The Impossibility of Voting for the Lesser of Two Evils
The state is a legitimized monopolization of force within a given territorial area. While the state is a coercive monopoly, its power (and the extent of its power) ultimately rests on public support. It is not superior physical strength that allows the state to commit violence with legal immunity, but that the state is considered legitimate by the delusional masses. Those in government make up a small minority of the population and if a great percentage of those outside the state decided to not follow its dictates and instead decided to remove the clock of approval they currently give such politicians and bureaucrats, the state would be powerless to stop them. When the emperor is revealed to be naked and his mask is off for all to see, he cowers in fear and runs away. The state could end tomorrow with hardly a fight if the bureaucrats and the enforcement arm of the state decided to not obey their orders and enforce the will of the politicians.
The legitimization from the masses needn't be one of enthusiasm; passive acceptance is sufficient. Simply viewing the state as a necessary evil or inevitable or resistance being futile is enough. The truth of the matter is that an overwhelming number of people are not particularly enthusiastic about the state. And as proof of this is when they openly admit to it being evil. The idea of voting for the lesser of two evils seems evidence of this. Saying that one is voting for the lesser of two evils, or as my grandma puts it, "I never vote for a candidate, but against a candidate," reveals such lack of enthusiastic support for the state.
The purpose of this paper is to explain how there is no way to vote for the lesser of two evils (certainly when it comes to the two major parties) and that the belief that one can is wrong and short-sighted.
The first question I'd like to ask those who believe in voting for the lesser of two evils is, "How do you know the person who you voted for is the lesser evil and what proof do you have to make your case?" Pretty much everyone who votes believes they are voting for the lesser of two evils. True, some may believe they are voting for the greater good, but very few (almost none) consciously believe they are voting for the greater evil. You believe your guy (or gal) is the lesser evil, the people who vote for the other candidate believe their person is. Who is right? Are you infallible and never err? Do you always vote for the lesser of two evils or do sometimes you err? How do you know when you did? Are you delusional when it comes to knowing who the lesser evil is or is the other side? And even if you vote for the lesser of two evils, does the lesser of two evils win? Does he win everytime? How do you know when he does?
There is no alternative universe where both candidates become presidents so one can provide empirical evidence proving who is worse. It's mainly based on judgement, self-delusion and speculation. You believe you're voting for the lesser evil and your opponent thinks they are. Who is right? Is it fair to say that perhaps you're both wrong. Likewise how do you know you are voting for the lesser of two evils and not the better of two liars?
So the first problem is identifying and knowing who the lesser of two evil is.
Is the lesser evil intelligent? If so, wouldn't the lesser evil be better at hiding his evilness than the other person? If a greater evil is perhaps not only superior in evil, but in intellect wouldn't he (or she), as part of being evil, also be more deceitful and better at being unexposed? I think it's reasonable to assume that the greater evil, certainly if intelligent, would be able to make people think otherwise. It's not unreasonable to speculate that the greater evil is the one who is best at hiding his evilness and in reality appears the lesser evil.
Another problem with voting for the lesser of two evils is focusing on the short-run, while ignoring the long-run. As Henry Hazlitt and Frederick Bastiat understood, the good economist looks at both the seen and the unseen. The short-run and the long-run. In the words of Henry Hazlitt: "The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate, but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups....Economics, as we have now seen again and again, is a science of recognizing secondary consequences. It is also a science of seeing general consequences. It is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run...For depth in economics consists in looking for all the consequences of a policy instead of merely resting one’s gaze on those immediately visible.”
Therefore, what matters in the analysis is not the short-run concern of the having the lesser evil in the immediate moment, but the lesser evil overall. If voting for a lesser evil creates support for a greater evil in its wake then one is not truly voting for the lesser of two evils, but only the lesser of two evils at the immediate moment. Therefore, even if one is able to identify who the lesser of two evils actually is, it's also important to know if the lesser evil would create more gridlock or would allow more people to support his "less" disastrous policies.
They say that if you want to cook a frog the way to do it is not to turn the temperature on high quickly, since doing so will make the frog scared and jump out of the pot. The way to cook a frog to put the flame on low and slowly increase the temperature until the frog is unaware that he's being cooked until it's way too late. People are the same way. As the effective tyrant Abraham Lincoln understood, "The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it harshly." While I would moderate that and say the best way is to not enforce it at all, the second best way is to enforce it harshly. The way to end a bad law is for the masses to be disgusted at such a law and rise up against it. The more obvious the harshness and unjustness of the law is, the more apt the masses are to rise up against it. The less severe the unjust law feels the more the masses are willing to tolerate the abuse.
