One thing Americans take seriously is the privilege of voting. We do it, encourage others to do so, and will not tolerate any infringement of it. We've passed monumental civil rights legislation to ensure all eligible citizens are not barred from voting. As the ongoing New Black Panther Party/Justice Department controversy illustrates, to this day the slightest restriction on voting attracts our attention and ire.
Through voting we assert our sovereignty as citizens. We just won't abide being disenfranchised from the political process.
Oh, that we were just a vigilant in protecting our voting privileges in our economic democracy, the market place.
Every time we make a purchase we are voting with our dollars. For whom are we voting? Those people who best serve our wants and needs, who deliver goods and services to us in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Businesses large and small compete on a daily basis for our votes. If they ask us too much money, offer products insufficient to our needs and wants, we vote for someone else.
Unlike political elections every two and four years, elections in the market place occur every day and millions of times a day. From the moment we wake and put hot coffee (or tea, or orange juice, or some herbal libation) to our lips, to the moment we put our heads on our down pillows (or foam, or orphopedic), we truly vote early and vote often.
Each of us are what Ludwig von Mises calls the "sovereign consumers" in the "economic democracy of the market." This process first occurred when free market capitalism introduced into the static, hand-to-mouth societies of old a new and dynamic approach to elevating the living standards of the masses:
"Those underlings who in all the preceding ages of history had formed the herds of slaves and serfs, of paupers and beggars, became the buying public, for whose favor the businessmen canvass. They are the customers who are 'always right,' the patrons who have the power to make poor suppliers rich and rich suppliers poor."As with political elections, those looking for our economic votes--dollars-- look where most votes can be found: the majority. The criticism of capitalism that it favors the few at the cost of the many denies the economic fact that the consumer is sovereign. Businesses that seek profit (how redundant is that?!) seek as many votes as possible. The majority represents volume, not a niche market. As Walter E. Williams puts it, who made more money, the founder of Rolls Royce or Henry Ford?
How, then, can we be disenfranchised in our economic democracy? What would limit or infringe our privilege of voting with our dollars?
Two things: Excessive taxation and excessive government intervention in the market.
Income taxation strips us of the fruits of our labor and leaves us with less of our own property. This confiscation of our property leaves us with less money. Few dollars means fewer votes to cast in the market.
More taxes on goods and services reduces the amount of goods and services Americans can afford. The less we can afford means fewer trips to the cash register, the ballot box of the market.
We have a pending tax increase looming at the turn of the year. This tax increase will deprive us of many economic votes in 2011, in the midst of a dogged recession.
Excessive government intervention in the market is the more prevalent, but less visible, way in which we are disenfranchised in the market.
With each non-essential regulation of economic transactions, government imposes new terms by which the consumers and producers must abide. These new third party terms corrupt what normally would be two parties exchanging money for goods on mutually-beneficial terms. As Thomas Sowell explains in Economic Facts and Fallacies,
"...these new terms preclude some terms that would otherwise be mutally acceptable to the parties themselves. With fewer terms available for making transactions, fewer transactions are likely to be made."Having fewer available terms for basic economic transactions equates to limiting our range of voting privileges in the marketplace. We are less free to vote for the best possible products and services, therefore more confined to the status quo.
With 2,000+ page legislation on health care, finance reform, and, possibly, cap and trade, there are hundreds of regulatory powers and agencies, and inevitable new taxes, coming our way. With this additional bureaucratic anchor on the economy, there will be a lot of voter suppression and fraud taking place. We will be disenfranchised from the private economic process of bettering our lives.
How outraged will we sovereign consumers be?
Perhaps if we start taking our voting privileges more seriously, we will demand new voting rights legislation and protection from the Justice Department. Maybe we can call it the Sovereign Voters in the Economic Democracy and Freedom in The Market Act.
