Quote of the Day: The Fiction of the Mass of the People

Representative government cannot express the will of the mass of the people, because there is no mass of the people; The People is a fiction, like The State. You cannot get a Will of the Mass, even among a dozen persons who all want to go on a picnic. The only human mass with a common will is a mob, and that will is a temporary insanity. In actual fact, the population of a country is a multitude of diverse human beings with an infinite variety of purposes and desires and fluctuating wills. 

In a republic, a majority of the population from time to time decides what a candidate for public office shall have the use of The State’s police power. From time to time, an action of a majority can alter the methods by which men get power, the extent of that power, or the terms upon which they are allowed to keep it. But a majority does not govern; it cannot govern; it acts as a check on its governors. Any government of multitudes of men, anywhere, at any time, must be a man, or few men, in power. There is no way to escape from that fact. 

This is from American author, journalist and libertarian Rose Wilder Lane in her essay Credo (1936) So goes the local populist media concept of the "madlang people"

Quote of the Day: The Perils of Unlimited Democracy

Of course there is something very wrong with unlimited democracies. There is simply no justification for the majority of the population in a country imposing its will on everyone. The idea is completely misguided. Why on earth should a great number of people have the authority to force a small number to obey them? There is no argument anywhere in the history of political philosophy and theory that would make out the case for this? If it were a valid point, it would imply that a large number of thugs somehow have the right to subdue other people to serve them. The famous example of the lynch mob that hangs an accused person make the point without difficulty. Expanding the will of vicious people doesn’t make it virtuous. And even if what the larger group wants is actually virtuous, forcing it on others is still not justified since they would have to make the free choice to be virtuous. Human virtue must be a matter of free choice. Only in self-defense may force be applied to others!

The election process in so called democratic countries is anything but justified or moral. Even when it hides behind the term “we” as it tries to do in too many instances--just listen to politicians anywhere around the globe and notice how often they pretend to be speaking for and acting in behalf of everyone--the will of the majority simply has no moral authority, none! Anyone who can dodge it successfully is perfectly justified to do so!

This is from Philosophy Professor Tibor R. Machan at weblogbahamas.com

How Argentina’s Class Warfare Policies Promotes Poverty

Argentina’s politics serves as an example of how the minority (political class) exploits the majority (voting poor) to perpetuate themselves into power.

In the attempt to redistribute wealth, Argentina’s government has engaged in the tightening of currency controls that has only exacerbated capital flight.

First the unintended consequences

From the Telegraph, (bold emphasis mine)

The new regulations required anyone wanting to change Argentine pesos into another currency to submit an online request for permission to AFIP, the Argentine equivalent of HM Revenue & Customs. To submit the request, however, you first needed to get a PIN number from AFIP, either online or in person. Having finally obtained your number, submitted your online request and printed out your permission slip, you could then present it at the bank or official cambio and buy your dollars. Well, that was the theory.

In practice, the result was chaos. The online system quickly folded under the onslaught of applications, while a personal visit to an AFIP district office meant bringing a camp bed and picnic hamper.

The reason for this tidal wave of requests, and indeed for the introduction of the restrictions in the first place, was the ferocious rate of capital flight from the Argentine economy that had started in 2010, when many could already see the writing on the wall. Which brings us to that thumping electoral victory in October.

Argentina’s politicians implemented class warfare policies to gain hold of political power.

Again from the same article,

When Mrs Kirchner first came to power in 2007 she inherited the social reform programme of her predecessor (also her husband), Nestor Kirchner. Hefty tax demands on the country’s wealth base were liberally redistributed to the disadvantaged, but with little investment in longer-term projects that would deal with the causes of poverty.

From the point of view of the middle-classes, the Kirchners were using taxpayers’ money to buy themselves a constituency of dependents that would keep them in power, a tactic vindicated by that 54 per cent majority last October. Anyone with moveable assets started shifting them out of her reach by transferring them abroad or converting them into dollars.

The nasty economic effects from despotic redistributive policies and a culture of dependency: capital flight, inflation and economic stagnation as investors scamper for safety elsewhere.

