Political vs. Economic Votes

In a democracy or any other government that utilizes aspects of democracy (such as the constitutional republic of the U.S.), there are two main types of voting: (1) political voting, and (2) economic voting.

We're all familiar with the basic idea of political voting, but what is economic voting?

Economic voting is what one might call "voting with one's money and one's feet." Whenever you choose to spend or not spend money at a particular business, you are casting a vote. Whenever you choose to patronize or not patronize a particular business, you are casting a vote. Whenever you choose to live in City A instead of City B, Neighborhood C instead of Neighborhood D, and Home E instead of Home F, you are casting a vote. Whenever you choose between net spending or net saving during a particular time period, you are casting a vote. When you choose a college and a career, which car to drive, which supermarket to shop at, where to go on vacation, which charity to donate to, what to buy or sell on eBay... you are casting a vote. Whew -- that's a lot of votes! Economic votes are the stuff of life.

So which type of voting -- political or economic -- does the State and its allies train us from birth to worship and revere in raptured awe? Political voting, of course. There is a reason for that. It is political voting, not economic voting, that strengthens the idea that initiating force against innocent people is legitimate and morally acceptable.

Allow me to offer an analogy for your consideration. It occurred to me today that political voting is to economic voting as paper money is to gold, and as words or intentions are to actions. That actions trump words or intentions is clearly observable in business, romantic relationships, and reality in general. Paper money is an IOU, merely the intention to repay a debt with real money. Gold is real money that represents action. There is no intention to make a payment in gold. One either hands over the shiny, tangible metal or one doesn't. Similarly, political voting is a type of IOU -- a lottery ticket disguised as a virtual claim to something -- that the government offers to us: it is the intention of the government to force us to do only those things that we would have freely chosen to do anyways, i.e., to "represent" us equally and fully. But that can only happen if everyone votes unanimously on every single action the government takes. Since that obviously will not happen (if it did, what would be the point of having a government?), the government cannot make good on its intention to "represent" each of us equally and fully. It must always force some people to do certain things they do not want to do. Everyone goes into the political lottery (election) thinking, Come on, baby needs a new pair of shoes!, but not everyone is holding a winning ticket.

At the end of the day, it's freedom that everyone wants. Freedom is the gold. As long as "your" elected politician is making choices that benefit you or at least don't harm you, rather than forcing you to do things you don't want to do, you are happy because you feel free. You might even feel better than free if the government is giving you freebies. By contrast, the people who didn't vote for "your" politician are probably upset because they don't feel as free as you do -- their options are more limited. So the bizarre situation seems to be that everyone ultimately wants to be free, yet rather than simply organize themselves along purely free-market lines, they would rather form a coercive government apparatus and play with political lottery tickets (i.e., cast votes) in the hope that they'll get to keep most of their freedom or hit the jackpot by taking away everyone else's.

You are given one political vote -- and that one vote is a paper IOU, a mere lottery ticket dressed up in a cheap tuxedo.

You get to choose from an infinitude of economic votes.

Even if you have little or no money, there are ways you can freely interact with people that can make a huge difference in your community. So you can always cast an economic vote with your actions, no matter what your net worth is. It is a universally recognized "currency" in human interaction. That makes the freedom to exercise human action the gold standard in the political realm. So why do we even need political votes? Insofar as "democratic" tends to connote distributed rather than centralized control, what could be more "democratic" than the gold standard of freedom?