STIGMERGY: The C4SS Blog
Ballots Are Ballast

“[A]t what point,” asks Zen Anarchist at Everything Voluntary, “is somebody libertarian enough for your vote?”

I think Zen is asking the wrong question, at least to the extent that he’s addressing most non-voting libertarians.

We aren’t not voting for Gary Johnson because he’s “not libertarian enough.”

Even if he dropped his support for “humanitarian war,” stopped promoting the “Fair” Tax, and retracted/apologized for his call to conscript every business owner in the United States as an unpaid ICE agent, etc., voting for him (or for any other candidate) would not — in the opinion of non-voting libertarians — advance liberty.

Your mileage may vary, of course, and that’s fine — I understand the various arguments in favor of voting, and unlike some non-voting libertarians I don’t consider voting to be a moral failure as such — but my own position is that if we want to get rid of the state, one easy first step to take is to join the non-voting, non-consenting majority and get on with more important things than voting.

Anarchy and Democracy
Fighting Fascism
Markets Not Capitalism
The Anatomy of Escape
Organization Theory