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23 Responses to “Vindication of the Rights of Women”

1. Mona Says:
   August 26th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

   As to literacy tests for voting, I would have no problem with them except the rancid history of their use is a huge obstacle. But we have a Harvard Law Review African-American and his wife running for Prez and First Lady — blacks no longer are held down by lack of opportunity to learn to read. (What they are impeded by is a drug war which renders some 25% of their males convicted drug felons ineligible to vote.) There’s more than one white hillbilly where I live who has no business voting because s/he is dumber than a rock and votes based on pure ignorance, often of the prejudicial and jingoist variety — folks who could not tell you what the three branches of the federal govt are.

   That said, if K-Lo wants to tell GOP women it is their duty to reject the franchise, hey, I hope they listen to her!

2. Araglin Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 10:06 am

   The question of literacy tests is a really interesting one.

   On the one hand, a well-drafted literacy test could conceivably ween out those persons who know absolutely nothing, vote based on completely crazy and irrelevant characteristics (wasn’t McCain a POW in ‘Nam? Isn’t Obama that funny-looking terrist that makes home videos of his machine gun collection?), and are most likely to “buy” the slogans and other crude propaganda techniques of demogogues, spin doctors, the MSM pundit class, and the evil geniuses of electoral politics like Rove.

   On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine who one could trust to draft and/or ratify such a test (perhaps ETS?). This process would be just as vulnerable to capture by the incumbent elites, and could issue in all sorts of unimaginable badness.

   Similarly, I’ve seen it argued somewhere (Rothbard?), that the poll tax is probably one of the least bad taxes on libertarian grounds. One of the best reason’s commending this view is that a poll tax can be entirely avoided by simple abstention from voting (an agorist’s dream). Further, if properly priced, it would have two other happy consequences: (i) it would prevent people without means (standing in as a rough proxy for those who might be expected to lack a commitment to the sanctity of private property rights) from trying to use the ballot-box to “vote themselves” the justly-acquired property of others; and (ii) discourage people from voting who have little interest in (and only the most superficial knowledge with regards to) the underlying issues or candidates.

   Unfortunately, these latter arguments ignore two important and related facts: Not all persons who could not afford the poll tax are are desitute because of laziness and improvidence (in fact, vast numbers of them have been systematically robbed in one way or another by the political system and its functionaries). And, not all “property” that the poor might “vote themselves” using the ballot box was justly-acquired by its “owner.” Accordingly, for a libertarian to advocate framing franchise-eligibility rules so as to protect such “owners” from what might be entirely justifiable (restitutionary) expropriation is to fall into the vulgar libertarianism.

   Peace,
   Araglin
   Finally, not to endorse K-Lo, but I really rue the day when Lady Thatcher first donned a monochromatic pantsuit (Hillary’s orange suit was just the most recent example of the damage Maggie’s sartorial example has wrought). However, at least Hillary’s suit didn’t feature lineman-sized shoulder pads..

3. ajay Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 11:01 am

   “As to literacy tests for voting, I would have no problem with them”

   Why not? Are you saying that illiterates can’t have a stake in society? Can’t contribute to society? Can’t be well-informed on the issues?

   “On the one hand, a well-drafted literacy test could conceivably ween out those persons who know absolutely nothing”

   It must be some sort of inevitable law that any comment calling for a literacy test will always contain a glaring error.
   “weed out”, not “ween”.

4. Jennifer Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 11:16 am

   Are you saying that illiterates can’t have a stake in society? Can’t contribute to society? Can’t be well-informed on the issues?

   I’d say so, here in the year 2008. Two centuries ago, I could believe that America had a lot of intelligent people who were illiterate because they were simply too impoverished to have access to the most basic education needed to learn how to read. That’s not the case now; anyone in America who reaches adulthood without acquiring basic literacy is either very stupid or cataclysmically lazy.

5. Araglin Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 11:16 am

   Ajay,

   Please tone down the righteous fury!

   My comment did not “call[] for a literacy test.” This ought to be clear by my use of “could conceivably” and from the part of my comment beginning with “[o]n the other hand…”).

   As for the merits of your comment: Aside from extremely rare instances (people with severe mental retardation or dyslexia, or who were raised by wolves until well into adulthood?), most people who are the least bit interested in getting on in the world, who are or wish to be “informed on the issue” know how to read or could learn without much trouble. I am open to correction on this point, but found your response on this point a bit overwrought (hopefully not another glaring error).

   Finally, if one’s only way of becoming “informed on the issues” was TeeVee info-tainment “news,” I think it would indeed be nigh impossible to be genuinely informed.