In 2010 the flight of capital started gathering speed, totalling $11 billion by the end of the year. In 2011, as the election approached and signs of a probable Kirchner win emerged, this figure more than doubled to $23 billion. Hence the great slamming of the fire exits as soon as her victory was in the bag.

The months since then have seen an almost weekly tightening of restrictions to close any remaining loopholes, to the extent that it has now become almost impossible to buy foreign currency anywhere apart from the black market.

Which is, of course, exactly what the government hoped for, and in that respect at least the policy has been a success. In the first six months of this year dollar flight has been reduced to $3.5 billion. But damming the flood has come at a huge cost to the economy, especially since the currency restrictions were coupled with another set of regulations that effectively imposed a near-total ban on any imported goods. 

Apart from the minor inconveniences this has caused to shoppers, such as no longer being able to buy breakfast cereal not composed of shredded carpet, the measure has also backfired on Argentine industry itself because so many of the products manufactured in Argentina still need component parts and raw materials from elsewhere. Hence, for example, the 1,600 workers laid-off from the Renault car plant in Cordoba last June, while the parts they needed to finish the job languished in a container on a Buenos Aires quayside. But you do not need to be an economist to imagine the consequences when a G20 nation suddenly adopts North Korean-style siege-economy tactics, which does make you wonder about the quality of advice the government is getting.

Eventually there will be no one else to squeeze but the gullible and manipulated poor, and signs are becoming evident…

It’s not that significant, but set alongside the downwardly spiralling prospects and the upwardly spiralling inflation (25 per cent), the frantic hunt for hard currency and the bland ministerial assurances that there is nothing to worry about, it is just another little ripple of déjà vu permeating life in Argentina.

This reminds me of all the free stuffs given by local governments in the Philippines which most people think are without costs.

Nevertheless Argentina’s politics serves as a grim reminder of the evils of democracy.

As the great libertarian Henry Louis H.L. Mencken once warned,

The state — or, to make matters more concrete, the government — consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get, and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time it is made good by looting ‘A’ to satisfy ‘B’. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advanced auction on stolen goods.

Bottom line: There is no such thing as a free lunch

Video: Explaining The Tyranny of the Majority

Should majorities decide everything?

That's the question dealt by Duke University Professor Mike Munger in the following video at the LearnLiberty.org (thanks to Tim Hedberg for the video)

A synopsis from LearnLiberty.org

Under a democratic system of government, how is an individual protected from the tyranny of the majority? According to Professor Munger, democratic constitutions consist of two parts: one defining the limits within which decisions can be made democratically, and the other establishing the process by which decisions will be made. In the United States Constitution, the individual is protected from majority decisions. Professor Munger warns, however, that these protections are slowly being stripped away as American courts of law fail to recognize the limits of what can be decided by majority rule. Professor Munger uses the case of Kelo v. New London to illustrate the dangers of confusing majority rule with a democratic system.

It is important to note that the lessons from the above doesn't apply just to the US but has been universal through modern political institutions. For instance, Europe's unfolding crisis has substantially been influenced by the rule of the majority channeled through the populist welfare state.

In the Philippines, such dynamic has been evident through Pork Barrel "personality" based politics.

Yet all one has to do is to look at how media and politicians shapes public opinion. Even trivial events have been sensationalized to bring about political importance. Events are always projected to appeal to the majority's emotions subtly intended to mold and manipulate the public's sense of social morality e.g. collectivism via "selfless" nationalism "para sa bayan", which have been and will be used as basis for legal mandates premised on the rule of the majority.

The tyranny of the majority as the great Professor Ludwig von Mises warned, (Theory and History p. 66-67)

If public opinion is ultimately responsible for the structure of government, it is also the agency that determines whether there is freedom or bondage. There is virtually only one factor that has the power to make people unfree—tyrannical public opinion. The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion. It is not the struggle of the many against the few but of minorities—sometimes of a minority of but one man—against the majority. The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority

In short, the ethical tenet embraced by democratic politics has been "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote". People essentially lose their "rationality" when they become overwhelmed by Groupthink dynamics applied to politics.

