New Rome, Meet the New Visigoths

I’m generally skeptical of grand historical theories, but Brink Lindsey presents a pretty persuasive one here. The basic notion is that through much of history, great civilizations have been threatened by primitive nomadic ones, and they have been vulnerable to the threat precisely because of their virtues: division of labor, use of agriculture, relatively fixed location, etc. Although the advent of guns ushered in a long hiatus in this general pattern (which Lindsey explains with plenty of historical detail), the pattern reemerged with a vengeance on September 11. As he puts it, the barbarians are at the gates once more.

Lindsey is on record as something of a war hawk (check out the archives of his blog if you doubt me), so it would not surprise me if the sequels to this article (two are promised) involve justifications for war. So it’s probably worthwhile to mention the anti-war implications of the historical parallels offered in the present article. The Roman Empire, the greatest civilization of its time, fell in large part because of the depredations of marauders and barbarians. And the barbarians were motivated to attack, in part, because of the things that made Rome great, such as its amazing wealth. But was not imperial overstretch also a large part of the problem? The Roman army was constantly on the march, conquering new territories and enforcing its rules on foreign cultures. Yes, the culture of Roman civilization was arguably superior in many respects to the cultures dominated (I’m not arguing the cultural relativist position here), but that’s not the point. The citizens of Rome were threatened by the Roman government’s willingness to incite the ire and violence of other societies.

I wonder if Rome might have survived longer if instead of sending armies into the barbarian hinterlands, it had instead focused its resources on defending its citizens against the barbarians at the gates.

UPDATE, added 2/12/07: A lot of people are finding this old post because of Glenn Reynolds's link to the one below. I should note that I posted a correction to this post here.

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Stop the Rape Penalty

This country has a highly active anti-death penalty movement. But where, I wonder, is the anti-rape penalty movement? That is the question that jumped to mind when I read Stuart Banner's excellent blog post about the strange inconsistency of anti-death penalty activists who cast a blind eye to other needed prison and sentencing reforms. I found the following observation especially telling, given that the supposedly "humane" alternative to death is life in prison:

I'm always reminded of William Witherspoon, whose death sentence was vacated by the Supreme Court in a famous case in the late 1960s. A few months after the decision, when no one was paying much attention to him any longer, Witherspoon was resentenced to 50 to 100 years in prison. His new sentence was "worse than the death penalty," Witherspoon wrote to his lawyer. "Is not 100 years death? All they have done with this sentence is to change the method of execution. Hell, they could have just cut the voltage down and gotten the same effect."

Banner doesn't mention the issue of prison rape, but it was fresh my mind because of a recent article in the L.A. Times Magazine (Nov. 3 edition) by Fred Dickey: "Rape. How Funny Is It?" (available at the L.A. Times website for a price). Most people don't give a damn about prison rape, probably because of the widespread notion that the victims deserve it. But most people would also agree that rape is as serious a crime as murder, or close to it, so you'd think the anti-death penalty crowd would at least weigh in on the subject.

Indeed, I think prison rape is probably a *more* pressing problem than the death penalty, for at least four reasons. First, it's much more common. There are fewer than 100 executions per year in the U.S. (according to the ACLU's death penalty page), whereas the number of prison rapes per year is probably in the thousands or even tens of thousands. It's hard to make a good estimate because the problem hasn't been studied extensively, but in one survey 1 in 10 male prisoners reported having been raped, and there are currently 2 million people serving time in the U.S., so "thousands" is probably a conservative estimate. (See, for instance, the testimony of Lara Stemple of the organization Stop Prisoner Rape.) Second, unlike the death penalty, prison rapes occur without the official approval of a single judge or jury. Third, prison rape is inflicted without any sense of proportionality to the crime. You can go to prison and get raped for a minor drug offense, for instance, whereas the death penalty is only imposed for the very worst crimes. Fourth, prison rape often turns out to be a de facto death penalty, since rates of HIV infection in prison are as much as 10 times the national average.

If the death penalty is a problem, then isn't prison rape an even bigger problem?

UPDATE, added 2/12/07: I see that Glenn Reynolds has linked to this post. Interested readers might want to read this follow-up post on that I wrote a couple of years later on the same topic.

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Reductio Creep

Turns out that Julian blogged on the same phenomenon I did in my last post, and he dubbed it "reductio creep."

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Triumph of the Absurd

There must be a name for this phenomenon: In opposing position X, someone observes that the same arguments that support X would also justify some other position Y that appears, at the time, to be patently wrong. Maybe the point is made as a reductio ad absurdum: "If you support X, you must also support Y, but Y is clearly absurd." X nonetheless gets adopted. Then, some time later, Y is proposed in all seriousness, and the absurd becomes reality.

Exhibit 1. When lawsuits were launched against the tobacco companies (and later, gun manufacturers) for the voluntary actions of their customers, some defenders of the wacky notion of personal responsibility noted that some of the legal arguments employed against the tobacco and gun companies could be targeted against (say) food companies that sell high-fat, high-cholesterol foods. But we would never actually blame companies for individuals' poor eating habits, right? Wrong - now people are suing McDonald's for tempting them to eat unhealthy fast food products.

