Freedom in One Lesson

86.

Our Politicians Would Probably Be
Better If We Picked Them by Lot

As we near every election, Americans hear political partisans arguing more and more intensely that if we vote for them and their coconspirators, we will end up in the best of all possible worlds. It reminds me of Will Rogers’s quip that “if we got one-tenth of what was promised to us . . . there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven” (Ketchum 1973).

Such assertions are backed by get-out-the-vote efforts that even try to make voting mandatory. Despite such supercharged hyperbole and extreme proposals, there are good reasons to question whether the political world as we know it would be as good as it gets if only the best party were put in charge. In “Regardless of Choice, Vote!,” from his 1964 book Anything That’s Peaceful (Read 1964a), Leonard Read proposes a simple thought experiment that can help us consider the issues involved.

Read suggests that most officeholders be chosen by lot for single terms. In the current system, politicians and their partisans “compete to see which one can get himself in front of the most popular voter grab bag in order to stand foursquare for some people’s supposed right to other people’s income.”

At first, the idea seems shocking. After all, “voting is deeply embedded in the democratic mores as a duty.” Nevertheless, “any person who is conscious of our rapid drift toward the omnipotent state can hardly escape the suspicion that there may be a fault in our habitual way of looking at things.”

What motivates this thought experiment? “If it be conceded that the role of government is to secure ‘certain unalienable rights, that among them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,’ by what stretch of the imagination can this be achieved when we vote for those who are openly committed to unsecuring these rights?”

Read looks at how this limited role of government would reduce the vigor with which political abuses now invade our lives. Consider his conclusions: “ With nearly everyone conscious that only ‘ordinary citizens’ were occupying political positions, the question of who should rule would lose its significance. Immediately, we would become acutely aware of the far more important question: What shall be the extent of the rule? That we would press for a severe limitation of the state seems almost self-evident.”

Instead of focusing on who can most effectively package their preferred violations of the Constitution, people would focus on the foundational constitutional question: what is it that government does better for us with our own resources than we could do ourselves. Only the very small number of things that pass this test can improve the general welfare. The current bipartisan momentum to increase the size of government would be reversed. Read lists some probable consequences of this:

Political parties—now more or less meaningless—would cease to exist. . . . No more campaign speeches with their promises of how much better we would fare were the candidates to spend our income for us. . . . An end to campaign fund-raising. . . . No more self-chosen “saviors” catering to base desires in order to win elections.

Political parties are, in substantial part, coalitions that invade our rights. Voting that would shift control from one coalition to another cannot defend these rights. But selection by lot would eliminate the strategy of bundling promises of who will be Peter and who will be Paul in the political game that robs Peter to pay Paul. It would also undermine the lies now sold and free up for more productive ends the massive resources dedicated to selling them. And, as a bonus, many Americans would have lower blood pressure. It would be “an end to that type of voting in Congress which has an eye more to re-election than to what’s right.”

If, as some claim, the prospect of reelection provides incentives for politicians to advance American society, it also encourages them to keep the dominant political coalition in office by harming those who are not in it. And where the Constitution (and, perhaps even more so, the vision of the Declaration of Independence) is more honored in the breach than the observance, Read thinks the latter behavior will clearly dominate.

The mere prospect of having to go to Congress during a lifetime . . . would completely reorient citizens’ attention to the principles which bear on government’s relationship to society . . . on which the future of society depends. In other words, the strong tendency would be to bring out the best, not the worst, in every citizen.

Read here comes back to the big question of what government can do for the well-being—and to the satisfaction—of society. For Locke, such a function boils down to more effectively enforcing our rights against attack by foreign nations, neighbors, and the government itself. This would allow the maximal expansion of mutually voluntary arrangements, make us better citizens, and free us from government impediments to creative improvement.

But selection by lot isn’t going to happen any time in the foreseeable future, so why bother thinking about it?

Merely to let the mind dwell on this intriguing alternative to current political inanities gives all the ammunition one needs to refrain from casting a ballot for one of two candidates, neither of whom is guided by integrity. Unless we can divorce ourselves from this unprincipled myth, we are condemned to a political competition that has only one end: the omnipotent state. . . . [Alternatively,] such scrutiny may reveal that voting for candidates who bear false witness is not required of the good citizen.