Why Are You Giving Control of Your Life to Other People?

Especially THESE other people… (DN 1.16)

Cover page | Preface | Introduction 1 | Introduction 2 | Introduction 3 |

(Part I) Why: 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 1.10 | 1.11 | 1.12 | 1.13 | 1.14 | 1.15 | 1.16

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Chapter 1: WHY

1.16 — The Democracy Problem, Part 3:
Voters Are Terrible!

In the years since 2020, we have undergone a significant increase in oppression. In addition to all the obvious vectors of tyranny, we also saw a statistically impossible series of events unfold…

Sudden deaths of children and young adults. Impossibly huge increases in fertility problems and dozens of other conditions.

Increases in all-cause mortality that aren’t seen except during massive wars.

Chemical spills. Explosions and attacks on food supplies and food production. And more.

Statisticians have looked at these events and determined that it is impossible for them to have been the result of random chance. It cannot be accidents or incompetence—the rate of occurrence is simply too high. There is agency behind all of it. A plan.

Things aren’t simply melting down; they are being melted down on purpose.

But wait, there’s more…

Our overlords have openly expressed plans to move us into 15-minute cities. They have labeled words such as “freedom,” “sovereignty,” and “free will” to be an indicator of “domestic terrorism.” They are now tracking people who buy Bibles—BIBLES!—for the same reason. They have made it clear that there are too many of us, and that our very existence poses a threat to the “climate.”

For good measure, throw in the fact that many aspects of rule of law that we have come to take for granted—habeas corpus and due process chief among them—have been recently disposed of, all in the name of fighting manmade viruses and manufactured “insurrections.”

All of this is taking place in a world awash in democracies, and the nations with long-standing reputations for being the freest in the world have been the worst offenders.

Do you understand? Democracy did this.

In the face of this, it is tempting to believe one of the following:

1. This isn’t real democracy.

2. Evil people have perverted democracy and taken over.

3. We can fix this with more voting. The collective wisdom of “we the people” can prevail.

#1
It doesn’t matter whether it’s “real” democracy or not. Between 1783 and 1918, we overthrew or neutered nearly every monarchy on the planet and replaced them all with “democracies” of one sort or another. And this is where we ended up. “Real” or not, the outcome is the same. We’ve been voting—in most countries for more than a century, and in a few countries a lot longer than that—and this is what we’ve come to.

#2
It’s true—some combination of ideological forces and elite power-players are pursuing a shadowy global agenda, against the interests of most humans on the planet. By and large, democratically elected governments are not stopping them—they are abetting them. Doing their bidding. Participating in that agenda, with complete disregard for what “the people” want. What does that tell you about democracy?

#3
First, as quick aside, it is time to stop fetishizing the phrase “we, the people.” Its use by the American Founders was based in good intentions and the correct principles, but at the end of the day, it is, categorically, a collectivist idea. It is not as bad as Rousseau’s “general will” of le peuple or Marx’s proletariat, but it is of the same type. There is no “the people.” There is no collective blob-entity with its own will, its own feelings, its own thoughts. There are only individuals. Individuals may choose to work together towards a common goal, but that is not the same. The Founders did the best they could given their time and circumstances. It’s time to take the baton from them and run forward, not back.

Second, and entirely related—why on Earth would you want your fate in the hands of anyone else but yourself? Who the heck are these voters who control what happens to you?

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Back in the late eighteenth century, classical-liberal principles were very much in the air. Obviously not everyone thought exactly in lock-step, but the Enlightenment, and the classical-liberal political revolution it helped engender, were the zeitgeist of the era.

This is why the “We hold these truths…” section of the Declaration of Independence, which describes those philosophical principles, is only 111 words long, whereas the list of grievances takes up most of the rest of the document. They took the principles for granted—people were most interested in the question of whether the grievances violated those principles to a degree sufficient to justify revolution.

At the time, the Founders had no experience of modern leftism—the dominant zeitgeist to come. Its first stirring, the French Revolution, hadn’t even happened yet. So perhaps we can understand why they might’ve had a rosier view of the voters than was justified. Perhaps a majority of the voters of their day really would have served as a strong rampart for classical-liberal principles.

But their day—as are all our days—was short. Today, voters who will vote to defend classical-liberal principles are far outnumbered by those who won’t. And there is no sign of that changing any time soon. Indeed, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe extensively argues, democracy itself is a primary cause of this change in “the people.”

Greedy Little Thieves

“The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
—Frédéric Bastiat

First, we have the voters who see the mechanisms of democracy primarily as a means to acquire things that they want, at others’ expense. Classical-liberal philosophers had long feared that such a thing would happen, and by the middle of the 19th century, men like Frédéric Bastiat were sure of it.

The American Founders might perhaps be forgiven, since in their day, a much greater percentage of people would have been horrified at the notion of the state taking things by force from one person to be given for the sole and exclusive use of another. Today, by contrast, that activity is a fetish, an idol, a holy rite.

Recipients want goodies. Narcissists want to virtue-signal about how generous they are…with other people’s money. Politicians want the support that comes from both. The perverse incentives here are overwhelming.

Against that, all we have is the moral truth that the practice is wrong, and the cold reality that people ought to earn what they want for themselves, and rely on the voluntary charity of others when truly in need. In other words, given how venal and self-serving much of mankind tends to be, we will always be on the losing side of the fight. The widespread belief in classical liberal ideas that graced the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was, thus far, an historical aberration.

