Ethics of Voting, Revisited

Can I vote ethically? 

Voters, in effect, direct candidates to implement the promises the candidates made during their campaign. We can think of the election as creating a conditional contract - if enough people vote for it, it takes effect. Although the voters cannot literally instruct the office holders after they are elected and have no recourse if the candidates renege on their promises, by voting the voters do in some sense give instructions in the form of those campaign promises to their chosen candidates. The candidate says “this is what I plan to do” and the voters reply, in effect, “yes, you do that”. And so one prerequisite for voting ethically would be for the candidate one chose to solemnly and credibly promise not to use the power of their office unethically.

Principals who direct an agent to act for them share responsibility for the consequences of the action. If the principals have no right to act on their own, they cannot delegate such a right to their agents.

Even if the deed is never actually done, a principal cannot ethically command an agent to do something unethical. Just as I would be wrong to shoot at you and miss, I would be wrong to give the order to kill you, even if no one obeys the order. Principals can direct agents ethically only if the principal gives ethical directions and the agent carries them out ethically.

Voters lack some of the rights of principals, but still share responsibility for the plans of the candidates, as if the candidates acted as agents for the voters. The details differ, but the same principle applies. If I intend to cause something to happen, I am responsible for the consequences. I am included among the persons who should pay compensation or make amends.

So, the ethics of voting depends on the ethics of the candidate and the candidate's campaign promises. If I could hire the candidate to carry out those instructions without violating ethics, I can vote to have them carried out without violating ethics. Voters can vote ethically if they find candidates who credibly promise ethically to fulfill their campaign promises. From a voluntaryist standpoint, this appears theoretically possible but practically impossible.

Voluntaryist ethical concerns about the ethics of political office holders might include the ethics of:

• instructing enforcers to enforce legislation and taxation upon persons who have not consented,
• fulfilling the duties and prerequisites of office, such as taking the oath of office,
• accepting a salary and an office budget funded by taxes,
• perpetuating the institution of government, the social environment it creates and its illusion of legitimacy.

I wonder, will the candidates exceed their campaign promises in an unethical way? Are they credible? I could argue that principals share no responsibility for an action taken by their agent if the action violates their instructions. But I could also argue that this holds only if the principals have good reason to treat the agents as credible or have the power to monitor and end the principal/agent relationship as soon as they learn of unethical behavior. If the principals know that the agent is prone to ethical violations, and they have no means to nullify their contract, they can hardly avoid taking some responsibility for entrusting that person as their agent. If there is no way for me to monitor or constrain my agents, I must take extra care in selecting them, and if I fail to choose wisely I share the blame for the agents' actions.

So the question, “can I vote ethically”, boils down to, can I find a candidate that credibly promises to behave ethically while holding office? By voluntaryist standards, no such candidate has ever run for office or likely ever will. Such candidates could theoretically behave ethically, but only if they would vote “no” on every bill except repeals and refuse to accept any tax-funded benefits until taxation and obedience to legislation were made voluntary. 

Social contract criticisms

I’m not enough of a scholar to really illustrate the history and details of other peoples social contract theories, but I sketch out some notes below. 

Hobbes' idea amounts to a metaphorical social contract that justifies anything the state does. Any situation that we consider bad because of the depredations of the state can be made worse by imagining a mob carrying out the same depredations but adding new victims in the form of those who for whatever reason would have been safe from the state. No one can amend the social contract and the state faces no limit. It is purely pragmatic, based on no principle more lofty than “might makes right” or “as bad as this is, it could be worse.” This version of the social contract justifies anything done by the state, including genocide.

Locke had the idea that rights precede the social contract. The social contract merely provides a means to enforce those pre-existing rights.

Rousseau wrote about the general will and direct democracy on a small scale. 

The social contract means government authority consists of the consent of the governed. Citizens consent to pay taxes and obey laws, and the state promises to protect the rights of citizens. Both the citizens and the state accept obligations as parties to a contract. Agents of the state may coerce citizens because the citizens have agreed in advance and because the state organization fulfills its obligations. But if they have not agreed, or if the state fails to fulfill its bargain, then the social contract fails to justify political authority.

Huemer gives several criticisms of the social contract. The social contract as described by Locke (or any of the others) is not historically accurate (as pointed out by Hume). Citizens cannot be viewed as giving passive or tacit consent, because consent is not voluntary if 

• Consent was obtained under duress, if one must obey or be forced to sacrifice something to which one has a right,
• explicit dissent has been expressed, which overrules implicit consent,
• explicit refusal to consent would not change anything (the contractual counterpart will do the same thing regardlesss of consent), or
• the counterpart reneges on its contractual obligations, or in fact has none.

Huemer argues that these exceptions describe all existing states to some extent, so that none truly can claim authority on the basis of the consent of the governed. We have a right to free association, including a right to our jobs, our friends and families, and property rights to our land. If we cannot opt out of state authority without emigrating and sacrificing all these, the first condition applies. If anarchists are subjected to the same laws and taxes as superpatriots, then the second and third conditions apply. Huemer cites several court cases that conclude that the US “federal” government owes no specific obligation to any specific person, but only a general duty to the citizens as a group. Hence, if the social contract obligates the state at all, it has failed to fulfill those obligations. Huemer says, “One cannot maintain that the individual owes duties to the state but that the state owes nothing to the individual.” He concludes that social contract theory does not apply to the USA or any other modern state.

Huemer has a separate chapter dealing with the hypothetical social contract of John Rawls. Read Huemer's book if you are interested, I’m not prepared to give a serious summary of that argument.. 

Andrew Kern has a series of blog posts criticizing conventional social contract 

Conventional approaches to social contract seek to justify existing states by weakening the meaning of consent. The bottom line is, if we regard the social contract as an actual contract requiring actual informed consent, existing states cannot use the social contract to justify their activities. But what if we used a strong concept of consent and seriously applied the idea that legitimate authority flows from the consent of those affected? I want to answer that question next.

[This is part of my project on the purely voluntary society]

Purely Voluntary Society project meta information

This blog has been a bit random so far. I am embarking on a project that will unify at least most of the new entries. I’ve been generating tons of notes on various ideas that are related. I guess if I was well organized and knew what I was doing they would turn into a book outline. But I don’t know what I am doing. So I’m going to start putting out blog entries on a single narrow question each. Each entry will include questions that I’ve left unanswered that I am aware of. Then eventually I will write entries to answer each of those questions. I hope that at some point this network of related ideas will be able to be turned into an outline that makes some sense. But at first it’s going to skip around a lot.

The first questions consider the idea of the social contract. I want to review Heumer's reasons (and some others) for rejecting the conventional social contract justification of state authority. Then I will consider how the social contract idea changes if we apply a stronger version of consent.

As with all my blog posts, in these I am thinking out loud. Please put suggestions, criticisms or corrections in the comments. I will appreciate it.