I posted this answer:
The question implies a false and dangerous dichotomy--me or them. But personal freedom is the only thing that is genuinely good for everyone, so long as each of us respects each others’ liberty rights. Any other way of voting cannot be good for everyone, because it would mean voting to sacrifice the lives, wallets, morals, and good of some for the unearned benefit of the lives, wallets, morals, and good of others. Such a lose-win proposition is clearly not good for everyone.
I vote for myself, my own wallet, my own morals, and my own good, and expect everyone else to do the same for themselves. You could say it’s not good for “everyone” in one sense: It’s not “good” for predators or power-lusters, for example. But by extension, that’s what’s best for every honorable person. To vote otherwise would be to self-sacrifice my own life, wallet, morals, and good, which by definition would definitely not be good for everyone, since “everyone” means all individuals and I’m part of “everyone.” My right to govern my own life by my own judgement, to earn and use property, live by my own chosen morals, and pursue my own good, is by definition good for everyone, because when you defend your own rights, you defend the rights of all.
Predators or power-lusters don’t see it that way, of course. People who primarily “vote for what is best for everyone” are declaring that they know what is best for everyone and that they get to impose, through their votes, what they think is good for everyone else’s lives, economic affairs, and morals. Well, I don’t recognize anyone’s right to tell me what is good for my life, my wallet, or what morals I should live by.
There is no either/or. Every individual has the equal and inalienable moral rights to his own life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness. A just society reflects those moral rights in its government, laws, and elections. I have those rights, and I respect the same rights of others, and no government should have power to alienate any of us from those rights. When elections become about what the majority votes is “best for everyone,” we are on our way to totalitarian Democracy, which means tribalism, social breakdown, and civil war. My vote is always guided by who or what is most likely to protect and advance—or least likely to infringe—those rights.
* [Quora is a social media website founded by two former Facebook employees. According to Wikipedia:
Quora is a question-and-answer website where questions are created, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. The company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21, 2010.[3]Quora aggregates questions and answers to topics. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users' answers.[4]
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Related Reading:
Why I Declined to Wear My 'I Voted' Sticker
Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right
It’s MeFirst, or Slavery. Take Your Pick
Books to Aid in Understanding Rational Selfishness
'Social Justice' Collectivism in American School and Culture
Moral Rights and Political Freedom by Tara Smith
Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’
America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters
The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur
America's Revolutionary Mind: A Moral History of the American Revolution and the Declaration That Defined It by C. Bradley Thompson
1 comment:
In a system of central control of human relations consisting exclusively of enforcing unalienable individual rights, this question wouldn't come up. In such a system, all voting in elections for political candidates and for legislating would be for what's best for everyone. This would automatically be what's best for one's self, one's own wallet, for morals (even if not for one's own), and for one's own good. Outside this one command of unalienable individual rights, what is for one's own good is up to one's self.
But, under our mixed system of today, we must usually choose from alternatives of what's bad for everyone. Sometimes, an alternative of what's best for everyone, under unalienable individual rights, comes along for us to choose.
Under unalienable individual rights, voting is always win-win, even if one votes in the minority, therefore 'looses'. In our present mixed system, voting can be win-win or lose-lose, but it has gotten to be usually lose-lose now. (It can't be win-lose. There's no such thing, not even in the short term despite its seeming that way, and of course never in the long term.)
Under pure statism, even the rulers ultimately lose along with their victims. (Stalin seemingly got away with it, but not really. Same with Castro. He was island-bound. We'll see about Xi.)
As of moral right and of physical practicality, we must establish unalienable individual rights, thoroughgoing, no exceptions. This will yield win-win, even in politics, law and government.
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