How Democracy Fails

Hans Herman Hoppe is the go-to anarchist on democracy, and can elucidate how we got to the mess we are in now.  Little noted is the USA was not created as a democracy, but a republic.  There is a big difference, the founders knew the difference, and there is a reason they made their choices.

In Washington state, there is the strange prohibition era anomaly in which the state distributes the booze.  Waste fraud corruption high prices blah blah blah.  I buy my booze in California, since I buy good stuff and its at least  1/3rd off.  Stolichnaya I can get for some 60% off.  I had a talk with a pilot who had a nice little side business running rum into Oregon.

Costco, Safeway and other heavy hitters backed a citizens initiative to repeal the laws, and make a freer trade in booze in Washington state.  It polled favorably.  It lost.  The numbers show state workers voted to retain state jobs.  Union solidarity and all that.

In-house unions are anathema in the labor movement.  Govt unions are in-house unions.  I am a free market anarchist, but I have no problem with free market unions.  No problem at all with workers organizing to advance their agenda vis a vis the management.  I abhor govt unions, but love a free market union.  Bbut, of course, the govt interfered with the free market unions, and they want bad.    Jimmy Hoffa fought govt interference, and was railroaded into prisons.  Nixon pardoned Hoffa, and Hoffa went back at injustice, so he ended up six feet below stall 311 in shopping mall parking lot.

I asked a govt union worker, a friend, why she voted against the initiative, in spite of the fact she enjoys a high quality tipple herself. Solidarity of course.  But doesn't she know that voting for govt is just making a worse mess of the economy?  Yes.  Doesn't she know that these bailouts and all other plans just kick the can down the road and make things worse.  "I kick the can down the road."

If structurally we cannot, in a democracy, rule ourselves, how can we do so in anarchy.  We cannot.  In a big country, it is always easier to vote for someone else to pay.  This is why freedom seems to thrive only in small countries, say about 5 million people, Switzerland, Hong Kong.  We need  Canton Helvitica, a New Hong Kong, within USA.

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