For crying out loud

Can we agree now that maybe subjecting 4-8 years of your future to the results of a popularity contest is a stupid idea?

Don't blame me; I voted to leave the office vacant.  If you voted, you have no right to complain. You agreed to live by the results.  Why is everybody so upset? I thought this was the greatest system ever!

Strange people in ballot booths handing out swords is no basis for a system of government.

Why I don't vote

I don't vote because I don't believe in the offices that we are voting to fill.  I don't believe we should even have those offices.  I don't believe anybody should have the powers of those offices.  I view emptying or eliminating these offices as a worthy goal, and I view voting as a detriment to that goal, because it legitimizes those offices.  I view not voting, and telling people that I am not voting and why, as the best option for proceeding toward my goal.

As a Christian I am glad for the opportunity to get involved in the process, and I do so by not voting so that I can advance what I think is the best goal for the land: eliminating the existing political offices.  I would welcome the ability to have more input in the process, such as a chance to vote to leave offices empty, or a chance to secede.  Failing that, I'm grateful for what I can get: the opportunity to make a difference by declaring how important it is to eliminate the existing monopoly government.

Texas proposition 3

I heard a radio spot this morning from Texas Realtors urging me to vote on a number of "proposals" to make real estate appraisal "more fair." Little warning bells went off in my head, of course. I do not plan to vote, but I thought I'd glance at the issues and see what's up and perhaps offer a brief analysis.

First of all, anyone involved in politics always has a skewed understanding of fair. Let me explain fair: if you don't take anything that doesn't belong to you, or restrict what I can do with what is my own, or hurt me, that's fair. If you are taking my money, that's not fair, no matter how much "reform" or other excrement you smear on it.

So, fair would be repealing all real estate taxes. "More fair," I suppose, would be an across the board cut in tax rates, which I would support, and maybe even vote for if it didn't involve voting for a specific liar -- I mean "person" -- promising the alleged policy change. Heck, even a selective reduction in some people's tax rates would be more fair, and I'd support that even if I wasn't going to get a direct benefit myself. At least it'd be a benefit to the economy, which could sorely use it right now.

Unfortunately, nothing of the sort seems to be on the table. Proposition 2 might result in a lower tax rate for some people, and comes the closest to being something I could support. But I've never heard of anybody in the situation that proposition 2 describes. It makes noise like it wants to protect innocent homeowners, but it smells like it wants to protect real estate developers who monkey around at your city council meeting to get their property zoned a certain way for lower taxes while they wait to decide what to do with it. Ever read your city council minutes? Disgusting enslavement politics. Almost everything on the agenda, in my experience, involves case by case changes of the "zone" for pieces of property, where everything you might ever want to do requires approval. These are the people who give you grief when you want to use your property for something of your design, but easily sway the council to bow to their will because they allegedly help the local economy. Forget it. Not interested in helping such powermongers for something so vague and slanted.

Propositions 3 and 5 are far, far worse. They rest on an insane and destructive assumption: that your local government wants to screw you, and the higher level of government is here to help, and that centralization and standardization across the state will help lots of people. Note again this is cloaked in helping people to retain more of their wealth, i.e., libertarian motivation, but we should know that increased centralization never helps. What you want is a patchwork of differing local regulations so that if your locality is too much more thieving than the next one over, you can move. (Actually what you want is differing competing local regulations within the SAME locality, but if wishes were horses ...) Centralization regulations always function as a means for powers to collude without the threat of competition. And so in this case. The criminal gang in Austin wants to bring all the little gangs under its control, because power feels good when exercised, especially if you can get people to worship you for being their "benefactor." The little gangs actually support the centralization because then they can collude under cover; they will run the much larger centralized show and set regulations that are worse. Example: the Federal Reserve, far from forcing banks to keep more reasonable reserve standards, allows the banks to collude and set reserve standards lower than the previously freer market allowed.

Want to make my real estate appraisals more fair? Give me a free market in government, from which I can choose the option I want, or create my own if it does not exist. In other words, allow me to secede. In other words, allow me to be free.

How to fix government

I recently saw the suggestion that we can fix the problems of the U.S. federal government by "kicking them all out": firing every single incumbent congressman and banning corporate lobbying. Making corporate lobbying illegal strikes me as somewhat naive and definitely restrictive of rights.

As Walter Williams often says, the government shouldn't have the legal power to do bad things ... then the problem of lobbyists influencing it to do such things will go away.

I don't think term limits of one term will fix the problem, either, whether it happens from statute or the vote.

I think the only way to limit the power of government to encroach upon its citizens' rights to life, liberty, and property is for that government to be checked by alternate, competing institutions "instituted among men to secure these rights ... and whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (For those who might not recognize it, this is a near quote from the United States Declaration of Independence. You should really read it sometime. If you don't believe in this stuff, you really shouldn't be celebrating on July 4th.)

If you don't think the U.S. federal government is adequately securing your rights, then you do morally have and should legally have the right to use your own resources to establish your own rights-securing institution, including the right to delegate enforcement of your rights to others who work on your behalf, the right to subscribe to such services from a company, the right to collaborate with and work with other people to build your institution as you see fit. The government does not morally have and should not legally have the right to force people to pay for its services and prevent them from receiving such services from other providers.

The problems are:

• government is a monopoly
  
• security for the rights of life, liberty, and property is a socialized service, instead of being provided by a free market
  
• government grants to itself the legal right to take actions which are not morally right (i.e., violation of the rights of people to life, liberty, and property)

Personally, I think the biggest committer of crimes against me and my neighbors, is the U.S. federal government. I would like to see everyone kicked out of it and to leave the offices empty, not repopulate them and play Russian roulette and hope (against all evidence) that somehow it will come out better this time, and that if it doesn't we can still somehow improve it in the future through the democratic process and constant monitoring and tweaking of statutes and regulations. At the very least, give the rest of us the right to opt out, even if you want to keep it.