There is a general election in New Zealand this weekend. The present Labour party government has done its best to reverse much of the half hearted reform that it inherited – and it looks like the Labour party will be re-elected (and continue to increase the size and scope of the state).
I found myself thinking (as I often do) “good, if people vote for statism they deserve to get it – good and hard”. However, the divine right of the 51% (democracy) is (as all libertarians know) quite immoral. There is no reason why those who vote against statism should suffer because of the people who vote for it.
Take the example of California. When I rub my hands with glee (which I do) at the latest example of California statism (“jolly good, the reckoning is brought forword and the collapse of California will be a warning to the rest of the nation to repent…”) I am overlooking a few important points.
Firstly the innocent (those who vote against the increase in government spending and regulations) suffer at least as much (most likely rather more) than the guilty. And secondly there is no reason to suppose that people in other areas will understand that the suffering is caused by the statism.
Take the example of retail price controls on the sale of electricity (in California this is known as ‘deregulation’). Such price controls created a shortage of power (no surprise there) and rather than letting the lights go out the Bush administration demanded that companies outside California sell power (at the government price) to California.
I have argued that the lights should have been allowed to go out until the Californians worked out “if we pay more money people will sell us power”.
However, (of course) people who opposed the price controls would have suffered along with the people who supported them. Also there is no guarantee that people would understand that the suffering was caused by the statism.
After all the famous “economist” Paul Krugman has explained that the Californian energy crisis was created by a plot by Enron and other wicked corps. Nothing is so absurd that it will not be argued for by the media and academia. It does not matter whether most academics and media people are liars or whether they believe their own nonsense, the effect is the same – millions of people are mislead.
When I argue that the bankruptcy of California would act as a warning to the rest of the United States, or that the bankruptcy of one of the European Welfare States would warn the other nations of Europe to reform themselves whilst there is still time I must come up with a reply to the above. And I have no great reply.
I suppose all we can do is to endlessly try and explain to as many people as we can the consequences of statism – sadly we have little access to such things as the mass media, but we must do the best we can.
Things are not formally inevitable and we must help when we can. For example in California if the people voted for Bill Simon to be Governor (the election is in November) there is a good chance that collapse could be avoided (almost needless to say – the Bush administration strongly opposed Mr Simon getting the Republican nomination for Governor). And even if Gray Davis is reelected (as he most likely will be) there may still be an election in 2006 (I do not think people will be eating each other by then) and something might be saved.
Yes democracy is immoral and it is inefficient (the innocent minority are punished for the votes of the majority and the majority are endlessly mislead by academics and media people anyway), but this does not mean we should ignore democracy.
Perhaps the world will collapse and isolated groups of libertarians (or semi libertarians) will have to try and rebuild civilization via a grim struggle to survive – but we should not just give up. To give up (or to treat each example of statism with perverted joy – as I often do) is immoral.
Paul Marks
