I’ve wrote about this before but I think it needs repeating.
Libertarians, anti-statists, and anarchists should all have a common goal, the end the state. Freedom can only be maximized when there is no government intervention, force, and coercion. Until then freedom will always be limited.
But the fact of the matter is the state isn’t very likely to end itself. Governments are far too powerful, far too many powerful people rely on government, and far too many people rely on the government for handouts.
Many of the people who want to see the end of the state see participating (voting) in the process as consent to be government. To which I completely disagree with.
Voting is no different then self defense. Libertarians believe in a non-aggression policy. Force should never be used against another private property and self ownership. But if your private property and self ownership is being aggressed upon and attack you have all the rights to defend yourself with whatever means possible, even force. So while we might detest violence it is acceptable to defend yourself with it. Voting is no difference. We might detest the state but it is no difference if you try and vote for less government, less taxes, and less coercion. That isn’t consent in the slightest.
As Murray Rothbard put it….
Let’s put it this way: Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so. Of course, there might well be circumstances — say when both masters are similar — where the slaves would be better off not voting in order to make a visible protest — but this is a tactical not a moral consideration. Voting would not be evil but, in such a case, less effective than the protest.
But if it is morally licit and nonaggressive for slaves to vote for a choice of masters, in the same way it is licit for us to vote for what we believe the lesser of two or more evils, and still more beneficial to vote for an [sic] avowedly libertarian candidates.
This is basic economics: Minimize your damn costs.
thecheekylibertarian 