Successful tyrants do not implement all their tyranny at once since doing so would create pushback. Instead they do so gradually, slowing increasing the flame bit by bit until the people don't know they are being cooked. People's freedoms aren't taken away all at once since doing so would cause a rebellion, but are taken away slowly until they are powerless to prevent it. To use an extreme example, Hitler didn't start on day one sending the Jews to concentration camps, gassing them, shooting them, and doing experiments on them, but started slowly. First it was requiring people to put signs on the window of the shop saying, "No dogs, no Jews." Then it was making the Jews sit in the back of the class. Then it was making them wear a yellow star. Then greater and greater freedoms eroded until it was too late.
As I mentioned earlier, the depth of the state's aggression is dependent on the approval of the masses. Public support is what determines how oppressive the state will be. It simply isn't true that the state's power grows year by year. Sometimes taxes increase, sometime they decrease. Sometimes bad laws get created, other times they get repealed. Chattel slavery ended. Jim Crow laws ended. Alcohol prohibition ended. The DEA wanted to outlaw Kratum and only massive backlash prevented (at least for now) this from happening. The state is as oppressive as the masses let it be. No more, no less.
As Bertrand de Jouvenel explains in his excellent book, On Power, democracies are more oppressive than monarchies. The main reason for this is that democracies obscure who is the ruler and who is the ruled. Under monarchy it is clear who is the ruler, it's clear there are no term limits and he's there for life and that his kin inherits his kingdom after his death. There is no delusion of waiting it out a few years, hoping the next person will be different. There is no delusion that "the people" are in charge. But when the ruler is obscured and speaks on behalf of the people he is able to be more oppressive since his power is cleverly hidden.
What all the above has to do with voting for the lesser of two evils is that if the winning candidate is viewed as the lesser of two evils there are a few things that are likely to occur. One is that his power will be held less in check. If the voting cattle believe that the worst get on top and that the winning politicians are the greater evil they are more apt to try to keep his power somewhat in check. If they view the politicians as the greater evil they are more likely to be skeptical of the growth of the state and an increase in state power. Many people seem to trust Hillary with the nuclear codes but not Trump. Perhaps if a person like Trump was president during the Cold War people would create so much backlash and uproar to try to prevent (though not necessarily succeeding) from allowing the President sole power when it comes to deciding to use nukes, without any check. If people view those in power as looking out for the greater good and being less evil they are more likely to not question the increasing power of the state as much. If people viewed the state with greater skepticism, had no faith in politicians and viewed the winners as being the greater evil it's reasonable to conclude that the government would think a little more before they increase their power knowing how much backlash such power grabs would create.
Faith in government kills. A little skepticism, especially with those who have a legitimized monopoly of force never hurt anyone. Therefore, voting for the lesser of two evils reduces such skepticism, increases people's view of government not being as bad as the alternative, and therefore less likely to check its power and try to put constraints on it.
Another problem with voting for the lesser of two evils is that doing so creates more evil candidates in the future. I think voting for a candidate is pointless, stupid, and a waste of time. There are those who disagree. There are even those who openly reveal how the third party candidates are more principled, but because they don't think a third party candidate can win they don't vote for them. If someone openly says, "I care more about winning than principles. I will vote for the candidate who I think has the best chance of winning, not who I think is right. And the candidate who I like best and think is the most principled I'm not going to vote for and instead will cast a vote for someone I openly admit to being evil, no matter how lesser I delude myself in viewing it," what does that signal to future candidates? Such statements signal to future candidates that being principled makes you the loser and those who appease, tell people what they want to hear instead of the truth and are the "lesser" evil are the ones who have the best chance of getting elected. Since people generally run to win, when people say the most principled has the least shot at winning this tells other future candidates that being principled doesn't pay and therefore encourages a lower quality of candidates to run in the future. There is a reason that the candidates seem to get worse every election cycle and that is why. When your only standard is one of being better than the other guy, that's as high a standard as you will get and that's the type of politicians that will enter the race.
In conclusion the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils is more a way to delude yourself that you're not voting for the bad guy than it's an actual metric of how it works. There's no way to know if you're not voting for the greater liar, if seeing less evil leads to an increase in government power since such legislation feels more tolerable and so people are more willing to tolerate it. Since there's a winner-take-all system, instead of both candidates ruling side by side, there is no counterfactual to actually prove who the lesser evil actually is. And even though voters try to bully non-voters by saying, "What if everyone felt like you," they don't actually practice what they preach because when they go to the voting booth, the majority of voters don't vote for who they like best and imagine everyone feels like them, but simply vote for who they think is more likely to win and is the lesser evil. And like pretty much everything else in politics, the opposite of what you want to happen usually does.