Why I Don't Vote

By Robert Wenzel

My general attitude toward society is one of live and let live. That is, my preferable society is one where I am left alone on my property where I am free to do whatever I choose and I leave others alone on their property where they can set their own rules there.

I have outlined a more detailed explanation in my book, Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person.

I consider elections the opposite of my philosophy. It is a vote to control how all people can live on their own properties and elsewhere, where the rules are ultimately determined for all by referendum votes and by votes for leaders, with the largest vote gainers winning the rules setting game.

In short, it is about mob rule.

I am against mob rule with every fiber in my body.

I don't want to take part in elections where nothing is determined but who sets the rules of interference against live and let live. 

I will have nothing to do with electing someone who is restraining my life or your life in any way.

In fact, I adopt an active policy of "looking the other way," if your liberty is somehow obstructed by government regulations. If you are paying someone less than the minimum wage, if you are charging a rent on an apartment that is higher than rent controls allow, if you are selling a product that is prohibited by government to be sold or if you are doing a thousand other things where government regulations prevent you from acting freely, you can be sure I won't drop a dime on you. I will look the other way. Live and let live.

Indeed, to the degree possible, I attempt to signal in my everyday life that I am part of the "Look the Other Way" Party, through actions and words so that people are comfortable around me as if there were no government regulations.

Recently, I had lunch with an acquaintance who brought along a friend of his that I had never met before. My acquaintance did not know my entire philosophy on life, but apparently, our past interactions were enough that he sensed I must have some kind of live and let live philosophy.

A topic was brought up by my acquaintance that can best be described as an activity that the government frowns upon. The discussion resulted in my acquaintance bringing into the conversation his friend who had specific information on the topic. The friend looked somewhat hesitant in discussing the details in front of me. To which my acquaintance said to his friend about me, "He's cool."

This is what I consider the mark of a next-generation civilized man that I aim to be. Someone that can be counted on "to be cool," to live and let live.

It is the rejection of mob rule. But further, my not voting is an unwillingness to participate in the false claim that voting is somehow a virtuous way to have a say in society. It is the opposite. It is participating based on a feel-good emotion built on propaganda that such mob rule is a civilized activity.

I will do much more for the liberty of my fellow man by looking the other way than by voting and thus sanctioning mob rule over my fellow man. I see a democratic government as no different at its foundation than a dictatorship. It is about a select few lording over all others by using some form of government. That is, it is interfering with live and let live.

Now, some may say, "But what if there is a clear choice between a candidate who is much less authoritarian than the other?"

My answer is that all running for office are posers who will say what is necessary to win the election and then break their promises, and on top of this, they must appeal to the masses who by their nature are shallow followers of politics and the nature of society. For the most part, the masses are just headline readers. To structure a society based on the concept that a government is needed and to be chosen by shallow headline readers, highly susceptible to propaganda, is bizarre to me.

Democracy by an almost inevitable force pushes almost all government leaders in a society toward more oppression.

As The Nobel Prize laureate Friedrich Hayek wrote in his famous chapter 10, "Why the Worst Get on Top," of his book The Road to Serfdom: 

There are strong reasons for believing that what to us appear the worst features of the existing totalitarian system are not accidental by-products but phenomena which totalitarianism is certain sooner or later to produce. Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure. It is for this reason that the unscrupulous and uninhibited are likely to be more successful in a society tending toward totalitarianism. Who does not see this is not yet grasped the full width of the gulf which separates totalitarianism from a liberal regime, the utter difference between the whole moral atmosphere under collectivism and the essentially individual Western civilization.

Further, it is not an accident that the more totalitarian a government the more propaganda is pumped out and the more opposing views are censored. Forget the vote, the masses must be controlled by manipulation of their minds. The mind is where the focus needs to be, even every brute dictator understands this.

Totalitarian rule can not survive regardless of its structure, democratic or dictatorship, if the people do not fall in line. A live and let live philosophy by the masses is the ultimate antidote to totalitarianism. 

In such a world, leaders would be looked at no different than a madman screaming on a street corner.

The idea that it is a civic and noble duty to vote is the ultimate propaganda point. It is framing society within the context that we must be ruled over, that the civilized freedom of live and let live can not be had.

I will not participate in such an evil concept. I will always, everywhere, to the degree possible, promote freedom and act in a way that releases freedom.

I would have not voted in Nazi Germany but I would have sheltered Jews in my basement. I probably would have worked with an underground group to damage train tracks that allowed trains to head to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt--I probably would have proposed the idea myself.

I would have not voted in the old Soviet Union but I would have given shelter and safe transport to the kulaks. 

Here in America, I will do what I can as the oppression intensifies.

This, of course, does not mean I don't recognize that the democratic process is the adopted process of the modern day masses in this land but, it does mean I myself will not partake in the process or stop attacking it while at the same time recognizing it as an occasional tool to put in check a greater monster.

While still trying to destroy the process that gives all political monsters their strength, support of government by the masses, I will when it makes strategic sense promote one monster over another while still decrying the entire system.

But vote, myself, I shall not. I am a member of the Look the Other Way Party.

In other words, you need not fear me, I don't vote, I look the other way. I am a civilized man.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is the author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person, and most recently, Problems With Modern Monetary Theory: A Comment on Stephanie Kelton’s "The Deficit Myth".

Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.