I recently received an email asking " If those of us who believe in small government don't vote for it, will we ever achieve it?".

If we do vote for it, how will we ever achieve it? Does voting do anything significant to help us achieve it? Or is it a way to distract ourselves by pretending that we make a difference while we continue paying high taxes to a bloated government that we abhor? As a believer in one of the two major parties, perhaps the voting system works for you. Since I am a libertarian, I see little chance of it resulting in a government anything like what I desire. I can give you lots of reasons for this.

For example, compared to my beliefs, the Republicans are a huge-government party, not a small-government party. Republicans and Democrats are arguing about whether to raise or lower taxes *by* a few percent, when I want them lowered *to* a few percent. The R's may be more "small-government" focused than the D's, but they still believe in gargantuan amounts of federal spending. For example, defense (current and past) spending amounts to (depending who you believe) between 20% and 45% of the budget [ http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm ]. Historically this is a sector the Republicans are protective of, even more so than usual in the current climate of war-mongering jingoism [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020124-1.html ] [ http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2002/b02042002_bt046-02.html ].

Another important factor is the theory which states that in a two party-system, the parties will tend to converge towards the center, and thus have far more similarities than differences. This is because by moving towards the center they can pick up centrist voters without losing any of the folks on their extreme. They get farther from their extremists, but those extremists still vote for them because they remain closer than the other party. You can visualize this with a beach and two hot-dog vendors, and the rule that people on the beach will always buy from the nearest vendor. The equilibrium positioning occurs when both vendors are next to each other, with equal numbers of customers on each side. Also of interest is that customer repositionings that do not cross the center line do not affect optimum vendor positioning. 50% of vendor A's customers can move to the extreme end of the beach, and vendor A is still correct to be in the middle. This suggests that influencing the opinions of huge numbers of voters may still have little or no effect. In the hot-dog model, such situations provide great incentive for the entry of a third vendor. Unfortunately the majority rule of democracy makes this inapplicable, as a third party which splits the votes of an existing party simply guarantees that neither can win.

The fact that, as a libertarian, I am economically conservative and socially liberal means that the distinction between the major parties is orthogonal to my views. I gain some freedoms and lose others if I move the country towards either party by voting. Thus voting is even more pointless than usual. Sure, some candidates will be better than others, and I would gain if they won - by finding out which is not worthwhile because of rational ignorance [ http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/01/rational-ignorance.html ] [ http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/econ/LogicOfChoice/RatIgnorance.html ].

I think libertarians (and idealogues of all stripes) often have the attitude that if only they can argue their views persuasively enough, the world will change its mind. I think this is pretty unrealistic. Libertarian (and truly small-government) views are an extreme minority, even in the US. Even if those views were popular, they would have to fight against entrenched power structures and the fact that government organizations are concentrated interests while voters are dispersed [ http://internationalecon.com/v1.0/ch105/105c070.html ]. The combination is brutal: the voters don't agree with me, and even if they did, it is nontrivial for their views to be implemented. What chance do I have?

Since my vote is but one of many, analysis of other people's expected voting yields me far more information about the state of future regimes than the knowledge of my future votes. That analysis tells me that small-government will not happen. Free-market proponents talk a lot about "voting with your wallet" and the importance of market feedback, and then fail to apply those ideas to governments. Isn't the obvious market feedback for small-government advocates expatriation to low-tax competitor countries? [ http://votewithyourfeet.com/philosophy.html ]

Another issue is moral culpability. Regardless of how I vote, I believe that if my tax money is spent on uses which I consider immoral, then I bear some responsibility. Thus if I remain an american taxpayer, I am violating my moral code, and the existence of "voting" and "democracy" makes no difference. If you donate to a terrorist organization, does it make you any less responsible for the people they kill if they let you vote between two different terrorists as leaders? If both potential leaders are going to take your money and make bombs and kill civilians with those bombs, just how does voting between them make your donations less immoral?

Its easy to focus on relative differences, say between Republicans and Democrats, and be happy that one is a little better while ignoring the fact that they are both terrible. If you pay taxes in the US, you choose to finance a bloated government. You actively support through your labors (as I currently do) a vast spectrum of organizations acting in opposition to your beliefs. How does making an occasional irrelevant vote make up for that?

And finally, the issue I have not yet addressed, which is whether small governments are possible without voting. I claim the answer is a trivial yes, because there exist countries with small governments and few taxes to which you could expatriate. Surely moving to a small-government country is an easier route towards living under a small government than trying to change the course of a trillion dollar a year juggernaut. If all small-government proponents did this, none of them would have to live under and support a large government. Sure, there would be large governments left in the world, but they'd be supported by people who believed in them - and who are we to inflict our views on them?

<< Behavorial Finance (10/02/02) << || >> War Blues (9/21/02) >>