Even though I thought I was decided on the matter, certain people have encouraged me to rethink my justifications for abstaining from the vote. Although I do feel it is immoral to participate in a process that appoints a representative who can use force against you, Charles Johnson brought up an interesting counterargument:
Well, I think the problem here is that you're giving too much credit to the State's own legitimating myths. There are cases in which participating in a process means tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the proceeding, and tacitly consenting to the outcome. But voting, at least, is not among them. For participation to count as consent, even tacit consent, it must be the case that refusing to participate would have exempted you from the outcome. Otherwise, I can't see how the "permission" you give to the government by voting is any different from the "permission" you give a mugger to take your money instead of your life when you hand over your wallet.
That is a good point, although I argued that what matters was how my vote was perceived socially vis a vis my long term goal of abolishing the State. It also raises the question: how should I regard my participation if I do vote? I don't feel it's honest to say that I'm simply taking part in a meaningless ritual - clearly, it's important or I would not go out of my way to do it. I don't like the self-defense argument, because it still implies that I'm participating in a mechanism for oppression - whether or not my consent is given - and that betrays the sense of solidarity that I feel anarchists should embrace and promote.
However, I can't deny that this election is important. Allen is absolutely and totally unacceptable, and there's been worse politicians than Webb. Furthermore, I really think that voting against the marriage amendment to the Virginia constitution is not nearly as awful as voting for a politician. Honestly, I wish I had more time to turn these matters over in my head, and since there's only today I have to act, I'm leaning towards going to the polls.
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Guess who said this?
To get really nitpicky about it, I could point out that the detainees at Gitmo are absolutely pampered. They are given all kinds of rights that are unprecedented in a time of war. They eat McDonald's Filet of Fish sandwiches.
Yeah, she definitely lays my concern to rest.
For the following reasons:
- Unfortunately and to my own shame, I haven't yet worked out in my head whether or not I should change my policy towards voting, so I operated on the default setting. That's my own fault for not resolving the dilemma in time. Given that, there's obviously a lot of pressure to vote on the one day on which it's allowed. I figured I'd be more regretful if I didn't vote and hated the outcome than if I voted and decided after the fact that I had just committed a crime against humanity. Hopefully by the next election I will have either divorced myself from the need to participate, or I will have a more thorough, positively defined understanding of what I want to accomplish with my vote.
- I have never really considered, and nobody has convinced me, that voting is patently immoral in and of itself. The ritual does not confer any real legitimacy on the regime, even though it appears that way. It may give a wrong impression to the State and others, but it's not wrong per se.
- To really take a consistent stand against the State, I should not participate in ANY of its institutions. That means surrendering my driver's license, not paying taxes, not obeying police officers, etc. I'm not willing to do any of that... yet. So voting is really not a big step in the direction of statism - nor is abstaining a big step in the other direction. Like I said, I need to work out a consistent stand on this matter.
I did, however, turn down the "I voted" sticker... I wanted to tell the poll worker that I felt dirty.
My favorite band is in Virginia this coming week: Thursday in Norfolk, Friday in Richmond, and Saturday in Charlottesville. They have a new drummer, so I can't vouch for how kickass they'll be. But I'm sure it'll be better than staying at home and watching TV.
I urge you to check them out - here's the tour schedule, and here's a review of a show last year I whipped up.
Sometimes, it's just too much. Not days after I called out a well-known capitalist for his anti-market rhetoric, Right Thinking Girl - that most vulgar of vulgar capitalists - gives me some more material along the same lines. And both bitch fests are about hotels and eco-friendly policies. It's great to throw your money around and cheer about capitalism and shopping and 'Mercka, until - oops! - the market aggregates values and demand in a way you don't approve. Then it's those evil liberals allying with Al Qaeda to deny you fresh sheets.
But screw going to a different hotel that caters to your high-falutin', jet-setting, glamorous lifestyle. You're a Republican, and America OWES you a hotel - in your price range - that doesn't conserve resources or appeal to your non-existent environmental consciousness. I mean, wake up, 'Mercka - is George W. Bush not president? Hello?