Importantly, the tyranny of the majority is just but one phase of the harsh political reality. Democratic politics has largely been about the rule of the political minority who uses and manipulates the majority as an instrument to acquire their self interested goals.

So democracy is essentially an illusion where the majority rules but through the palms of the privileged politically mandated minority.

Quote of the Day: Democracy is a Delusion that the Majority is Master of Itself

participatory democracy became fashionable in the 19th century. The main reason was probably because it is easier to squeeze and bamboozle a citizen than it is a subject. The real genius of modern democracy is that it makes the citizen feel that the government and its workings are somehow the product of his own aspirations. If he wants more money for his retirement, he presumes he can get is — provided only that enough fellow citizens share his desire. If he wants to go to war, that too is up to him and his fellow voters. If he wants to spend more money on space exploration or ban people from saying prayers in bars, the majority — of which he feels he should be part — can do that too.

There is hardly anything he and his fellow lumpenvoters cannot do — just so long as they are of one mind on the subject. That is why you so often hear people say, ‘If we could only get together on this…” They believe solidarity is the key to success. Whatever the majority wants, it gets.

Even kings had bits in their mouths and a hand on the reins. According to the “divine right of kings” doctrine, a king was a servant of God. A king was subject as well as monarch. God himself had given them the post; they could not refuse it. Nor could they refuse to carry out the job on the terms that they believed God had prescribed. God could pull on the reins whenever He wanted.

Often, monarchs were ridden by those who claimed to represent God. In the famous example from the 11th century, Pope Gregory VII got into a dispute with Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry was excommunicated. How much harm Gregory’s excommunication would do him, Henry might not have known. But he didn’t want to find out. He dressed as a penitent and waited three days outside the Pope’s refuge at Canossa. Then he was admitted and forgiven.

The democratic majority, on the other hand, recognizes no authority — temporal, constitutional nor religious — that can stand in its way. And thus it deludes itself to thinking that it is the master of itself, its own government and its own fate.

“The government is all of us,” said Hillary Clinton.

This from Bill Bonner, founder and president of the Agora Publishing, in one of his latest articles published at the Agora’s Daily Reckoning website.

In reality, participatory democracy is the manipulation of the delusional majority to serve the interests of the political minority.

Myth of the Greater Good: Philippine Government to ‘Blast’ Illegal Settlers for Flood Project

Recently I quoted Wendy McElroy’s the Myth of the Greater Good.

Yesterday’s headline news would seem like a great example

From Yahoo.com

The government is prepared to "blast" houses and other illegal structures along riverbanks and waterways if inhabitants refuse to transfer to safer areas, Public Works and Highways Secretary Rogelio Singson said yesterday.

Singson said President Benigno S. Aquino III has authorized the use of force to remove obstructions in the tributaries in Metro Manila and nearby provinces, citing the government's "political will" to implement its P352-billion flood control and mitigation program.

He said the government plans to relocate around 190,000 illegal settlers in the water channels as part of its efforts to reduce floods and minimize casualty during stormy weather.

"I just received instructions from the President that if push comes to shove, we will have to blast the houses if they don't leave within a certain period," Singson said in a Palace press briefing after presenting the flood control master plan to the President.

Political priorities that cater to the alleged “greater good” as shown in the above are reactive, presumptive, short term oriented and populist. Such also demonstrates the innate nature of the state.

The usual stereotyped responses by the government to fleeting immediate popular concerns are short term oriented, where the typical solution centers on throwing of more money at the problem, more regulations or prohibitions and or more taxes.

Never mind that the past centrally planned flood projects have been ineffective. Nobody questions if such fiascos have mainly been consequences of the knowledge problem and of the fragility of central planning operating on a highly complex environment. Everybody has been made to superficially think or believe that such blemishes have been mainly about the lack of money and or mismanagement and of the supposed necessity of government action.

So to address these, for politicians and the bureaucracy, such failures require even grander and more lavish projects. Of course these will be accompanied by the presumptions of expertise.

