Politics is an immoral dead-end

[shyfrog]

if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

song lyrics pop into my head randomly like this (and I don't even need a degree for that)

[John Edward Mercier]

Thats true. When I choose not to vote, I have made a choice.
The individual freedom of will is a wonderful thing.

[Vitruvian]

Refusing to vote makes you morally responsible if your vote would have changed the outcome.  If you have a voice and do not use it, your silence is also an action.

This is fallacious.  No person has any obligation to act, unless he or she chooses to assume said obligation.

if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

True, but choice does not equal action.

[MaineShark]

Refusing to vote makes you morally responsible if your vote would have changed the outcome.  If you have a voice and do not use it, your silence is also an action.

This is fallacious.  No person has any obligation to act, unless they choose to assume said obligation.

This is correct.  And demonstrates why actually using words the way they are technically defined is so important.

I'd put good money on Seth not actually having intended to say that failing to vote is somehow a violation of ZAP.

Rather, I expect he meant that it was an ethical violation (in his world-view) to allow bad things to happen, if one has the power to stop them.

Joe

[Faber]

Under that paradigm, I've got a lot of dead and sick people on my conscious . . . .

[MaineShark]

Okay, "...if one reasonably has the power to stop them."

I didn't think I needed to add reasonableness, since it should be understood that Seth isn't likely expecting you to cook your leg to feed the hungry...

Joe

[MaineShark]

Let's boil this all down and make it simple:

I'm numbering some points, which can hopefully receive simple "yes/no" or "that is/isn't what I meant" responses.

1) The initial claim was that involvement in politics (ie, voting or otherwise assisting a candidate in getting elected) is immoral, as a violation of the ZAP, since that candidate will violate the ZAP.  Is that a reasonable summary?

In a vacuum, that would be correct.  If you are minding your own business and I hire someone to go punch you, I and he both bear responsibility for that action.

The trouble is, this is not happening in a vacuum.  The government isn't something that the voter has manufactured out of thin air to go attack others.  The government already exists, and already attacks others.  Further, as demonstrated by dictators/kings/etc, the government is not "fueled" solely by voting, and will not implode if "starved" of votes.

2) So, in reality, we have a pre-existing entity (government) which does harm to innocents, and will not stop due to a lack of voting.

3) In order for a ZAP violation to exist, there must be harm (ie, force against a person) caused by some moral actor (ie, a person, not the weather or somesuch), and that actor must have intended to act in such a manner (turning on a light switch in a room filled with flammable gas does not make you an arsonist, if you had no way to know the gas was there), and the act must be an initiation of force, not a response to an act of force.  All set, there?

Can we get simple responses to these three questions, to make sure we're all on the same page?

Joe

[Faber]

Okay, "...if one reasonably has the power to stop them."

I didn't think I needed to add reasonableness, since it should be understood that Seth isn't likely expecting you to cook your leg to feed the hungry...

Joe

I've got the reasonable power to stop a lot more deaths than I do, but the life I choose to lead (having a car, having a decent place to live, having an office, having health insurance, having ice cream) precludes this.  How do you define reasonable?  I'm not talking about cooking my leg either, I'm talking about stuff like beer and ice cream.  This is the problem with positive obligations, they never end.  If I am ethically obliged to vote, then that is an unchosen positive moral obligation being placed on me.  That's different from the NAP, which holds an unchosen negative moral obligation to not aggress.  There's an end to non-aggression, there's no end to political involvement.  For what logical reason would voting be required, but not advocacy?  It's nothing but whim.

[MaineShark]

I've got the reasonable power to stop a lot more deaths than I do, but the life I choose to lead (having a car, having a decent place to live, having an office, having health insurance, having ice cream) precludes this.  How do you define reasonable?  I'm not talking about cooking my leg either, I'm talking about stuff like beer and ice cream.  This is the problem with positive obligations, they never end.  If I am ethically obliged to vote, then that is an unchosen positive moral obligation being placed on me.  That's different from the NAP, which holds an unchosen negative moral obligation to not aggress.  There's an end to non-aggression, there's no end to political involvement.  For what logical reason would voting be required, but not advocacy?  It's nothing but whim.

I'm not arguing that it's correct.  Just saying that's likely what Seth meant.  And, again, as an ethical obligation, not a moral one.

Remember that ethics are aesthetic, not moral.  If someone behaves in a way I think unethical, I'm making a judgement of displeasure towards that individual's acts, not accusing him of being "evil."

I expect most of us hold this sort of belief, to some extent.  I know I would not want to associate with an individual who intentionally destroyed items he intended to dispose of, solely to prevent some poor person from retrieving them and enhancing his own life.  It's mean and spiteful behavior.  Not evil, but not the sort of thing I would condone, or tolerate among my associates.

I presume that there are those who dislike the fact that I drive a lot and "waste" (in their eyes) gasoline.  They might not like to spend time hanging out in my garage, working on an old Corvette, because that offends their aesthetic sense.  As long as they don't call me evil, we're fine.

I expect Seth feels similarly about not voting, when voting might reduce the harm caused to others by the government.  Not that those who choose that path are evil, but rather that they don't meet his personal standards of conduct.

