I have been asked to update my blog, and in particular to discuss the presidential candidates. I didn’t have much to write about and I had other things to do, but now it’s the weekend and I’ll comply.
First I’ll have to explain where I’m coming from. One of my favorite posts from Catallarchy is Policy Isomorphism, which states that we are more affected by domestic policy than foreign and more by fiscal policy than civil rights. This helps to explain why libertarians are more likely to support Republicans than Democrats.
My own specific ideology seems to fall best under “paleolibertarianism”. Like many of that sort, I am an anti-federalist and I like Ron Paul (even though his reverence for the Constitution rather than the Articles precludes him from anti-federalism, he’s definitely preferable to the others). On the Democratic side I’ve liked what I’ve heard from Mike Gravel, but that hasn’t been a lot. I do not believe Paul has any chance of winning and I do not intend to vote…ever (it’s more sensible to play the lotto).
If Paul did win, here is what I expect would happen: he would veto every bill that he believed was unconstitutional, just as he votes against them now. That would be just about every bill Congress passes. Congress would in many cases overturn his vetoes, but it would minimize the flow of legislation. As an anti-federalist, I would prefer if the national government did not exist at all. In general my assumption is that any action taken by that government is idiotic and harmful. I do not see the political arena as one through which the good is advanced, but rather as something like the human sacrifices performed by the Aztecs because they believed it was necessary to cause the sun to rise (Mike Huemer has a good explanation of why politics and religion are so irrational here, but I dispute his contention that morality is objective and can be known). I disagree with the main message in this from Roderick Long (that libertarians ought to be concerned with “oppression” other than coercion), but I agree with his characterization of libertarians as largely wanting politics not to exist. A possibly useful sort of legislation is that which overturns previous legislation and ends those idiotic and harmful activities undertaken, but there is far less of that than the other kind. Congress is unlikely to do much of that under Paul, but he himself could undo a great many executive orders and possibly put some restraints on the permanent bureaucracy that could be thought of as a fourth branch of government if it were not technically under the executive.
One of the candidates mentioned by the aforementioned commenter as somewhat acceptable is Michael Bloomberg, and this brings me to an area where I disagree with my commenter’s goals. His concern is with long life. Michael Bloomberg is known for banning smoking, trans-fats and the like in New York. I say a life without unhealthy crap is a life I do not wish to lead. Bloomberg can pry my french-fries from my cold, dead hands along with my guns (which is he is also not a fan of).
M. Traven has responded at his blog because of the lousy comment-spam filter here. This is my response:
Robin Hanson as “Ramone” did a broader defense of voting-as-ritual here. Libertarians don’t object to man-as-a-social creature. We advocate forming social organizations as competitors to the state (which does not permit people to decline membership in it, as Herbert Spencer discusses here). I am a fan of the individualist anarchist Max Stirner (even though I am not an anarchist or lefty like him) who discussed a Union of Egoists, in which people join together for their mutual benefit.
The point of voting is not (as Landsberg stupidly holds) that it is only worth doing if you stand a chance of casting the single vote that tips the balance past 50/50.
If you knew that the vote was rigged and your ballot would be thrown out, would you still vote? If your vote makes no difference why don’t you pull an imaginary lever in your house and cheer “Go [my candidate]!”? Do you like the atmosphere of the polling place?The point is that you are joining in with other members of your community to make a collective decision.
If I stay at home and blog about how all the candidates suck, how am I playing less of a part than you? Can’t I just declare myself as taking a part? Why let the state define your relation to the community?
Entitled to an Opinion 
September 21, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Very interesting post, TGGP.
I don’t really care if other people enjoy unhealthy crap, except to the degree my longevity is adversely impacted.
September 21, 2007 at 7:50 pm
The libertarian distaste for politics and voting guarantees that they will remain without influence — a good thing from my point of view, but probably not yours.
Here are some of my thoughts on voting from a couple of years ago, see especially the link to the Valdis Krebs paper.
The Landsberg piece you link to is a typically autistic piece of economist crapola. The Freakonomics boys made the same argument and I answered them there (first comment).
September 21, 2007 at 7:54 pm
The libertarian distaste for politics and voting guarantees that they will remain without influence — a good thing from my point of view, but probably not yours.
Here are some of my thoughts on voting from a couple of years ago, see especially the link to the Valdis Krebs paper.
The Landsberg piece you link to is a typically autistic piece of economist crapola. The Freakonomics boys made the same argument and I answered them there (first comment).
[I keep posting this and it keeps not showing up, here I am trying again…]
September 21, 2007 at 7:58 pm
The Akismet spam filter has so far had a 100% failure rate.
September 21, 2007 at 8:12 pm
Libertarians are not without influence (Milton Friedman excepted) because of their distaste for politics but because libertarianism is unappealing to most people.
Your response on voting was lame. Most of the criticisms I’ve heard of “autistic economics” are just people who don’t like what they say but don’t have any real arguments. Regardless of what you did in your social network the actual vote is an individual choice. IF a group of people could enter into a contract with each other to all vote a certain way it could be rational on an individual level to vote, but in real life voting is anonymous and you can always decline to vote without penalty. It is the first amendment that gives you “the right to participate in the conversation”, not voting. Voting gives you no more “right” than praying in the direction of your candidate five times a day.
