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Courtesy of Conner Boyack:

Connor shared this a couple of months back, and one unthinking response had this: “Nobody wants a society like this, Connor, that’s why Libertarians don’t get votes.”

Connor had not attached this directly to libertarianism, or voting. But we here at TPOL will.

Despite the claim, by no means does “nobody” want a society like this: we see estimates over the years that as many as a third of Americans believe something like this.

So why doesn’t that translate to votes for Libertarians in elections? Not a silly question, but one offered by people without eyes that see and ears that here: look at far too many Libertarian candidates, for one. Consider StarChild, for example. Or Bob Barr for another. Or the 2024 presidential candidate.

Next, many people are afraid of wasting their vote – including letting the worst of the two most- likely-to-win choices win.

And of course, as times go on, more and more people drop out of electoral politics as a waste of time and “just encouraging them guys.” Add that to too many people who don’t know much if anything about being libertarians, or have the wrong idea, or are fixated on just one issue, and it becomes clear that most who don’t vote for libertarian candidates don’t have government waste of money high on their reasons for not voting for LP candidates.

Of course, this neat, simple flow chart touches on a symptom of the evils of government. Perhaps an obvious and important symptom, but still not the cause of government evil. Government has money to spend – money it gets because it is evil, immoral, and a parasite. And money is power – at least in the 21st Century in these Fifty States just as powerful as Mao’s dictum. (Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun (枪杆子里面出政权) .)

Things like highways, playgrounds (and parks in general), and sports arenas are high on the priority list of government officials. Why? Well, they make people happy – these are nice things to enjoy and if you can pretend that you aren’t paying for them directly? That’s even better. And for the corrupt politicos, it is a win-win-win situation: people are happy, your monetary backers (companies and unions especially) get lots of money to build and operate and maintain these things, and you enjoy the usual benefits of “bread and circuses” when it comes to staying in power. (Bread and circuses were a tool in governments’ kit long before Rome.)

And there is a “downside” to this as well: just as doing so many things can reward those in favor, they can also be used to punish people out of favor. Obviously, denying a new (or improved) road is one way. Choosing locations for certain “essential facilities” like airports or wastewater treatment plants or many other things can punish communities or even individual or groups of landowners. It creates powerful ways of forcing compliance.

Notice that while transportation is the most familiar and perhaps easily understood aspect, this idea of “government provides things that people don’t want to pay for” applies to many other things: military defense, recordkeeping, research, and much else. All of these offer ample opportunity government to employ “carrot-and-stick” tactics.

Keep in mind that government chooses what to fund and what not to fund, supposedly based on the idea of “democracy” – of majority rule. But this is a myth: even as children some here at TPOL noted that in many towns and cities, the government built and operated golf courses. In the past several decades, those local governments have built and operate such things as skateboard parks and playing fields for certain sports. All at taxpayers’ expense, of course. But other facilities, such as shooting ranges and bowling alleys (to name just two) are not furnished “free” government money: individuals and private groups are expected to provide for these.

In other words, what services governments provide is a form of social engineering. Often subversive.

This technique of Connor has some very good value in explaining why and how government can and should be controlled. In the future, TPOL may suggest specifics.

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