During elections, it is the custom for the various candidates vying for our votes to knock on the doors of the constituents in the riding where they are hoping to win the seat, assure the voters that you care about each and every one of them – personally – and, hopefully, convince the voters that they are worthy of their trust.
I have experienced this many times – politicians of all political stripes and polka-dots have had a discussion with me at my front door, from federal, provincial and municipal levels. This has led to interesting discussions (though usually, not particularly long ones as the candidates are eager to hit as many homes as possible in the little time available to them) and even when we do not see eye-to-eye politically, the politicians have always been on their best and most affable. After all, you never know when a neighbour is listening and might be impresses….
With the current Ontario election in its last week, I was not particularly surprised to see a political candidate on my doorstep, hoping to convince me to give him my vote. What shocked me was that almost from the first moment, the dude trolled me!
The only thing I can think of was that it was a cold and rainy evening when Ric Dagenais of the NDP happened upon my abode – so his demeanour might have been a reflection of the elements… because I cannot imagine why on Earth anyone hoping to convince me to vote for them would behave like a such a small-minded troll. Truly…
What came out of this guy’s mouth was astonishing. I find it difficult to understand what possessed him to behave as he did, to say the stuff he said. It made him sound, well, uneducated, slightly unhinged and patronizing all at the same time.
Let me expand on that.
He started ‘on script’ and asked if I had considered voting for the NDP. I said that while still undecided, I was seriously considering the Freedom Party of Ontario.
Mr. Dagenais’s eyes glazed over as he said: “Who?”
It took him a bit, but he finally remembered who that was. Then he said: “They are running a candidate in this riding?”
When I assured him that they were (Marco Rossi), he reluctantly agreed that yeah, he guessed they were.
So far, he has sounded just a bit grumpy and a more than a little ignorant – he could not even remember who was competing against him for the seat in the Ontario legislature.
Then he asked me why I was considering the Freedom Party.
I told him my honest opinion: that we needed to move towards smaller government and that I thought the Freedom Party was the best choice for people who do not like big government.
This seemed to shock him: “You think the NDP does not stand for small government?”
At first, I thought he wassimply jesting – facing a voter with insurmountable ideological differences from him, that he would depart on a light note. I was wrong. He was serious…
Then he began to explain to me that the NDP was the ONLY party that would guarantee me ‘smaller government’. With a straight face, he was honestly trying to convince me that NDP was the only logical choice for people who want to reduce the size of the government.
Now – let’s do a little recap. I was aware of more candidates in this riding than he, as one of the candidates, was. This should obviously put me into a category of ‘at least somewhat informed voter’ – or, at least, not an absolute political ignoramus who is unaware of the NDP’s policies and their inherent incompatibility with ‘small government’. OK – I am blond…and since my left shoulder has still not fully healed, my pony tail was not well centred or actually styled, just sort of sraped back off my face. And, when he knocked on my door, I was in the process of cleaning my house and dressed in my ‘grubbies’. So, I probably looked ditsy and grubby at once. Still, treating me like an idiot by offering me such transparent lies, in such a patronizing manner, was a bit of a strain on me.
In order to re-focus the conversation, I tried to explain that I thought the government should be much smaller than the NDP suggests – that governments should really not provide any services beyond the military, policing and judiciary. Pretty standard stuff – right? Mr. Dagenais had a very weird reaction to this: he accused me of wanting to live in a police state!
He got quite heated, too, leaning forward and pointing a finger to deliver the message. Needless to say, I was not prepared for such an irrational statement, nor the passion with which it was delivered. I still don’t know if Mr. Dagenais was just trolling (I hope so) or if he is truly so ill informed that he thinks that wanting less government truly means wanting to establish a police state.
I tried to explain it – I really did. I good faith and everything. But his claims kept getting more and more irrational, at one point claiming that if citizens were granted property rights, then multinational corporations would build poisonous factories across the street from my house and kill my children!
Yes, he actually went that far.
The thing he said were so irrational that I asked him to stop with the ‘straw men’ arguments because it was silly, but I don’t think he even heard me. But he seemed like he was just getting started… He actually shouted that I would build a Nazi state and demanded to know if that was what I really wanted!
Rather than stand there and continue to be insulted, I asked him to please leave. It took him several sentences to register what I said, then he looked up at me in shocked surprise – so I repeated my request. He said he guessed he’d better – and stalked off…
The encounter had left me rather baffled. I am grateful to Ric Dagenais and all the candidates for participating in the political process: without people willing to devote their time and energy and running for public office, our system would simply cease to function. People of all political opinions and views ought to have someone to vote for who represents their views. Without people like Ric Dagenais, this would not be possible – so I am sad to have had such a discouraging encounter with him.
Still, I hope this was just stress coming through, that I had unknowingly pushed some buttons that led him to troll me…and that he truly does not believe that giving property rights to citizens would lead to multinational corporations killing all the children and reducing the size of the government would lead to a Nazi-style police state.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
October 3, 2011 at 17:12
“I tried to explain that I thought the government should be much smaller than the NDP suggests – that governments should really not provide any services beyond the military, policing and judiciary.”