September 21, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Answered at greater length here.
Look at it this way — most people think voting is pretty important, and historically people have fought and risked bodily harm to obtain the right to do it. Yet economic theory predicts they shouldn’t do this because their marginal utility is negative. So, is the problem with the people for not behaving as economic theory says they should, or with economic theory for not being a very accurate model of human action?
September 22, 2007 at 7:13 am
M Traven, if we use non-procreative sex as tha analogous example instead of lottery tickets, I think a good case can still be made that actual voting by a given individual is an irrational, wasteful act.
September 22, 2007 at 11:55 am
Look at it this way — most people think voting is pretty important, and historically people have fought and risked bodily harm to obtain the right to do it. Yet economic theory predicts they shouldn’t do this because their marginal utility is negative. So, is the problem with the people for not behaving as economic theory says they should, or with economic theory for not being a very accurate model of human action?
When people behave irrationally we don’t need to rethink our notion of rationality, we just say that people act irrationally and leave it at that. When I notice a behavior is irrational I stop doing it and start mocking those who do.
September 22, 2007 at 4:35 pm
How do you define “rationality”? If people get a warm, fuzzy feeling (aka “utility”) from voting, should they do it? How about finding love, or listening to music, two other notably non-rational activities that people nonetheless seem to avidly pursue and would laugh at you if you told them they should stop?
September 22, 2007 at 8:52 pm
If you knew the election was rigged and your ballot wouldn’t be counted, would you still get that warm fuzzy feeling? Would you get the warm fuzzy feeling from pulling an imaginary lever at home? Is there something about the atmosphere of the polling place that gives you the warm fuzzies? Have you ever declined to vote for a third-party candidate that you preferred because they couldn’t win? Because practically speaking the election is rigged in favor of the plurality candidate and your vote is not going to count, and you could stay at home and pretend to vote. Though I haven’t voted, I have been to polling places on election nights, and I’d be surprised if you said it had a great atmosphere. And every candidate other than the winner has no chance of winning regardless of your vote, so you might as well vote for Mickey Mouse or yourself if that’s what you’d prefer.
September 22, 2007 at 11:36 pm
You didn’t give your definition of rationality. Otherwise, see the new reply at blog — this is a pretty pointless conversation to have on even one blog, let alone two.
September 25, 2007 at 11:03 am
TGGP: I find the Catallarchy post on “Policy Isomorphism” very unconvincing, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. The current Republicans are worse than the mainstream Democrats in domestic policy, foreign policy, fiscal policy, AND civil rights. MUCH worse. By any rational measure. At least, this is true on the national level. On the local level things vary greatly between districts, the issues are different, etc. Giuliani would be an awful president, but was a good mayor.
September 25, 2007 at 11:04 am
mtraven: Rationality consists of approximating the behavior of an entity maximizing some well-defined and self-consistent utility function. For more info, go to http://www.overcomingbias.com
September 25, 2007 at 3:52 pm
michael vassar, I believe the Catallarchy post was striving to be general rather than focused on current events.
I think the concept of rationality should permit such things as inconsistent but possibly anticipated utility functions over time (which could result in future self paternalism) that are still consistent within a short frame of time and ordinal utility. Means that oppose ends, inconsistent utility functions in the short term, systematic errors in prediction and behaviors/mental processes that keep someone from having an accurate view of reality (by which I don’t mean to include laziness that prevents one from becoming better informed but improper incorporation of evidence) can be considered irrational.
September 25, 2007 at 9:55 pm
So, rationality involves “some well-defined and self-consistent utility function”. Fine. Humans do not have a well-defined and self-consistent utility function, so rationality (as defined by you) is an almost perfectly useless concept in trying to understand human behavior. Either you define some absurdly reductive sense of utility, in which case voting is irrational but so is art, love, looking at the sunset, and flaming on blogs; OR you say “utility is whatever makes me feel good”, in which case you vote because it makes you feel good (and if it doesn’t, you don’t).
So, next challenge for you big brains, can you define a notion of rationality that excludes voting but includes attending a performance of Schubert quartets?
Or, maybe a more pertinent question: it’s not economically rational for you to leave a tip in a restaurant, especially if you know you’ll never be going back. Yet, you probably do. Why?
It’s not like these are new questions, by the way. Here’s an interesting paper that attempts to explain voting as a manifestation of something called “expressive rationality”, which is just a more worked-out version of what I’ve been saying.
September 26, 2007 at 9:53 am
I’m about to leave and can’t read the paper right now, but my point is that you can express yourself and derive utility from it without voting. The reason “get out the votes” folks always deride the idea that “your vote doesn’t count” by pointing to the 2000 election or various myths is that that idea really does depress voter turnout, and people really do decline to vote for third party candidates because that is “throwing your vote away”. In your other examples there is not even a pretense of making a difference, but the reason voting exists in the first place is to determine an outcome.
