Regardless of what it is, I am not entitled to any of these by rights. Each of these was acquired through somebody else’s resources and initiative, and I am not entitled to it. I must get whoever can provide “healthcare” to offer it to me via a mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange.

That’s mighty big of you. So when can we expect a statement in favor of immediately repealing all patent laws, which forcibly exclude generic drug makers from making “mutually beneficial and voluntary exchange” with willing patients, for a term of up to twenty years from the development of new drugs?

Greg Mankiw: My interpretation: The Dems will likely give us lower drug prices and less research into new drugs. Good news if you plan to be sick soon. Bad news if you plan to be sick in the more distant future.

Garth: Perhaps I worded poorly…what I mean is since they are already given temporary monopoly power to pay for their R&D costs etc, why give them MORE by making it impossible to compete?

Steve: Because there is a cause and effect relationship between potential profitability and the amount of capital invested in a venture. A venture with potential for only minimal profits will only attract minimal investment. A venture with enormous potential for profits will attract lots of capital. The US pharma industry has been the most productive in the world at producing new drug therapies because it is highly profitable. Reduce the profits, reduce the investment.

Greg and/or Steve:

You both seem to be worried about the possibility of too little money being invested in long-term drug research.

Just out of curiosity, how did you calculate what the most efficient rate of long-term investment in drug research would be, absent a process of free market competition?

Mankiw:

My interpretation: The Dems will likely give us lower drug prices and less research into new drugs. Good news if you plan to be sick soon. Bad news if you plan to be sick in the more distant future.

I wasn’t aware that the United States Congress was “giving us” pharmaceutical research at all. Who knew that we were electing biomedical researchers instead of legislators?

Kennedy,

American policy does a lot of bad things. Call me selfish, but I’m far more concerned with the bad things it tries to do to me. The Iraqis are way down my list.

There’s nothing wrong with looking out for yourself. My point was just that this…

We’ve lost a couple thousand soldiers in Iraq and 5K people to 9/11.

… is not a complete list of the effects of foreign policy. (And the reason that the list was left incomplete may have something to do with whoever the hell this “we” is supposed to be.)

Foreign policy mostly affects us in what shows up in the newspapers. We’ve lost a couple thousand soldiers in Iraq and 5K people to 9/11. Big whoop-de-do.

I hear that American foreign policy is having some effects on Iraqis.

Len: “Tell that to someone like Ron Paul. With term limits in place, he wouldn’t still be in congress.”

And neither would Dennis Hastert, Nancy Pelosi, Rick Santorum, Trent Lott, Ted Kennedy, Ted Stevens, …

There’s a lot more bad ones profiting from unlimited incumbency right now than there are good ones. And more importantly there’s a lot more bad policies being protected by the stifling status quo in Mordor-on-the-Potomac than there are good policies. The point of term limits is throw the bums out and prevent new entrants from accumulating and institutionalizing that kind of entrenched power.

One of the problems here is that “agnosticism” can be used to describe at least two quite distinct views:

1. Holding that, as a matter of fact, you do not know whether or not God exists.

2. Holding that, in principle, you cannot know whether or not God exists.

(1) is probably the more common usage but (2) seems to be closer to the philosophical position espoused by Huxley and other early self-identified “Agnostics.” It’s not so much that they entertained God’s existence as a non-negligible possibility, but rather that they had epistemological objections to the idea that you could even assess the possibility. In any case, I think the second usage is taxonomically more useful and more interesting, since it helps you to classify the position not only of agnostics like Huxley or Ingersoll who didn’t believe in God, but also the views of folks like Kant or Kierkegaard, who did believe in God but denied the possibility of theoretical knowledge as a basis for their faith.

Jeremy,

Furthermore, I know that my participation is interpreted as support for the institution, regardless of my electoral choice or my intent in voting.

Well, sure, but won’t your refusal to vote be interpreted—by exactly the same people—as acquiescing to the political status quo?

You could say that it’s not just a matter of refusing to vote, it’s a matter of refusing to vote plus explaining to people why you’re refusing to participate in the election. But then couldn’t you just as easily choose to vote plus explain to people why you are choosing to participate in the political process?

That said, there are circumstances under which I would vote. I would vote if I were willing to back up my electoral choice with violent action. In such a case my vote is a proxy for my own willingness to compel others to accept a just outcome. However, I see no scenario where that kind of circumstance is likely to occur.

If I lived in South Dakota, I’d vote to repeal the state abortion ban in the upcoming referendum on precisely these grounds. If Michigan ever ends up with a referendum to restore the death penalty — which is not at all out of the realm of possibility — I think that voting against that would be another clear-cut instance.

I can’t see any reason to vote that doesn’t imply that I view the state as legitimate, and therefore no way to act that doesn’t view its actions as originating in real authority, whether or not I agree with the actions.

Well, I think the problem here is that you’re giving too much credit to the State’s own legitimating myths. There are cases in which participating in a process means tacitly accepting the legitimacy of the proceeding, and tacitly consenting to the outcome. But voting, at least, is not among them. For participation to count as consent, even tacit consent, it must be the case that refusing to participate would have exempted you from the outcome. Otherwise, I can’t see how the “permission” you give to the government by voting is any different from the “permission” you give a mugger to take your money instead of your life when you hand over your wallet. Here’s how Lysander Spooner put much the same point in No Treason:

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man takes the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot —- which is a mere substitute for a bullet —- because, as his only chance of self- preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

Doubtless the most miserable of men, under the most oppressive government in the world, if allowed the ballot, would use it, if they could see any chance of thereby meliorating their condition. But it would not, therefore, be a legitimate inference that the government itself, that crushes them, was one which they had voluntarily set up, or even consented to.

Therefore, a man’s voting under the Constitution of the United States, is not to be taken as evidence that he ever freely assented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Consequently we have no proof that any very large portion, even of the actual voters of the United States, ever really and voluntarily consented to the Constitution, even for the time being. Nor can we ever have such proof, until every man is left perfectly free to consent, or not, without thereby subjecting himself or his property to be disturbed or injured by others.

I’d be happy to take an anti-electoral line if it were true that everyone who refused to vote didn’t have to deal with tax-men, law-men, hangmen, or Congressmen anymore. But it isn’t, so I don’t see how the decision to vote or not to vote, just by itself, says anything about your moral relationship to the State. (Of course, whom you vote for, and why you vote for them, might.)

I should say that I hardly think that voting is the only or the best or even a particularly effective form of self-defense against the State — I think that voting on single-issue referenda is better than voting for so-called representatives, and that education, symbolic civil disobedience, direct action, etc. are all far better than voting of any kind. So there’s not a particularly pressing reason to get out there and do it. But the opportunity cost for voting in either kind of election is fairly low, so I don’t see a pressing reason not to do it, either, and if the stakes are high it may be worth your time.

I care passionately about what happens to this country, but I will not take part in its subjugation by granting the state my tacit permission to do so. … Remember that when you vote, you’re not just agreeing to your own oppression – you’re sanctioning your neighbor’s.

Are you claiming that voting in a government election constitutes consent (permission, agreement) to the actions that the victors take?