Political Minorities, Economic Niches...
It is often said that democracy and the market are one and the same thing. Democracy is political liberalism, market is economic democracy... It is often said, even more surprisingly, that somehow the first form of liberalism is nobler than the second... But democratic propaganda cannot disguise the political process into something different from a criminal activity.
Politics forces uniformity; the market, on the other hand, is intrinsically pluralistic. To be a minority on the market just means to form a market niche. You don't need to obey the political winner; you don't need to fund their decisions; you don't need to buy their "products". In politics, losers' preferences are irrelevant: minorities cannot work to implement what they prefer.
Minorities cannot reduce losses by astensionism: entering and exiting the game is not a voluntary choice. Those who don't vote always lose. They can't withdraw unhurt.
The only way to be safe is to win. And to win means to ally with other people in heterogeneous groups, with no common ideas but power-hunger, with no common scope but victory. To mantain this conglomerate united, you need to rob the loser and divide the spoils: politics causes conflict, to obtain power, to avoid being victim of other people's power, to justify the means through which power has been achieved.
On the market, on the other hand, everybody chooses what he prefers. Minorities are not submitted: they form niches. Minorities remain free to choose: they don't need to obey. Minorities cannot be forced to foot the bill of the winners' decisions. And if you want to cooperate, it is because you think cooperation to be mutually beneficial. Cooperation is more stable, and it is not based on deprivation and loot.
If markets were a democracy, everybody would be drinking Coke instead of Pepsi; everybody would be reading Nozick instead of Rothbard; everybody would be eating Angus beef instead of Kobe beef... if we wouldn't like a world like this, why we tolerate such a great part of our lives to be controlled and determine by the democratic political process?
Market is freedom. Democracy is not.
posted by Libertyfirst @ 10:35 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I have to read "Democracy, the god that failed".
Good post. Don't you think in Democracy minority can have a great power, rather than majority, because they vote compact.
For a politician is more useful to grant privileges to compact minorityes rather than an eterogeneus majority. It's very difficult to have votes from a majority, instead it's easy to grant a great privilege to a minority and take their votes. This privilege, divided by a great number of people that carry on the consequences, don't cause a really losses of vote, but the great privilege granted to a minority produces an increasing of votes.
This is why omosexual people have greater importance in the actual world.
Sorry for my english.
I finished reading Hoppe's book last week, in italian. It is a good book, full with interesting arguments, I think I will talk about it soon.
Anyway, as Hayek noticed, "democracy" does not give equal opportunities to rule one's own countrymen to every citizen. "interests" which are more easily organized will have a higher political impact than other lobbies...
Useless to say, to give previleges to everyone is tantamount to have no privileges and a huge bureaucracy: almost every citizen in democracy is a loser from the political process.
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