Posts Tagged ‘Governments’

“The lesser of the two evils”

Monday, October 20th, 2008

“In a democracy, the nonvoters can hadly be said to support the rules, and neither can the voters for the losing side. But even those who voted for the winners may well have voted for the ‘lesser of the two evils’. The interesting question is : Why do they have to vote for any evil at all ? Such terms are never used by people when they act freely for themselves, or when they purchase goods on the free market. No one think of a refrigirator as an “evil” - lesser or greater. In such cases, people think of themselves as buying positivive goods, not as resignedly supporting a lesser bad. The point is that the public never has the opportunity of voting on the State system itself; they are caught up in a system in which coercion over them is inevitable.

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Setting all these matters aside, however, and even granting that a state might be enthusiastically supported by a majority, we still do not establish its volontary nature. For the majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.”

Power and Market - Government and the Economy” by Murray N. Rothbard.

This makes a good point don’t you think ?