Ethics are also variable in a way that morality is not.  Acting immorally (violating the ZAP) varies in degree, based solely upon the level of violation.  The same violation is the same "leve'" of evil (eg, the murder of one person cannot be "worse" than the murder of another identical person).  Ethical rules are very personal, and something that I feel to be a major violation of ethics might matter to another person as well, but not to the same extent.

Joe

[SethCohn]

I said:

Refusing to vote makes you morally responsible if your vote would have changed the outcome.
If you have a voice and do not use it, your silence is also an action.
Not to get all zen, or even yoda-ish.

To which Vitruvian replied

This is fallacious.  No person has any obligation to act, unless he or she chooses to assume said obligation.
True, but choice does not equal action.

I never said you had an 'obligation', merely that you have a 'moral responsibility' (and for the sake of argument, let's equate morals and ethics for the moment... I recognize that there is a difference, but not for this purpose right now)

There is a VAST difference between the two.
Obligation - you must, because you owe/promised/contracted
Moral Responsibility - you should, because it's the ethical/moral/right thing to do.

You might have no obligation to pull a child from a burning building.
But the stench of burning flesh you leave behind shows you have abandoned a moral responsibility, and may whatever God/ess have less mercy on your cold soul.

Joe wrote:

I'd put good money on Seth not actually having intended to say that failing to vote is somehow a violation of ZAP.
Rather, I expect he meant that it was an ethical violation (in his world-view) to allow bad things to happen, if one has the power to stop them.

Indeed.  And while voting itself might be a small responsibility, your 'share' is equal to the number of potential voters, divided by the fraction who could have changed things.  So in large scale elections, you have little responsibility, but still measurable, and in smaller local elections, you have significantly more.  If a bad candidate is elected and proceed to run rampant, and he won by 1 vote, and you didn't vote when you could have, you have a large percentage of the responsibility there: you could have stopped it, by your action.  Your inaction brought it about, just as surely as your inaction would have caused a burnt child stench.  You might have no OBLIGATION, but you are still responsible, far more than those who voted when you didn't.  Those who voted for a candidate have a small share of the responsibility equal to their combined voting for, and the least responsible are those who voted "No" or against such a candidate - they tried to stop the problem.

Then Joe asked:

Let's boil this all down and make it simple:
I'm numbering some points, which can hopefully receive simple "yes/no" or "that is/isn't what I meant" responses.

1) The initial claim was that involvement in politics (ie, voting or otherwise assisting a candidate in getting elected) is immoral, as a violation of the ZAP, since that candidate will violate the ZAP.  Is that a reasonable summary?

No, because that logic implies that not rescuing a child from a burning building is morally ok, since their parent or other guardian is the sole person responsible for them, and it's just not your problem.  The inaction of voting implies that you will live with the results, regardless of the vote totals, and want nothing to do with burning children.  But the children still get burnt.  The only moral answer is to do your best, even if the child dies, because that way you KNOW you tried to help.

2) So, in reality, we have a pre-existing entity (government) which does harm to innocents, and will not stop due to a lack of voting.

3) In order for a ZAP violation to exist, there must be harm (ie, force against a person) caused by some moral actor (ie, a person, not the weather or somesuch), and that actor must have intended to act in such a manner (turning on a light switch in a room filled with flammable gas does not make you an arsonist, if you had no way to know the gas was there), and the act must be an initiation of force, not a response to an act of force.  All set, there?

Correct.  If you set the fire, that's a ZAP violation.  Attempts to prevent/putout/rescue the fire, if it clearly would harm others, is neither a ZAP violation nor an obligation (unless you have a fireman contract), but it is a moral choice and responsibility flows from that.

Faber wrote:

I've got the reasonable power to stop a lot more deaths than I do, but the life I choose to lead (having a car, having a decent place to live, having an office, having health insurance, having ice cream) precludes this.  How do you define reasonable?  I'm not talking about cooking my leg either, I'm talking about stuff like beer and ice cream.  This is the problem with positive obligations, they never end.  If I am ethically obliged to vote, then that is an unchosen positive moral obligation being placed on me.  That's different from the NAP, which holds an unchosen negative moral obligation to not aggress.  There's an end to non-aggression, there's no end to political involvement.  For what logical reason would voting be required, but not advocacy?  It's nothing but whim.

You're assuming that moral responsibility implies you must act positively.  You have a choice - and your actions only have the limits of reasonableness.  If you choose to walk away from the burning building because you are holding an ice cream cone which might melt, I doubt people will look on it favorably... If you have a bad back which prevents you from pulls the child to safety, that's a limit of reason which you could not help.  If you are doing what you can, you are the guide (well, you and whatever God/ethics/etc) who must make the call as to how much is that limit.  Your peers will do this as well, such as:

I expect most of us hold this sort of belief, to some extent.  I know I would not want to associate with an individual who intentionally destroyed items he intended to dispose of, solely to prevent some poor person from retrieving them and enhancing his own life.  It's mean and spiteful behavior.  Not evil, but not the sort of thing I would condone, or tolerate among my associates.

