20A040 Politicking Cannot Cut It  by Jim Davies, 10/6/2020    

There are plenty of reasons why a zero government society will not be brought about by taking part in the Statists' political circus, but not long ago I came upon one I'd overlooked. Perhaps you hadn't, in which case you might want to skip this edition of the ZGBlog and maybe cruise its archive.

It came to me from a question posed on an online forum I infest, by a person called "JeanSC". She's a lady in Chicago, and my only clues about her are that she's in the leather-tanning business and is one of the more thoughtful among those taking part - albeit, like most, a Democrat.

The topic of the day concerned the wage disparity between US and Chinese workers, and hence the alleged "exportation of our jobs" to that and other low-wage countries. I had suggested that protectionism doesn't work and that the proper fix would come only from Libertarians, who understood economics.

JeanSC balked at that; just what, she asked, was the Libertarian solution?

I replied to explain that given equivalence of the work content, which the market alone is well equipped to ensure, freely-negotiated wages will inevitably reach their natural level so the urgent need was for the FedGov to repeal all its pro-labor laws so that it could take place. I added that this was not a solution that voters would likely favor, since they are used to getting something for nothing (other than a vote.)

The result will be a serious reduction of wages for unskilled labor here, until they reach the prevailing worldwide rate. Who would vote for that? - not many. There is the problem. The voting system (the "political arena") is structured so that inevitably, people vote themselves out of a job.

As I also added, a free market is the only actual solution that exists; but that doesn't alter the fact that few would vote for it; it's politically DOA. That is not a flaw in the fix; it's a flaw in the political process. That being so, the political process will continue to keep US wages high through legislation until the rest of the world has taken over all unskilled labor and everyone here is unemployed. Proof indeed that politics is deadly.

Proof also that the LP is on the wrong track. If its candidates are honest and tell it how it is, they will never attract enough votes to win. They are stuck at ~1%. Or if they win much more than that, they will have been fudging the message, as has actually been done by all Prez candidates since Harry Browne; and even they didn't pull many more than that percentage. This year's team of Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen is the best since Harry, as can be seen from their attractive web site; but I'll be surprised if they do better. Honesty and politics don't mix.

This is true not just about outsourcing. A zero government society will see no interference in migration, racial preferences, warfare, welfare, zoning, schooling, reproduction, anything. Everyone will do whatever he or she wishes, with his or her own life only. So who today would vote for open borders, aside from knee-jerk Democrats desperate to import some future Dem voters? Who would vote to allow retailers and schools to exclude patrons on the basis of race? Who would vote to allow his neighbor to use his property for commercial rather than residential purposes? - and so on. Answer, few or none.

All those changes and many more are wholly desirable and the resulting freedom would bring its own equilibrium (for example, a racist restaurateur would lose trade to competitors if he excluded Blacks) but anyone now in the political arena will attract no votes by proposing them. Such changes can happen only after the political arena has vanished and been replaced by the market arena.

This reasoning tells us very clearly that a libertarian political party is doomed from the get-go; if its candidates tell the truth, offering genuine freedom, they cannot possibly win election. Or if they do what it takes to win election, they cannot tell the truth. To be true to the message, they will always be asking the voter to vote against his own perceived immediate interests, and that's hardly rational.

The whole purpose of voting is to get some benefit at the expense of someone else, and there is nothing whatever in a true libertarian platform or program that can offer any such thing; it is a contradiction. An LP candidate can win votes by diluting his message (they often do) but if he stays on message, he will win only those cast by people who have already understood the message - but who have not yet quit the political arena altogether, as I have. Hence, the recurrent 1%.

Can a faithful LP not, nonetheless, act as an educational service, to bring about and enlarge that set of people? - yes, I think so; it can, and it has. I'm one result. Whether it is the most efficient way to achieve that education becomes the next question, and I would say no, it is not by any stretch. It's horribly expensive.

In contrast The On Line Freedom Academy can do the job fully, for nothing. If you make use of it.