November 10, 2007
Your vote doesn’t count
Talk about a baptism of fire: my first experience with a televised panel debate put me up against Tony Benn, a leftist former cabinet minister famous – in part – as perhaps the most formidable debater in the country.
“You’re going to get killed,” said my wife, ever supportive. And rhetorically, perhaps I was – he masterfully trotted out his favourite sound bites, regardless of whether they pertained to the question or not.
This was almost two years ago, and one of Benn’s sound bites has had me thinking ever since. He pointed out that “in a democracy, everybody gets a vote. In the market, the poor and the homeless don’t get a vote.” Ergo, government provision of, well, anything, is preferable to leaving it to the market.
But the concept of a “vote” is meaningless when it comes to the market. If Benn’s claim means anything at all, surely it means this: that a poor person has more influence over the service he or she receives from the government than over the service he or she receives from the market. That claim means something, but it is also hard to sustain.
The remainder of this column can be read here.
Another disanalogy is what your vote (vs. your dollar) buys. Your vote buys one of two gigantic packages - a president or a congressman (at the national level, at least). But your dollar can be split into many parts and be used to buy many different products.
If we could choose to vote for every policy, power and person in government, and not be directly affected when we abstain from voting, then a vote might be more like a dollar.
It seems clear to me, at least, that the vote is a FAR blunter tool than the dollar.
Many on the social democratic left seem to systematically overestimate the responsiveness of democratic institutions and underestimate the responsiveness of markets (at least relative to one another).
Posted by: Selfreferencing | November 10th, 2007 at 7:27 pm | Report this commentI think it’s true that the market has more capacity for responding to individuals than government, but it is also true that votes have the opportunity to be about something bigger than the transaction at hand. In all, though, it’s a generally simple divide: liberals trust big government; conservatives trust big business. It’s not obvious that either one cares much about the individual until they are forced to.
Posted by: Ron Davison | November 10th, 2007 at 7:28 pm | Report this commentI think it’s your ‘ergo’, rather than Benn’s soundbite, that is specious.
Even Tony doesn’t argue that everything would be better delivered by the state, but that the market’s preference for those with money needs to be balanced through state institutions that can be influenced by everyone, rich or poor.
To argue that an individual’s vote is useless is as ridiculous as to argue that a single purchase doesn’t influence the seller so the market is flawed.
Ideally, democracy should exist at different levels - by increasing regional and local government powers for example - and this can help to make public services more accountable.
Posted by: David | November 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm | Report this commentYou cheated (Your vote doesn’t count, FT Magazine, Nov 10/11). You discussed government in terms of a marginal decision, but not the market. I reckon a single purchase of a competitor’s product has never brought ruin to a company or the end to a product line, any more than a single vote has decided who won an election. As much as I think it is important to vote in the market with a purchase, clearly it also doesn’t count at the margin. Yet in both cases, there are times and places where it is worth trying. Or maybe it is good to make it a habit in order to save yourself the trouble of assessing each opportunity.
What was your point? That Tony Benn’s statement was wrong? Or that there are limits to what politics can deliver? Or that it is not preferable to leave the provision of anything to government? Or that the poorest participants in a market society have more influence over what they receive as consumers than they do as voters? The ability of your examination of individual choice to support any of the four is …well…marginal. There’s no argument in your argument, and whether this is sloppy thinking or subterfuge, it threatens the credibility of what you write next.
Michael Mattingly
Posted by: Michael Mattingly | November 13th, 2007 at 2:41 pm | Report this comment