Then Joe said:

I expect Seth feels similarly about not voting, when voting might reduce the harm caused to others by the government.  Not that those who choose that path are evil, but rather that they don't meet his personal standards of conduct.

No, the problem here is that we have people who feel that 'voting' is the immoral act, and people who feel that 'not voting' is the immoral act, and my point was that neither is essentially 'the truth'. 

As Shyfrog pointed out, the song says it all

if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

And so all of the 'politics is immoral' talk is nonsense, since a choice to NOT do politics is just as immoral, by any reasonable standard, if the net effect is that your inaction is what caused the bad things to happen, since you could have stopped such a thing by your vote.  Inaction is NOT a 'free pass'

The more people who don't vote, the MORE responsibility each of them has, since their combined vote could have made the difference and stopped the bad things.

[dalebert]

Seth, the problem is that everyone thinks they're voting for the "good" candidate! We all have our ideas about how people should live their lives, but LIBERTARIANS don't believe in forcing them on people. Persuade people to do what is right instead of playing this game of force where we get to delegate the violence to a politician and seemingly absolve ourselves of the responsibility of having to go out and use force overtly. It may make you feel better about what you're doing but just like the authority of the government, that warm feeling is just an illusion.

When Ron Paul uses force against perfectly innocent immigrants, just as he's promised to do, you pointed at those people and said "Go get 'em Ron! Better them than me." When some other politician speaks out in support of your pet issue and you campaign for him, you're saying "better someone else's rights get infringed on than mine." It's like an action movie where the evil villian is about to shoot someone and they beg for their life and he says "OK, then pick who dies in your place." That's the self defense justification that political libertarians are using.

[Vitruvian]

1) The initial claim was that involvement in politics (ie, voting or otherwise assisting a candidate in getting elected) is immoral, as a violation of the ZAP, since that candidate will violate the ZAP.  Is that a reasonable summary?

Yes.  I agree with this statement.

In a vacuum, that would be correct.  If you are minding your own business and I hire someone to go punch you, I and he both bear responsibility for that action.  The trouble is, this is not happening in a vacuum.  The government isn't something that the voter has manufactured out of thin air to go attack others.  The government already exists, and already attacks others.  Further, as demonstrated by dictators/kings/etc, the government is not "fueled" solely by voting, and will not implode if "starved" of votes.

Neither the pre-existence of the State/government nor the fact that the State/government already engages in aggressive violence affects the moral status of voting.  Extending MaineShark's analogy, although some "punching agreements" already may exist, and  although some people may be punched regardless of one's own actions, one still should not hire someone else to punch an innocent third party: this act remains a violation of the ZAP.     

2) So, in reality, we have a pre-existing entity (government) which does harm to innocents, and will not stop due to a lack of voting.

Agreed, with the slight caveat that non-voting is necessary, though insufficient, for the dissolution of the State.

3) In order for a ZAP violation to exist, there must be harm (ie, force against a person) caused by some moral actor (ie, a person, not the weather or somesuch), and that actor must have intended to act in such a manner (turning on a light switch in a room filled with flammable gas does not make you an arsonist, if you had no way to know the gas was there), and the act must be an initiation of force, not a response to an act of force.

Mostly agreed.  My opinion on the issue of intention, as it pertains to the ZAP, is still unsettled.

Remember that ethics are aesthetic, not moral.

Actually, normative ethics, the branch of ethics we have been discussing, is concerned with "developing theories that
determine which human actions are right and which are wrong" (Free On-line Dictionary of Philosophy): in other words, theories of normative ethics are theories of morality.

There is a VAST difference between the two.
Obligation - you must, because you owe/promised/contracted
Moral Responsibility - you should, because it's the ethical/moral/right thing to do.

A moral responsibility is an obligation, the only obligation one has no choice but to assume.  Because it is an unchosen obligation, a moral responsibility must also be negative, i.e. one is obliged only to refrain from certain activities, marked by the presence of aggressive violence.  Therefore, voting cannot be a moral responsibility because to vote is a positive act.  On the contrary, I submit that voting, as a violation of the ZAP, is immoral (or unethical, if you prefer).

And so all of the 'politics is immoral' talk is nonsense, since a choice to NOT do politics is just as immoral, by any reasonable standard, if the net effect is that your inaction is what caused the bad things to happen, since you could have stopped such a thing by your vote.  Inaction is NOT a 'free pass'  The more people who don't vote, the MORE responsibility each of them has, since their combined vote could have made the difference and stopped the bad things.

Same here: one cannot be morally obligated to take positive action, no matter the circumstances.

[KBCraig]

if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

True, but choice does not equal action.

Then making a choice at the ballot box cannot be considered force.

[KBCraig]

I've got the reasonable power to stop a lot more deaths than I do

Really? How many deaths do you personally encounter or directly influence? What would you have to do to stop those deaths?

[Dreepa]

i see that no one has refuted the voting in a town meeting where you can LOWER your taxes and your neighbor's taxes with a simple no vote.

So in that case voting is not only moral... not voting is immoral.