What mechanism of democracy, then, could possibly be used to fight back? We might, I suppose, envision a constitutional amendment:

Congress shall make no appropriation of any property from any individual, cohort, or entity to be given for the sole and exclusive use of any other individual, cohort, or entity.

But even something that explicit would not work. They would find a way around it. They would change the definition of “property.” They would define everything as being for the “general welfare,” and thus nothing would ever fit into the category of “sole and exclusive.”

They will find a way around anything. There are goodies to be taken! Taking things by force is what some humans do—what some humans have always done.

State Lovers

People unfit for freedom—who cannot do much with it—are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a ‘have’ type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a ‘have not’ type of self.

—Eric Hoffer, “The True Believer”

The next type of voter wants a more authoritarian government. There are so many reasons for this, some of which “longshoreman philosopher” Eric Hoffer explores in his masterly work The True Believer.¹

Some simply want the goodies that only a large state can seize on their behalf (see above). Some adhere to the ideology of leftism, which requires a large (and ultimately, a massive) state, and tells them that such a state is both good and a Hegelian inevitability. Some are fearful by nature, and feel like they need a large state to control the behavior of others.

Thomas Jefferson certainly noted this latter distinction, believing that it is “founded in the nature of man”—that “the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt” will seek “safety and accessibility in a strong executive,” while “the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources” are “willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government.”

We could explore the various reasons and personality types all day, but for now, suffice it to say that there is a large cohort that want larger, more active government sticking its nose into an ever-greater portion of human activity. Jefferson knew it, and hoped that the American system would mitigate the problem.

Perhaps it did, for a time. But it was never going to last.

The Programmable Hordes

Totalitarian systems have always been maintained primarily by systematic indoctrination and propaganda, injected into the population on a daily basis via mass media (without mass media, it is not possible to generate such long-lasting mass formation as that which gave rise to Stalinism and Nazism). This way, the population is literally kept on the vibrational frequency of the voice of totalitarian leaders.”

― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism

A certain percentage of the human population can, for all intents and purposes, be hypnotized into believe just about anything. Gustave LeBon famously began exploring this phenomenon in the 19th century. Recently, Ghent University professor Mattias Desmet has added significantly to the field, noting that around 30 percent of the population are highly susceptible to durable conditioning: once they get ahold of a delusion, many will continue to hold onto it no matter what. Another 30 percent or so are also susceptible, but can more easily be broken out of it by a sufficient accumulation of evidence.

Here, then, we have a full 60 percent of voters who are highly susceptible to manipulation. This is not an artifact of a corrupted system; it is part of human nature, and that nature is not going anywhere.

The press, academia, and all the other mechanisms of information dissemination will always end up on the side of the government. The government can take money (from you) and give it to them. The government can bail them out. The government can tell them what to do. You, freedom lover, what do you have to offer in the face of that? Principles and pretty words ain’t gonna cut it.

Indeed, when we say “the state,” we ought to think not only in terms of the government, but of all these other entities as well. They’re all a part of it. Which means they will ALWAYS be indoctrinating the weak-minded in favor of the state, and against you. Always.

Do you want your fate in the hands of people who can be made to believe pretty much anything?

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All of these types (and others we could easily add to the discussion) are the voters who control your life. And that’s a problem.

But even that is not the problem. The problem can be described in the form of a question:

Why should any group of people should have the authority to control the fate of any particular individual person? Even if they do it by voting.

Even if we call them by the august name of “we, the people.”

By now, you ought to know the answer.

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1. A little more re: Hoffer’s analysis, from two footnotes in my book, which is now in a completed (though unpublished) state:

Mass movements (orthodox leftism, national socialism, e.g.) attract people who crave "self-renunciation" (the desire "to be rid of an unwanted self") and who "see their lives as irremediably spoiled" and thus "cannot find a worth-while purpose in self-advancement.…Their innermost craving is for a new life—a rebirth—or, failing this, a chance to acquire new elements of pride, confidence, hope, a sense of purpose and worth by an identification with a holy cause. An active mass movement offers them opportunities for both. If they join the movement as full converts they are reborn to a new life in its close-knit collective body, or if attracted as sympathizers they find elements of pride, confidence and purpose by identifying themselves with the efforts, achievements and prospects of the movement. To the frustrated a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources." "Faith in a holy cause," notes Hoffer, is "a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves," and "[t]he less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready is he to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause." Without an independent, confident self, the focus is on external things: "A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business. […] When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need of something apart from us to live for." And, as Hoffer unequivocally asserts, all of this results in, and is concealed by a web of, virtue signaling: "The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft. What looks like giving a hand is often a holding on for dear life. Take away our holy duties and you leave our lives puny and meaningless. There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem. The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice utmost humility, is boundless." (Hoffer, The True Believer, 12–15.)

Needless to say, this does not describe everybody on the left. However, as harsh as it may seem, the historical, statistical, political, and observational evidence all support these contentions to a significant degree.

and

Here again is Hoffer with contentions about some adherents to mass movements that, though seemingly harsh, also appear to be borne out by the evidence: 

"The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy. They also crave to dissolve their spoiled, meaningless selves in some soul-stirring spectacular communal undertaking — hence their proclivity for united action."  (Hoffer, The True Believer, 24–25.)

"The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement." (Ibid., 47)

"They who clamor loudest for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society… They want to eliminate free competition and the ruthless testing to which the individual is continually subjected in a free society." (Ibid., 33)

"Freedom aggravates at least as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual… . Unless a man has the talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden." (Ibid., 31)