And anything that obstructs on their visions has to be met by force. Since environmentalism has been today’s politically correct theme, thus illegal settlers or squatters have become targets for coerced actions.

The so-called poor, whom were frequently used as convenient rationalizations for raising taxes, have been transformed into objects of political wrath.

Political priorities are dynamic. The shifting nature of government’s attention greatly depends on popular circumstances which dominate the headlines or which reflect on the public’s opinion.

A few months back, the public has been mesmerized with territorial claims dispute. And with calls for populist nationalism, the government’s response has been to increase their budget with implicit popular approval. According to globalsecurity.org, the Armed Forces modernization bill that would add 75 billion pesos ($1.8 billion) for defense spending over the following five years to acquire more weapons, personnel carriers, frigates and aircraft. Yet all such increases in military spending will hardly bolster the nation’s defense or do anything substantial to address the so-called controversial regional dispute.

Instead what these does is to pressure taxpayers into supporting non productive activities which will be used against them.

In the future, should there arise other popular immediate concerns such as natural calamities, e.g. earthquakes or tsunamis or others, expect the response to be the same—throw money at the problem, and wish or hope for their success.

Current political obsession over the environment comes in response to the monsoon rain flooding where popular opinion has been shaped by flawed ideas of environmental experts. One of whom has even blamed economic growth and urbanization as responsible for the current disasters.

Never mind if the citizens of the metropolis have shown increased wellbeing from economic development (table from NSO).

For the environmentalist religion, the argumentative framing has been to put up a strawman and beat them down.

The thrust of the environmental nirvana fallacy extrapolates that we should remain poor so as to allegedly “save the environment”. Yes, use one event (fallacy of composition) to highlight the need for socialist interventionist misanthropic (anti-people) policies by ignoring all other important factors.

High approval ratings thus becomes a license for political boondoggles premised on the supposed omniscience of “experts” whose reasoning can’t even pass the logical rigors of economics.

High approval ratings also mean that current policies have been designed based on the outcome most preferred by the median voter—Median Voter theory or populist politics.

Yet politics has always been a zero sum or even a negative sum activity.

So the Philippine government has turned the heat against the illegal settlers or squatters whom incidentally are mostly creatures of the state through the decriminalization of squatting or the Lina Law. The immoral statute has encouraged rampant squatting which has mostly been used by local politicians for election purposes.

Never mind too that despite the immorality of the actions of the illegal settlers who were mostly incentivized by law and became instruments of politicians, these people still have natural rights enshrined by Article 3 of the Philippine 1987 constitution (hat tip my beloved daughter) which holds that

No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall any person be denied the equal protection of the laws.

“The government is prepared to "blast" houses and other illegal structures” signifies that the privileges of the natural rights of life, liberty, or property only belong to the political class and to those designated by them. All the rest are standing vassals of the state and whose lives are seen merely as statistics.

This also shows that the nature of the state is institutional violence, such that violence and the threat of violence can be used indiscriminately, especially targeted against their own citizens, depending on the caprices of those that wield them.

As the great Professor Ludwig von Mises explained,

State and government are the social apparatus of violent coercion and repression. Such an apparatus, the police power, is indispensable in order to prevent antisocial individuals and bands from destroying social cooperation. Violent prevention and suppression of antisocial activities benefit the whole of society and each of its members. But violence and oppression are none the less evils and corrupt those in charge of their application. It is necessary to restrict the power of those in office lest they become absolute despots. Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violent coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm on those they dislike.

In reality, both illegal settlers and the threat of violence against them, to justify the administration’s new pet flood project, signify ethically as two wrongs which do not make right.

Yet for the current crop of politicians, high approval ratings translates to political superciliousness and the license to conduct political repression which elevates the risks of a tyrannical rule.

History shows us of the myth of the rational voter where people junk rationality in terms of politics to support “systematically biased ideas concerning economics” or widespread social ideas grounded on economic ignorance.

Populist politics have been premised on what people want to hear rather than what they need to hear.