I swear to God, her and I are not colluding - she actually writes this stuff. I just happen to make fun of it. By all means, go check out her blog and have yourself a laugh.
This election will be my first as a confirmed anarchist. Since I live in Virginia, the campaign here has been so shrill - with 90% of that shrillness coming from one candidate - that I'm very tempted to vote soley to push Allen and the Republican's obnoxiousness out of office. Reading two essays, however, reaffirmed me of my beliefs.
The first is one my friend Brady (a fellow Richmond anarchist) sent me by the voluntaryist George H. Smith. It's a mock dialogue between an LPer and a anti-political libertarian (APL) on the subject of statist politics pursued for libertarian ends. APL discusses the contradiction in a party who promotes the idea of a free society participating in the mechanism that oppresses it.
LPer: But we both agree on the desirability of a free society. It seems to me that we just disagree on how best to achieve it.
APL: Yes, we are in basic agreement concerning the goal to be achieved. But I am not merely asserting that the political method is inefficient in pursuit of this goal. Rather, I am arguing that the political means is inconsistent with libertarian principles, that it flies in the face of basic libertarian ideals. Consider an analogy. I state that a basic goal in my life is to acquire a good deal of money. You concede that this goal is, in itself, unobjectionable. Then I proceed to rob a bank. You are horrified and demand to know how I could do such a thing. I reply that we have a strategic difference of opinion. We both agree that my goal is laudable; we simply disagree concerning the means by which to attain it. We disagree on how to get from here to there. So I demand from you an alternative strategy for me to get rich. Sure, I say, my plan may not be perfect, but what can you purists offer in it place? Give me an alternate strategy, I demand, before taking pot shots at mine.
How would you reply to this? I suspect that you would accuse me of shifting ground. You would point out that the objection to robbing banks is not a simple issue of strategy, but involves profound moral questions. And you would say that your protest against my action was moral, rather than strategic, in nature. Therefore, unless I can surmount the moral objections to robbing banks, the strategy question is irrelevant. I cannot squirm past the moral issues, the matters of principle, in the guise of demanding alternate strategies.
Now, returning to the subject of political action, I respond to your question the same way. Fine, let's get together and talk over the issue of strategy some day - we can talk about education, moral suasion, counter-economics, alternative institutions, civil disobedience, or what have you - but that's not the issue here. I submit that there is a profoundly anti-libertarian aspect of political action - i.e., of attempting to elect libertarians to public office - and this is the issue to which political libertarians must first address themselves. Show me that political action is consistent with libertarian principles, and then we can take up the issue of strategy.
LPer: But you must address yourself to the issue of strategy at some point. You wish to disqualify the political means altogether, which seems to leave you precious little by which you can work for a free society. If your principles condemn you to inaction and certain defeat, then surely there must be something wrong with your principles.
APL: This is quite curious. You equate activism with political action. Doing something, for you means, doing something political. You regard an anti-political libertarian as a non-activist, and this is surely one of the most pernicious myths circulating in the LP today.
This is a key point that I needed to hear: just because I'm not voting doesn't mean I don't care. I care passionately about what happens to this country, but I will not take part in its subjugation by granting the state my tacit permission to do so. There are other ways to effect change upon the world without resorting to the vote, such as counter-economics, direct action, engaging people in conversation, etc..
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I'm starting to really enjoy Tim Lee's blogging over at the Technology Liberation Front. He tackles problems with electronic voting machines that have already occurred in Florida where you press the name of one candidate and the other is registered:
...my guess is that the touch-sensitive electronics are mis-aligned with the screen, so that the machine registers touches as being offset from their actual location.
For example, suppose that the screen is mis-aligned such that each touch is registered as being one inch above its actual position on the screen. In that case, if the Republican candidate's button were an inch above the Democratic candidate's button, pressing the screen in the center of the Democrat's button would register as a press in the center of the Republican button. To vote for the Democrat, you would have to touch the screen an inch below the Democrat's button. Voter who weren't paying attention would accidentally vote for the Republican without noticing.