Exhibit 2. When I hear people defend "buy American" campaigns, I often ask if they would support similar discrimination against products made in American states. Should Texans refuse to buy automobiles manufactured in Michigan? Should New Yorkers resist the urge to buy products made in New Jersey? With the exception of Pace Picante Sauce (which is made in San Antonio, by people who know what picante sauce is supposed to taste like), I thought the very notion ludicrous. Well, it has come to pass. Earlier this week I saw a television advertisement urging me to "Buy Californian." It featured people saying things like, "I'm not an actor, but I am a Californian. And I buy California vegetables." Right - we wouldn't want Californians to become dependent on Florida's farmers, because someday we might go to war with Florida, and then what would we do?

If this phenomenon doesn't already have a name, it needs one. After consultation with my brother the linguist, I propose to call it "absurdum evenit" - the absurd comes to pass. (Or perhaps the more alliterative "absurdum advenit" - the absurd arrives.)

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Canine Evolution

I found this L. A. Times article fascinating. Apparently, millennia of interaction with humans have shaped the genetic code of domesticated dogs in surprising ways.

In the genetic journey from wolf to lapdog, dogs developed a unique genius for sensing human intentions, as the interplay of handler and hound shaped the biology of canine behavior in ways that scientists only now are beginning to understand, new research shows. … From birth, dogs are fluent in the human text of hand gestures and facial expressions. Their ability to understand humans is better than chimpanzees -- humanity's closest relative -- or the gray wolves from which dogs are descended, according to the first direct comparison of the species.

What's most intriguing to me about this (though the article doesn't discuss it) is that it blurs the line between natural selection and artificial selection. Symbiotic relationships are a well established part of biological evolution, and nobody would suggest that those birds that instinctively pick the teeth of hippos are the result of the hippos' attempts at artificial selection. So what, exactly, is different about the relationship between humans and dogs? Is it the fact that people have *deliberately* bred dogs to have certain traits? That's true, but this article draws attention to the many traits of dogs that arose from interaction with humans without deliberate human selection, but as a corollary to it. Dogs with a greater ability to sense human needs and emotions were more likely to survive, even if humans didn't specifically try to breed in those abilities. So where does artificial selection end and natural selection begin (or vice versa)?

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Straphangers and Other Migratory Animals

In response to my post below about L. A. bus service, Amy Phillips observes that New Yorkers aren't that different from Los Angelinos:

They're doing the same thing on the NYC subway system. A group called "Straphangers" (www.straphangers.org) is trying to get the MTA to run more trains, and simultaneously lobbying to keep the fare down when the MTA has said they need to raise it to sustain the system. Apparently, Straphangers claims that the fare hike is just a ploy by unionized transit workers to bilk us out of our money, and so we should fight for our "fair share" of taxes paid by upstate New Yorkers to finance NYC transit. There are so many flaws there, I don't even want to get started.

Indeed. There's plenty of silliness to go around when it comes to mass transportation, though I think the silly quotient is lower when it comes to subways. New subway companies can't enter the market in the same way new bus companies can (or could, if city government didn't protect the MTA monopoly), so the argument for market competition doesn't work quite as well. But as Amy suggests, there is still something irksome about unions and NYC commuters fighting over money extracted from people who have nothing to do with the subway whatsoever.

By the way, "straphanger" is pronounced "strap hanger," and not "straffanger" as I thought the first time I saw that word in print.

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Why Do the Special Kids Get All the Best Presents?

According to this op-ed, the Republicans are dusting off an old proposal to give school vouchers to special-ed students. I'm supportive, of course, though I'm bothered by the federal nature of the plan (the federal government having no constitutional authority in the area of education whatsoever). But I figure this is something that's probably already federalized, so adopting a more market-like approach probably won't hurt anything. Still, something strikes me as a little bizarre about applying voucher logic only in the case of the mentally challenged, as though run-of-the-mill (and gifted) students don't really need a better education system. If this proposal goes through, educational choice will effectively be available only to the rich and the retarded.

That's hyperbole, of course, since many middle class families manage to cough up the money for private school even while paying taxes into the public system. My point, though, is that educational choice is not affordable without vouchers to a substantial fraction of American families. Vouchers for special education students would be great, but they would do nothing for the vast majority of families with typical children.

Interestingly, as the op-ed observes, in the status quo special-ed students already have the ability to attend private schools with public funds when the public schools' special ed programs aren't up to snuff. If the public schools can't provide them with what they need, the justification goes, then let them go to the private sector. My question for those who support such private-school transfers for special-ed students is this: why not apply that justification to all students, including the poor and the middle class? If they (or their parents) feel the public schools don't provide them with what they need, let them go elsewhere. It's evident that many public schools are not just failing in special education - they are failing across the board. In this regard, special ed students aren't so special.

