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RE: (Voting = Violence) = Dangerous Leftist Idea
WOW a lot of great philosophy in the comments. I live for that sort of thing. That being said, I think that the argument can be summed up rather succinctly. Voting is tacitly violent, but not necessarily explicitly violent.
My evidence for this is that (assuming the voting system is functioning and not fraudulent):
- Coercion/threat of force is inherently violent, and
- Government is coercive. Therefore,
- Endorsement of the mechanisms of government, namely use of force, and in the case of democracy majority rule, is endorsement of violence, and therefore voting is tacitly violent at worst and illogical at best. To illustrate why it is illogical, I will use simple logic.
A is your wants, B is the wants of the first option on the ballot, and C is the wants of the second option.
Because people must vote in the presence of ignorance of many issues and ramifications, A necessarily cannot align with B or C. Therefore:
A~B and A~C (let B and C be Donald and Hillary if you wish).
Voting is done in ignorance because it is having your say in a non-specific way—that is, you agree or disagree to a proposition or person, although neither the proposition nor the person are influenced by you. Thus, you are not having your say, because you are not engaging in a discourse that is commensurate with your wants, needs, and the world that you live in. This is why money and markets exist! Money allows us to live a lifestyle that we want, because we have an endorsement given to us in exchange for our labor. The government steals a share of this endorsement.
Because the price mechanism is constantly finding the optimal price (to the extent the given market is unregulated), spending and earning are far greater uses of personal power than voting ever could be. Assuming crypto is a success and the medium of exchange is freed from government tampering, then the issue of ignorant consent could be solved (using US dollars is not only using a poorly informed price mechanism, it is also tacitly violent).