   As for my “glaring error,” I do in fact know what “ween” means, but appear in my haste to have subconsciously created a portmanteau of “weed” and “winnow.”

   Satisfied?

6. TGGP Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 11:30 am

   One of the problems of democracy is that politicians will constantly be tempted to expand the franchise and then it is impossible to return to sensible restrictions.

7. Mark Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

   I don’t know about a literacy test, but perhaps a civics test (the voter could choose verbal or written examination)? Certainly, it would be nice if, at a minimum, voters understood what the government is actually supposed to be capable of. A desire to “vote oneself” the property of others or, far more often, to vote to infringe the rights of others, is a lot less meaningful when the voter knows that the government does not (or at least should not) have the power to do so.

   Alas, I suspect that it is far too late for such a test to have any real value since the current powers of government have grown so massively.

8. Daniel Koffler Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

   Wow, guys, I’m just making fun of K-Lo.

9. P.M.Lawrence Says:
   August 27th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

   Araglin, I ween you meant “wean”.

   Also, there is a vulgar misunderstanding in “I’ve seen it argued somewhere (Rothbard?), that the poll tax is probably one of the least bad taxes on libertarian grounds. One of the best reason’s commending this view is that a poll tax can be entirely avoided by simple abstention from voting (an agorist’s dream).”

   You can not get out of a poll tax by not voting. It is a tax per head, and it has sometimes been implemented using the voting system, but you are liable for payment regardless and you will be caught whenever you have to interact individually with the government - not just at the voting booth.

   If you are into least worst, “we’ve already settled that question, we’re arguing about the price” approaches to tax, the philosophically cleanest may well be a modernisation of the hearth tax that falls on energy using equipment, based on end use not transmission and charging according to capacity rather than actual energy consumption. It’s still not good. “Good” would be, no tax revenues but rather revenues from an endowment of profitable assets - but that begs the question of how the government first got and then maintains those in their turn.

10. Araglin Says:
    August 27th, 2008 at 10:11 pm

    PML,

    Let’s face it - you know way more than me. Further research induced by your mild rebuke, suggests that you’re quite right about not being about to get out of a poll tax by not voting (my bad). However (and I think this was the source of my confusion), in the past people were often disenfranchised for failing to pay the poll tax (otherwise, I’m not sure what the 24th amendment would have been for) - and from this I quite-illogically assumed that this was the only penalty for failing to pay the tax (but, I’m not sure how I squared this with my familiarity with Thoreau’s short tenure in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax over a certain invasion of Mexico…).

    Now that I think about it, the libertarian argument in favor (relatively speaking) of the poll tax was that it only minimally distorted economic decision-making (as opposed to income taxes, property taxes, tariffs in the like, which have severe, well-known distortionary effects).

    You won’t get any argument from me on your point about how even the least worst tax isn’t “good.” Nonetheless, I’d love to hear more about the hearth tax, and the modernization thereof.

11. Mona Says:
    August 27th, 2008 at 10:47 pm

    Daniel sez: Wow, guys, I’m just making fun of K-Lo.

    So you thought;
    but look what you wrought.

12. Mona Says:
    August 27th, 2008 at 10:55 pm

    Mark sez: . . . perhaps a civics test (the voter could choose verbal or written examination)? Certainly, it would be nice if, at a minimum, voters understood what the government is actually supposed to be capable of. A desire to “vote oneself” the property of others or, far more often, to vote to infringe the rights of others, is a lot less meaningful when the voter knows that the government does not (or at least should not) have the power to do so.

    I think the idea of a written or verbal civics test — of the sort folk must pass to become citizens if not born here — might be a good idea. But much as I hold sympathy with your view of govt, Mark, the test should not be slanted that way. Just a basic understanding of the federal branches, state authority, and the BoR.

13. P.M.Lawrence Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 12:57 am

    Araglin, I’ve tidied up the wikipedia article on Hearth Tax, and I will comment at greater length on this area later. You should also look at the wikipedia article on Poll Tax and follow its link to corvee (particularly the Madagascar part I contributed).

14. ajay Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 2:49 am

    Please tone down the righteous fury!

    Well, you stop arguing to deny basic civil rights to 44 million Americans, and I’ll stop getting mildly cross.

    http://www.shashitharoor.com/articles/newsweek/illiterate.php

15. P.M.Lawrence Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 3:08 am

    Ajay, your irritation stems from a cultural confusion, one that crept in as “democracy” got entrenched as a motherhood statement.

