Form: Argument

“WHY SHOULD YOU HAVE A VOTE?”

If you have juridical defense in matters private and public, but haven’t served, aren’t financially independent and responsible for yourself, haven’t had a family that you are responsible for, don’t run a company whose employees and capital you are responsible for, or haven’t run an enterprise whose employees, capital, and patterns of trade you are responsible for, or run a state whose entire economy you are responsible for, then why do you have a vote in any of those matters without having demonstrated sufficient ability to successfully hold that responsibility?

If you haven’t served then why do you have free speech, ownership of property?

If you haven’t had replacement number of children, then why do you also have a vote in matters of commons?

If you haven’t employed dozens, then why do you also have a vote in matters of the economy?

If you haven’t employed tens of thousands, why do you have a vote in matters international?

If you haven’t governed a state, then why do you have a vote in matters of the state?

About 1/5-1/4 of the population is informed enough to make choices. The rest are either biased to a political party, or dependent upon filtering propaganda and opinions of friends and family. We are all capable of different levels of intellectual resolution whether by level of ability, level of interests, level of knowledge, or constitution of character.

We do not have standing in matters public today – only private. The state deprived us of the user of courts in matters public – we had to invent class action to circumvent that deprivation.

But If you have juridical defense, in matters BOTH private AND public – called ‘universal standing’ – then you have defense against harmed by others private and political.

But aside from defense why should you have any opinion on anything over which you cannot demonstrate comprehension, success, and responsibility?

All government action is limited to coercion, either by informing/lying, bribery/deprivation, or force/defense. It is only the rule of law of reciprocity, the judiciary, the monarchy, and the military as last resort, that protects us from abuse of those levers of coercion.

Combine rule of law of reciprocity, with demonstrated investment and capacity for participation, with demand for truthful reciprocal speech, with houses of the classes, with a monarchy as a judge of last resort – and democracy can work.

But universal unearned franchise, political parties, single house majoritarianism, and devolution from rule of law to rule by legislation (or even rule by discretion) has proven too vulnerable to baiting the ignorant and unaccountable into hazard with false promise of circumvention of nature’s necessity for markets in everything.