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> As you said, as long as you can defend what you have, it "belongs" to you. ...in which case, there is no ownership of property. Someone else can just come along and take it. Honestly, embracing this kind of "natural law" does make sense to me, as it's least internally consistent, but I don't see it as synonymous with calling the cops because someone takes something that a legal document says is "yours". > Government is, by itself, a huge body of asymmetrical power against individuals. You do not "choose" it, when you are born you are already, automatically, subject to it. > When you buy some goods, however, every dollar you spend is a vote for a product, a company. Should that company screw up, you will not buy it again. I sense some cognitive dissonance here. So when it comes to politics, people are always stupid, picking tall wealthy men with good hair and no conscience; but when it comes to spending decisions, people are always smart, based on their rational self-interest. Now, I'll concede that capitalism has a faster, tighter feedback loop: you generally don't have to wait 2-6 years to change your mind. (Why there has been no public advocacy for rethinking the concept of only voting periodically, I have no idea.) That aside, I see the same phenomena in both arenas of human decision-making. People are mostly smart, left to their own devices, but they are sometimes irrational with both voting decisions and purchasing decisions. Moreover, there is a strong incentive in both arenas to manipulate those decisions, and the industries we have developed around this goal have become extremely efficient: electioneers, marketers, public relations, and all other sorts of "compliance professionals". In my mind, the question is not whether democracy is good, but whether it is possible. I have yet to conceive of a social structure in which the smart and/or rich cannot play the game at the expense of the foolish and/or poor, whether it plays out at a political rally, or a corporate boardroom. |