    The thing is, democracy is not an end in itself but only a means, and voting is most definitely not a “basic civil right”, it is merely itself a means to that means - highly derivative.

    Now, if there is to be a government at all, there can be no doubt that justice demands that its victims have a way to stop it dead. However, it by no means follows that all and sundry should have absolute rights of back seat driving. The mixed approach worked reasonably well once upon a time, with (say) an elected House of Commons but a government largely drawn from able people, many of whom were in the House of Lords; the Commons needed to be on side or there would be no supply, but that didn’t mean back seat driving by voters.

    Now, unfortunately, people have democracy on the brain and suppose that two or even more quite distinct issues are all fused in one. It is that that yields the apparent paradox that people ought to be able to call a halt, yet there is no sound reason that they should actually control in full, even indirectly via representatives.

16. ajay Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 7:07 am

    The mixed approach worked reasonably well once upon a time, with (say) an elected House of Commons but a government largely drawn from able people, many of whom were in the House of Lords; the Commons needed to be on side or there would be no supply,

    Wow. I can recommend some good books about British political history, if you have time.

17. TGGP Says:
    August 28th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    So the right of other people I’ve never met to run my life is a “basic civil right”? I’m with Spooner.

18. ajay Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 2:49 am

    So the right of other people I’ve never met to run my life is a “basic civil right”?

    Well, that’s one way of putting it, you sturdy individualist pioneer, you… but yes, the right to vote is a basic civil right. It’s in the Civil Rights Act.

19. P.M.Lawrence Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 4:56 am

    Ajay, that’s not an authority on the point. To adapt the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies, “well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

20. ajay Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    Actually, yes, as it happens, it is an authority on the point.

    There is a difference between civil rights and natural rights, which I think is why you’re getting confused. Natural rights are the ones which are said to be “endowed by the Creator” or whatever - life, liberty etc - on everyone, regardless of where they are. Civil (or legal) rights are established by law within a certain polity.

    For example: in some countries, there is a right to free education. This is a civil right, because it’s established by law and limited to certain areas.
    If you argue that there is something fundamental that means every human being should have the right to free education, you are arguing that free education is a natural right.
    If there was a law that said “Every citizen of Canada is entitled to a free Space Hopper” then free Space Hoppers would be a Canadian civil right. Nothing to do with any philosophical justification for all men having the right to keep and bear Space Hoppers. Civil rights are whatever the law of the country in question says they are.

    So, if a law defines a certain right as a civil right, then it is, by definition, a civil right! Especially if the law is actually called the Civil Rights Act?

    Is voting a basic civil right? I’d say so; it’s the civil right that allows people to make sure all their other civil rights are protected, by electing representatives who will protect them. Another basic civil right might be, say, the right to bring lawsuits before a fair and impartial court.

21. Araglin Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 8:28 am

    Ok, but, in that case, a law allowing this or that “denial” of a basic civil right would make the “right” itself go away, leaving you no ground upon which to object.

    You make an important point on the use of the franchise and rights to bring lawsuits and the like, as being political or legal process checks against the violations of people’s actual (normative) rights (to life, liberty, property, and the like). There’s no disagreement there, except to point out that the vote can be used as both a shield (to defend one’s natural rights from infringement) and a sword (to violate the rights of others). As far as I can tell, most so-called civil rights are like this: there’s no way to define delimit them in such a way as to only allow their defensive but not aggressive use - and herein lies the problem.

22. ajay Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    “Ok, but, in that case, a law allowing this or that “denial” of a basic civil right would make the “right” itself go away,”

    Very true…

    “leaving you no ground upon which to object.”

    Not true - it’s perfectly possible to object on the grounds that it would be a good civil right to have in order to protect your natural rights. Or on any other non-natural-rights-based grounds; for example, the utilitarian one that it’s expensive to administer a literacy test, or that it opens up the political system to bias and bribery…

    This is a good point you make - “As far as I can tell, most so-called civil rights are like this: there’s no way to delimit them in such a way as to only allow their defensive but not aggressive use - and herein lies the problem”;

    but surely the best way is to make sure that everyone has the same civil rights and can use them defensively?

    It’s a bit like the gun rights argument. There’s no way to limit the right to gun ownership so as to allow only defensive use. But if everyone has the ability to defend themselves, aggression is going to be harder…

23. P.M.Lawrence Says:
    August 29th, 2008 at 8:42 pm

    Now, who’s confused, Ajay? Have another look at my first clarification. Voting doesn’t fail to be a basic civil right from failing to be a civil right but from failing to be basic - it’s a means to an end, and so derivative, not basic.

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