September 26, 2007 at 12:08 pm
“you can express yourself and derive utility from it without voting” is true, but a very different proposition than “voting is irrational and you shouldn’t do it”.
“the reason voting exists in the first place is to determine an outcome.” — that’s an oversimplification, voting is a complex social ritual and determining the outcome is only one reason for it.
The paper highlights an interesting paradox of voting that might appeal to you more than my arguments. Briefly — your vote has very little power and so you might as well stay home. But if everyone follows that argument and stays home, then your vote will be powerful because there will be very few voters, so you should vote! This is a genuine paradox of rationality.
September 26, 2007 at 1:06 pm
The calculation an individual makes concerning whether to vote should take into account how many other people they expect to vote. Voter turnout is consistently far higher than that which would result in an individual vote having a chance to affect the outcome.
that’s an oversimplification, voting is a complex social ritual and determining the outcome is only one reason for it.
In the past voting was usually restricted to elites, who actually did have a chance of affecting an outcome. Voting was also not secret, so their stance was recorded. Over time the franchise was expanded and ballots became secret, but we still have voting for the same reason as before.
September 26, 2007 at 4:47 pm
People do take that into account — turnout is generally higher in elections where polling shows that it’s a close race.
Nobody seems to want to take up the gauntlet on the question of rationality in a non-vacuous way.
September 26, 2007 at 5:27 pm
The probability that an individual vote will affect the outcome of an election does not vary much, except when we are talking about small local elections for dinky positions/issues. Virtually no major elections have been decided by one vote, so we can conclude that all the people who decided to vote when they heard the race was close were way off base.
September 26, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Even on purely rationalistic grounds, there is something clearly wrong with saying voting is only rational if the election was decided by one vote.
For one thing, it’s ex-post-facto reasoning. You don’t know that it’s going to be that close until after the election takes place, so you can’t use that fact in making your decision to vote.
For another, it doesn’t address the paradox I describe in 17. It’s a situation roughly similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, where you get better results by taking into account the reasoning of your fellow players than by following a strictly locally-rational strategy.
Let’s suppose that you succeed in convincing all “rationalists” that voting is not worthwhile. Now all the elections will be decided by irrationalists. Surely that’s not a result you desire. So promoting “rationality” is not rational.
September 26, 2007 at 6:41 pm
For one thing, it’s ex-post-facto reasoning. You don’t know that it’s going to be that close until after the election takes place, so you can’t use that fact in making your decision to vote.
Unless you have a good reason to believe that THIS election is going to be completely different from virtually every major election before it, you should be able to guess that it will not be decided by one vote. People who guessed that the election would be decided by one vote guessed terribly.
It’s a situation roughly similar to the prisoner’s dilemma, where you get better results by taking into account the reasoning of your fellow players than by following a strictly locally-rational strategy.
If you ignore the actions of others, then you can imagine that your vote will decide the outcome. It is BECAUSE I am taking into account the likelihood that others will vote and that as a result my vote will not matter that I do not vote (leaving the aside the question of whether I believe I am informed enough that I can improve the outcome).
Let’s suppose that you succeed in convincing all “rationalists” that voting is not worthwhile.
If they were rationalists, they probably already knew this. My blog does not get a large enough readership and I do not believe I am persuasive enough to make a difference.
Now all the elections will be decided by irrationalists.
One could say that is already the case, though I also think that non-voters often less rational than voters. This is because voting requires some awareness and discipline and felons are disqualified.
So promoting “rationality” is not rational.
Let’s imagine that all of the population becomes completely rational. Everyone else realizes that the rest of the population is rational. They will all attempt to guess the expected number of people who will vote. Occasionally there will be a turnout of zero, which would likely result in a re-do. Since the probability that there will be no votes is considerably higher than now, some people will guess that their vote will count and may vote (I am assuming some degree of randomness will produce variation in the guesses of these rational voters), and since they are rational I will expect the results to be better than they are now.
October 2, 2007 at 10:59 pm
“This helps to explain why libertarians are more likely to support Republicans than Democrats.”
Well, I can’t deny that it helps, but I doubt that it’s a big part. Do you think libertarians are that rational about their compromises? It looks like rationalization to me, especially since I don’t see a correlation between introspection and party support among libertarians (though maybe I’m not look carefully enough).
I don’t have a theory of libertarian behavior, but I’d like one. I heard one once about some kind of style, maybe Lakoff mother/father style, driving libertarians to the Republican party. The theory didn’t impress me enough to remember it more clearly, but it seems to me a better approach.
October 3, 2007 at 12:06 am
Will Wilkinson has a post called “What’s the Frequency Lakoff?” wherein many commenters claim that the libertarian moral worldview is actually most like the liberal one.
Libertarians don’t have to really think through who they are to link up with. I think if they did they’d decline to participate politically at all (which is of course what I do). It does seem clear that there are some areas where the Democrats are more amenable to libertarians and some where Republicans are, and the Catallarchy post helps explain why the latter might resonate more strongly.
January 1, 2008 at 8:48 pm
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