You don’t want your government to include a fire department? You really think that should be privatized? I wonder why Libertarians stop at military, policing and judiciary? All of those are as reasonable to privatize as is the fire department or the road network.
There really is no need for the police or military if every person provides for their own security and trades security (i.e. guns and men willing to use them) on the open market. This also allows us to get rid of the pesky judiciary.
———————–
In any event, although I do have some level of respect for the libertarian mind-set (although the Freedom party hates that word), the problem with libertarian ideologues isn’t consistency. The problem is that a libertarian society is never at an equilibrium in a democracy. Not only is it not in equilibrium, it is actually divergent.
In any society where everything is owned privately and government is minimized, the very rich quickly gain influence and fund politicians who can give them a little more (as per their self-interest).
Imagine we have a truly Libertarian society with all the standard assumptions of Libertarianism being true (i.e. everyone is concerned with their monetary self-interest). Let’s also say John (who is a fantastic entrepreneur) owns a very profitable trucking company. Unfortunately for John, all the roads are privatized and he has to pay tolls everywhere he goes. It would be much more to Joe’s self-interest if the cost of the roads was distributed among all citizens, so to minimize his costs.
If Joe really cares about his self-interest (which Libertarianism assumes he does), the first thing he will do is put a large sum of money towards the election of a politician who promises to build public roads.
Any politician who makes such a promise is guaranteed funding from all the Joes who whose self-interest merge on this one issue.
The perfect Libertarian society is thus immediately destabilized by democracy; and turns into what we have today; corporatism and oligarchy.
The only system where Libertarianism is a viable system is under a forceful dictatorship, where the benevolent dictator does not pursue, his/her own self-interest (which is a contradiction of the basic assumption of Libertarianism).
Xan says:
Much of what you say is indeed correct – but you are assuming different underlying principles than what most libertarians do…which alters the application of what they say. (P.S. I do not consider myself a ‘core libertarian’, but that is a matter of definition and labels do tend to be misleading…)
What you say about pure democracy and libertarian principles is absolutely true – which is why libertarians do not propose to exist in a ‘pure democracy’. In fact, it is quite incompatible with libertarian principles!
‘Pure democracy’ is ‘tyranny of the majority’ – and it is not a good thing, ever. Rather, libertarian ideals thrive in strict ‘constitutional democracies’ ( say, constitutional republics, like the USA, or constitutional monarchies, like Canada, and so on), where the role of the government is so strictly limited by the constitution that it cannot be subverted by the ‘Joes’ you mention.
October 5, 2011 at 06:13
Xanthippa:
Problems like the one outlined by Poyani only arise when we don’t apply Libertarian principles consistently from the ground up, or fail to carry them through to their logical conclusion.
Essential services – emergency services like military, police, fire, hospital as well as logistical services like roads, waste, standards, justice – are, well, essential. And therefore they are easily misused to accrue unjust advantage to those who provide them.
This is true no matter who provides them.
For every horrendous flaw in public control of such services, I can show you an even more nightmarish flaw in private control. And vice versa. So any argument about which of these services belong in the public sector and which belong in the private sector is utterly futile. It will just go around in circles forever, without any possible resolution.
To cut the Gordian knot, we must step back and recall the fundamentals:
1. Every individual is inherently endowed with inalienable rights, above all being the rights to life, liberty, property, privacy, self-preservation and self-expression.
2. Rightful liberty is unobstructed action by each individual according to the will of that individual and limited only by the equal rights of other individuals.
3. A collective has no rights whatsoever except to the degree that its constituent individuals explicitly and revocably delegate a subset of their own rights to it.
4. The state is a collective which has only one legitimate function and that is to protect the equal rights of all individuals equally.
When we view problems of the kind posed by Poyani in this light, we see the crux of the issue right away:
Extortion and oppression are only possible when control of goods and services becomes concentrated to such a degree that people are defrauded, coerced or otherwise obstructed in exercising their rightful liberty. That is to say, when control is concentrated to a degree that substantially impairs the operation of a free and open market.
And having seen this, the solution is obvious:
We must organize society so that such concentrations of control cannot form.
Neither the state, nor any corporation, nor any individual has the right to such concentrated control, because it always leads to extortion and oppression, sooner or later. While this is particularly clear in the case of essential goods and services, the logic is completely general.
It is true for all goods and services.
If enough people want a road, for example, they can form a cooperative to build it. The road will continue to exist as long as it provides enough benefit to enough people that they remain willing to contribute to its maintenance. People who aren’t affected shouldn’t have any say in it, nor should they have to pay for it.
And the only proper involvement of the state is to protect the rights of all concerned by overseeing the equitable splitting of large cooperatives into smaller ones when they approach a size that might impact the freedom of the market.
In short, things only turn into problems when control is concentrated too narrowly.
The problem isn’t business or government.
The problem is big business and big government.
The solution is to keep them both small.
Xanthippa says:
Thank you, CodeSlinger! Very well expressed!
October 5, 2011 at 16:23
I plan to cover this in our podcast tonight. Watch clayandwater.ca for the upload. You handled that really well. Time to get a digital voice recorder, at the very least, for such occasions.
Xan says: Thanks!
What time will the podcast be?