Now, I've seen this behavior on my PDA phone: sometimes the screen's sensitivity to pressure (such as from the stylus or a finger pressing an area on the screen) becomes misaligned and so it looks like you're pressing something pretty far from what you're actually pressing. It's a glitch - a problematic one, to be sure, but far too obvious to constitute actual fraud.
However, Lee points out a side benefit to the glitch I hadn't thought of:
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Jesus Christ, the end of election season is frustrating. Since I'm no longer voting, it's like I'm that much more vulnerable to these "October surprises". They work, though... I've definitely considered voting just to get rid of Allen.
In a crowd of absolute asses, it takes a idiot like Allen to really stand out. Not only is Allen racist and shamefully dishonest, but now he's sticking his goons on bloggers. Hope Webb kicks the shit out of him... and I think Allen could use a literal dose of that as well, given recent events.
And I'm no Kerry fan, but come on - he was trying to attack the President, not the troops (he meant to say that the President is stuck in Iraq, quite obviously, not the troops). What is it with Republicans trying to gain advantage by taking things out of context lately (or, in the case of Iraq intelligence, for a while)?
I'm pretty sure I'm abstaining from this election because I'd rather not participate in the affirmation rituals of my oppressors, but maaaan... the Republicans are so batshit crazy these days. I never think I'll be surprised, and then BAM!
Although something tells me the Democrats will up the ante on obnoxiousness one of these days, if that's possible...
Note: If you think I'm posting this because I'm out of writing ideas, you're pretty much correct. In any case, I highly recommend Cat & Girl... sometimes it's really wierd, but the payoff is superior
Over at a wonderful magazine called The Republic, Kevin Potvin argues that conspiracy theorists are nothing more than present day historians recreating the probable power structures from available evidence. No, they can't prove everything, and they can't always reconcile all the facts and make them fit hand in glove. But a historian doesn't dismiss facts simply because they don't fit into the history he wants to tell.
A good historian looking at a distant time and place knows that everything he has as evidence before him has meaning and everything is somehow connected-or will be once he has finished writing his history. A 12th century scrap of paper with a partial list of sexually degrading acts found in the manuals of priests learning how to take confessions is at first so discordant, we can't begin to fathom how it came to be. Do we therefore throw it away, assume it has no meaning for us? Of course not. The piece of paper means something very important and it completely alters how we understand late-pagan culture in Europe and the frame of mind of the vanguard of the Church confronting it.
So when we get hold of executive compensation contracts from the heyday of the Enron era, and find CEOs holding out for things like a new dishwasher on a contract already worth several hundreds of millions of dollars, and find that also to be confusingly discordant, do we throw that information away because it doesn't make sense? No, we use that evidence to totally recreate what we think about corporate executive officers operating at the vanguard of our advanced capitalist economy, and to understand the demeaning service-sector society surrounding them, the very one we ourselves populate.
No doubt the Church would be terribly unhappy with what we would have had to say about their priests if we found those confessional manuals back when they were in circulation, and they would have argued articulately and vehemently against any less-than-flattering conclusions we might have drawn up because of them. So too do sycophants in the media today argue strongly against any unflattering conclusions we might draw about the executives in charge of our largest enterprises, based on what we learn about a few of them and their odd, even twisted, personal proclivities. But those denials, then as well as now, mean little against the hard evidence. Who owns the media in which those denials are made after all? Just as in the days of the Church, it is the same people being unflatteringly portrayed who have control over where and when, if ever, such portrayals will see the light of day. Of course their media will tell us to look away and ignore the evidence. That's what they bought the media to do.
Almost all that is dismissed as conspiracy theory today is really only good or poor attempts at writing history in our own time. But why is it that when we are talking of the histories of whole different places in whole different times, we easily accept that this or that group of powerful people made this or that important event happen, yet when it comes to histories of our own time and place, we automatically reject any suggestion of any group of people making any important event happen? Throughout history, every important event always has some group of people behind it, and these events always offer revealing meanings about the kind of societies in which they occur. It is the same today.