Nazi chief Adolf Hitler’s popular rise to power should be a magnificent example. Chart from Spiegel Online

At the end of the day, the “greater good” is in essence the bamboozling of the gullible public using feel good political themes, for them to support the self-interests and the priorities of the political class coursed through institutionalized violence.

Quote of the Day: The Myth of the Greater Good

The 19th-century British individualist Auberon Herbert addressed the issue of the “good of the greatest number.” He stated, “There never was invented a more specious and misleading phrase. The Devil was in his most subtle and ingenious mood when he slipped this phrase into the brains of men. I hold it to be utterly false in essentials.”

Why is it false? Because the phrase assumes as a given that a higher morality requires the violation of individual rights. Or in Herbert’s words, “It assumes that there are two opposed ‘goods,’ and that the one good is to be sacrificed to the other good — but in the first place, this is not true, for liberty is the one good, open to all, and requiring no sacrifice of others, and secondly, this false opposition (where no real opposition exists) of two different goods means perpetual war between men.” [Emphasis added.]

Herbert is relying on two intimately related theories: first, “the universality of rights”; and, second, “a natural harmony of interests.” The universality of rights means that every individual has the same natural rights to an equal degree.

Race, gender, religion or other secondary characteristics do not matter; only the primary characteristic of being human is important. A natural harmony of interests means that the peaceful exercise of one person’s individual rights does not harm the similar exercise by any other person.

My freedom of conscience or speech does not negate my neighbor’s. The peaceful jurisdiction I claim over my own body does not diminish anyone else’s claim of self-ownership. Indeed, the more I assert the principle of self-ownership, the stronger and more secure that principle becomes for everyone.

Only in a world where rights are not universal, where people’s peaceful behavior conflicts, does it make sense to accept the need to sacrifice individuals to a greater good. This is not the real world, but one that has been manufactured for political purposes.

Herbert explained a key assumption that underlies this faux world: the acceptance of the “greater good” itself. He asked, “Why are two men to be sacrificed to three men? We all agree that the three men are not to be sacrificed to the two men; but why — as a matter of moral right — are we to do what is almost as bad and immoral and shortsighted — sacrifice the two men to the three men? Why sacrifice any one… when liberty does away with all necessity of sacrifice?”

Herbert denied the validity of “this law of numbers, which… is what we really mean when we speak of State authority…under which three men are made absolutely supreme, and two men are made absolutely dependent.” Instead of accepting the law of numbers as an expression of greater good, Herbert viewed it as a convenient social construct, calling it “a purely conventional law, a mere rude, half-savage expedient, which cannot stand the criticism of reason, or be defended… by considerations of universal justice. You can only plead expediency of it.”

To whom was the social construct of conflict convenient? Why would a faux world of inherent conflict be created? By solving the manufactured problems, a great deal of power was transferred from individuals to a ruling class.

Herbert wrote, “The tendency of all great complicated machines is to make a ruling class, for they alone understand the machine, and they alone are skilled in the habit of guiding it; and the tendency of a ruling expert class, when once established, is that at critical moments they do pretty nearly what they like with the nation…”

Rather than solve a social problem, the ruling class had a devastating effect on the welfare of common people, who became “a puzzled flock of sheep waiting for the sheepdog to drive us through the gate.” Ironically, by claiming the collective was greater, the few were able to assume control over the many. The “greater good” devolved to whatever served the interests of the ruling class.

This is from Ms. Wendy McElroy at the Laissez Faire Books.

All the popular appeal to the emotions couched on (collectivist) 'nationalism' have been no more than vicious propaganda intended to uphold the interests of the ruling class.

Quote of the Day: A Foolish Thing is a Foolish Thing

The following quote seems profoundly relevant especially to politics and media, and has likewise noticeable influence on the financial markets or even in social networking media such as Facebook.

If fifty* million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

That’s from Anatole France, French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1921), as quoted in Listening and Speaking : A Guide to Effective Oral Communication (1954) by Ralph G. Nichols and Thomas R. Lewis, p. 74 (Wikiquote.org)

*the common attribution has been “If a million people”…