A Duty Not to Vote?

I am not going to address the circumstances under which one ought not to vote because the election is corrupted: there is only one candidate, the count will be manipulated, to show up at the polling place would be to risk life and limb, or the election will have some other fundamental defect. These require fact intensive case by case analysis. What I am going to consider is a toy case in which it would be wrong to cast a vote because doing so would conflict with values underlying democratic processes. Then I will touch on some alternative voting procedures and finally will consider on whether toy case would generalize to a typical government election.

Libertarian Island III: Coercion and Degrees of Freedom

Where we left off shipwrecked Ann, whom I have called a “left- libertarian,” has not been able to convince shipwrecked right-libertarian Bob that it’s only his wrongheaded ideology that makes him want to paddle away from Isle One, with its easier and more abundant life, towards Isle Two.

The Desert of the Rich

Other things being equal, people deserve bad things for bad things that they do and good things for good things that they do – that they themselves do. A daughter does not deserve punishment for something her father did before she was born, neither does she deserve a reward for good things her mother did. No matter how much the parents may have deserved their wealth, the children do not deserve their inheritance.

Of course, the daughter in question may be entitled to receive some or all of her parents’ fortunes. She would not be entitled to any part that her mother stole, of course. Deserved status is not heritable. Entitlement is heritable under the right conditions. Bequeath or give away something to which you were not entitled, however, and your beneficiary will also be unentitled except under rare circumstances. If an heir is entitled to wealth, it is not because of her merit, but simply because her parents so chose to give her assets that they possessed and that were not subject to superior claims of others.

Libertarian Island II: Individual Rights

In this second installment of the adventures of shipwrecked Libertarian Bob and Left Libertarian Ann somewhere in the south seas.

Choosing Libertarian Island

Shipwreck survivors on unknown islands are beloved by the writers of fiction, by cartoonists, and also by philosophers. Crawling up the beach on day on the island I have in mind were a "libertarian" Bob, and Ann,  who might, for want of a better label, be called a “left libertarian,” as will emerge. The pair were spotted by a stranger who helped them into the shade of the nearest palm.

Self-Ownership and Individual Rights

It has been said that all rights we have as human beings are rooted in individual self-ownership. If taken literally, and not as some sort of metaphor, this cannot be right.

Some talk suggesting self-ownership is the source of rights might be nothing more than rhetorical flourish, elaborating the observation that we have rights with respect, e.g., to our hands that are, in many respects, at least as strong as our rights with respect to our gloves. That I will not dispute. I here take issue only with those, perhaps few in number, who have been carried away and truly embrace the theory that the fundamental basis of individual rights is a property right of self-ownership

The Moral Underpinnings of Democracy and its Degree-Affected Variant

Motivated by some ideas that percolated around in the New Left, this essay argues that the core justification of democracy is not that it maximizes utility (which it often does pretty well) or even that it recognizes equality of citizenship (which is essential to any just political order), but instead that it is the best projection into the sphere of social decision making of the values of individual autonomy and liberty. It follows that democracy keyed to the stake that each voter has in the outcome will sometimes realize democratic values more fully than does one citizen one vote.