicum of moral encouragement. Since libertarians accept a role for government – again a role not necessarily specified or agreed on – it falls on us to ask about that role and how it might work. Simply stopping at enforcing property rights (however defined) seems unnecessarily limiting.

The non-aggression concept at the heart of libertarianism is fine – until we stop to think about what it means, where its limits are and how to enforce its strictures. The resulting arguments are more akin to discussion of angels dancing on pinheads that to a discourse about the reality of politics.

My worry – and the point at which I am wont to part company with my party – is that the Conservative Party accedes too easily and contains too many who believe in controlling the behaviors of others simply because we have arrived at a judgment on that behaviour. English conservatives need to ask what it is they are conserving – is it some defined set of behaviours handed down to us by some benign leadership steeped in the traditions of England (let’s call this the Scruton-Heffer position) or is the target of conservation the liberties, freedom and independence of English men and women (the Hume-Carswell position)?

For me we seek to defend the things that define what we are – some are cultural like pubs, folk music and pies while others are more fundamental such as equality under the law, property rights, free expression and free association. However, the fundamental principle of English conservatism is for me MYOB. Our inalienable right to tell whoever we want, whenever we want to “mind your own business”.

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