Don't make me cut and paste the entire article, read it yourself. It is spot on about the importance not just of an ongoing revisionist history, but applying those insights to a revisionist understanding of power structures in general.
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Greenspan says it's beginning:
"We're beginning to see some move from the dollar to the euro, both from the private sector ... but also from monetary authorities and central banks," Greenspan told a conference sponsored by the Commercial Finance Association.
I'm continuing to read Secrets of the Temple, and a lot of the books deals with the Fed's problems stablizing the money supply and interest rates. One of the huge factors was the foreign supply of dollars, referred to as the "eurodollar" market.
Now, it's one thing when European private banks and investors start selling or loaning dollars, but when central banks start moving out of the currency wholesale, at whatever speed... watch out. The slightest panic could end up in a world dumping of dollars.
That would not be good for those of us who use dollars, as I understand it.
Hat tip to Lew Rockwell.
The notorious George Reisman fires another salvo for Randroid ethics. This time, the scourge is not lying, theiving mutualists, but another form of cost-internalizing market usurpers: environmentally conscious businesses. Run away!!!
..."Green Hotels" have been busy attempting to persuade their customers to forego the customary daily provision of fresh sheets and towels in guest rooms. And more recently, they have begun to replace the provision of fresh bars of soap each day with the installation of fixed liquid-soap dispensers, similar to those in public lavatories, even in showers and bathtubs, where they can actually be dangerous.
It's one thing to argue that the so-called "green hotels" Reisman attacks are exploiting environmental consciousness to cut their own costs. I, too, find their breezy statements of faux Gaia worship tacky and self-serving. However, Reisman attacks them for even implying that any interest trumps "luxury":
Irrespective of the effect on their profits in the long run, what the Green Hotels are doing is disgusting. It is part of a cultural assault on luxury and pleasure. One that works to make every day of everyone's life one of unrelieved drudgery and sacrifice, to the point of there being no escape. Even vacations and holidays are now to be stamped with the mark of sacrifice. Sacrifice not even for other people, but for the "planet."
It's true that the environmental credo has problems of consistency. You shouldn't have to pay the same price for getting less soap, less frequent towel changes, or even organic food. All of these features should result in more efficient and sustainable business and therefore should lower costs to customers. Pollution, waste, and recklessness should be expensive in a market economy.
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My wife somehow got free ad space for one of her awesome
sushi sets in the latest issue of
Craft Magazine. It's situated among other fine crafts in a two-page
Etsy ad near the back. I flipped through the magazine and it's really well designed and interesting, along the same lines as
Make Magazine.
- There's some new feeds advertised over to the side. The "All of the above" feed contains all the latest updates to the site, including posts, comments, and linkblog bookmarks.
- I've tweaked the site so that it should now be at least tolerable in IE 7.
- Let me know if you have any feedback on the design.
In the course of doing research for a forthcoming post on the libertarian case against corporations, I happened to be reviewing the discussion at Catallarchy on libertarian critiques of progressive regulatory corporatism. One comment in response to what I considered a well-reasoned deconstruction of the typical libertarian argument stood out to me:
That is a key insight of libertarian democrats--markets are arbitrary human creations, and whenever we as a society deem it appropriate for the common good we should create new ones, as with the patent system or with tradeable carbon credits.
There's a lot to be said against that, but I'll limit myself to making the point that there is no "we as a society".
Now, I understand why libertarians say this: they want to prevent the sacrifice of the individual to the mob, realized either by "anarchy" or in the form of the "people's" state, be it socialist or democratic. Certainly I've invoked this kind of language in the past, as least in the first months following my reading of Atlas Shrugged.
But this oversimplification promotes the appearance of sheer boneheadedness: quite obviously (as the original Catallarchy commeter retorts) "we" exist, and "we" are commonly referred to as a "society". In fact, the whole body of libertarian thought is concerned with empowering voluntary associations - i.e., "society " - at the expense of the coercive state. Engaging in these cool one-liner mind trips is fine, as long as you're clear about what you mean.
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