Thursday 10 February 2011

Prisoner voting

Of course, while everyone has their panties wedged about this one, one way or another, no-one is looking at the crooks we're voting for. We are effectively voting to choose between people who will all extort from us with the menace of losing our liberty.

Voting is simply the mechanism by which the state justifies theft from the rest of us, in exchange for which it dribbles some of the money back to people in a manner it deems fit, creating clients and dependencies and strengthening itself at the expense of productive people.

I have laughed heartily (well, not really) at those twats who have claimed something like '"Lawbreakers shouldn't be lawmakers," say 234 MPs, while voting to break the law.' People who direct the most astronomical extortion racket in the world, people who run a Ponzi scheme that dwarfs Bernie Madoff, people who direct more slaughter than Colombian drug cartels, people who do more to transfer your money to big corporates than the big corporates do -- these are our lawmakers. They are already criminal scum, worse than any that can be found in our jails, yet they strut around, posing for photos like popinjay dandies, delivering soundbites on the news and waving bits of paper at each other and yelling like playground bullies in the Commons.

It is with no small sense of irony that I note that every single one of the people who has tweeted something like the above still remains firmly convinced that we actually need the thieving extortionists lording it over us, lest society collapse.

Cunts.

"Is it right to deny prisoners the vote and thereby ignore the rule of law?" is another bit of cockwaffle that is being waved around. Where is this enthusiasm for rule of law elsewhere in our lives? Certainly not to be found much anywhere in the life of the individual.

And where do I stand on this? Well, as far as I am concerned, there is only one kind of crime: crime which harms the body, possessions or reputation of another.

Any "crime" which involves damaging yourself, like drug use, or "damaging" the state can get to fuck. So I guess there are probably huge swathes of people I'd happily give the vote to, because as far as I'm concerned, they aren't criminals. Same for drug dealers and people who supply things that people want but are decreed illegal by the state, tax dodgers, cigarette smugglers and the rest of people who "commit crimes" against the state. Not only would I give the vote, but I'd escort them from the jail with a fulsome apology and probably compensation.

So I'd be quite happy to give those prisoners the vote and deny the vote to people who commit crimes against other people, no matter how trivial or insignificant the crime. The sanction of stepping outside the bounds of society is to lose the rights of that society.

But then I would not have anything to vote for in the first place, so really, for me, the whole fucking shambles can be summed up in one word.

Meh.

Update: Watch them give the vote to prisoners after all this folderol, anyway. Wonder what the objectors will do then?

11 comments:

Woman on a Raft said...

Good point.

kitler said...

The world of politics is of little interest to the majority of villains. Most jailbirds are usually either to stupid and disfunctional to give a fuck about voting and the smart crooks sussed out what governemnet is about long ago, hence the life of crime. All this is about is lawyers pocketing more cash.

JuliaM said...

It's the principle. Not the practical.

Mongo said...

Hear hear!

Timac said...

Obo,
Even in the purest Libertarian state, you'd still need a tax to pay for defence, police and judges. So, if you dodge this small and unfortunately necessary tax to fund all this, you should be punished too, right?

David said...

You used the word Popinjay!

Just Woke Up said...

I just spilled my coffee laughing.

Spot on with the logic however.

dangph said...

Timac, that's an interesting question. What would you do with tax avoiders in a minarchist state? I don't know. Maybe tax avoidance would have to be considered a crime. Such a state of affairs would still be an improvement on what we have now. Why do you ask? What are your thoughts on this?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Seems like a fair way of doing things.

Timac said...

Dangph,

I'm a moderately left wing libertarian so I am in favour of a bit of tax for the bare essentials plus a safety net for the worst off. I came to this conclusion and moved over from the hard right libertarian viewpoint after working in politics and realizing first hand that, inefficient though it is, sometimes and in rare cases the state does things better than the private sector. I also came to defend some sort of welfare after doing a dissertation on Rawls and the Original Position.

Mitch said...

Its amusing that they talk about allowing more people the vote while denying any real choice to the people who do.
This seems more obvious to me every day but when I point it out people think i`m mad.