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Why the Bush Administration is Focusing on Saddam Instead of Al Qaeda

I think this old parable -- one of my favorites for describing the effect of mathematics on the economics profession -- is a pretty good description of current foreign policy as well.

A man is crawling around on his hands and knees under a streetlamp, apparently looking for something. A second man comes walking by, stops, and asks the first man what he's doing.

"I'm looking for my keys," he replies.

"Where did you lose them?" asks the second man.

"In those bushes over there," replies the first.

"So why aren't you looking over there?" asks the second man.

"Because the light is so much better over here!"

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Another One Rides the Bus

I heard on the radio this morning that the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union is suing the MTA to get them to increase the size of their bus fleet. They complain that there are not enough buses to accommodate all the passengers waiting to ride them. As you can find out by following the link above, the Bus Riders Union was formed in 1994 to lobby for improvements in bus service in the L.A. metro area.

I can hardly think of a better illustration of the folly of organizing the production of goods and services through bureaucracy instead of markets. There's something truly bizarre about consumers having to launch lawsuits and lobby lawmakers to force businesses to sell them more of their product. Do we need a Fast Food Eaters Union to make McDonald's and Wendy's open more stores? If bus lines were operated by the market, rising demand would result in a temporary rise in price, which would increase profits, induce higher production, and eventually attract new competitors. Eventually, the new competitors would drive the price back down.

I'm simplifying, of course, because there are idiosyncrasies created by the state provision of roads, curbs, and sidewalks. Allowing "jitney" bus service could result in the destruction of regular bus service, because the jitneys could swoop in on the established bus stops and scoop up the passengers just ahead of the regular schedule. That would reduce the financial returns to having established stops and schedules, possibly leading to their disappearance. But these factors do not rule out market solutions, as Daniel Klein, Adrian Moore, and Binyam Reja have argued persuasively in their book on "curb rights." The use of specialized property rights in curbs (bus stops and the like) could allow for the emergence of a market in mass transportation without the bureaucratic nonsense.

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Knock Knock. Who's there? Osama. Osama who?

Why do I oppose invading Iraq? Here's why. The article's conclusion puts it in a nutshell:

One thing should not be forgotten: prior to September 11, much of the national security focus of the Bush administration was on the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to so-called rogue states (now the axis of evil) and the missile defense thought to be needed to combat that potential threat. America was blindsided by the al Qaeda terrorist threat. If we focus once again on potential threats that have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks and ignore the real threat at our doorstep, we do so at our peril.

Now for the Pop Quiz.

1. Which of the following persons is most likely responsible for the destruction of the World Trade Center?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Kermit the Frog

2. Which of the following persons has been connected to the bombing of a Bali nightclub frequented by American tourists?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Alfred E. Neumann

3. An audiotape released last week says that the United States should be expecting terrorist attacks in the very near future. Whose voice is allegedly on this tape?
(a) Saddam Hussein
(b) Osama bin Laden
(c) Mr. Magoo

I should think the choice of targets would be obvious. And lest I be accused of assuming mutual exclusivity where it doesn't exist, remember that defense resources are limited. Tax dollars are scarce. The time and attention of the administration are scarce. We can't afford to fight every battle at once, so we have to set priorities. So… before we pick a fight with Saddam, shouldn't we deal with the guy who already picked a fight with us?

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From the Role Reversal Department

According to this L. A. Times article, the Justice Department is investigating possible antitrust violations by the nation's two largest alternative newspaper chains, which allegedly agreed to sell each other their competing divisions in Cleveland and Los Angeles in order to reduce competition. The case is ironic in a couple of different ways, as author Tim Rutten observes:

If federal prosecutors find sufficient evidence to pursue a case, it would be a novel moment on at least two counts: One would be the spectacle of the nation's leading alternative weeklies, with their roots in the insurgent journalism of the 1960s counterculture, being treated like a 19th century cartel. The other would be the very strait-laced John Ashcroft's Justice Department entering the legal lists to uphold the commercial rights of massage parlor operators, escort services and phone sex operators, which provide the bulk of the chains' classified advertising.

The case is, unfortunately, consistent with current antitrust doctrine as exemplified in the recent Microsoft case. In that case, the defendant could be characterized as a monopolist only by adopting a very narrow interpretation of the market in question: MS was said to have a monopoly on *proprietary* operating systems for the *PC* platform, thus ignoring the software company's two main competitors: non-proprietary operating systems like Linux and the proprietary operating system used on Apple computers. The case against New Times Media and Village Voice Media relies on a similarly narrow definition of the market in question: the companies are being treated as competitors in the market for *alternative newspapers*, thus ignoring the vast amount of competition both papers face in form of mainstream print and broadcast media, not to mention the Internet.

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Titillating Supreme Court Action

Okay, somebody out there must have read the same article I did about the Victoria's Secret case. I read it within the last couple of days, on Salon.com I thought, but now I can't seem to find it anywhere on the web. It had to be the funniest description of arguments before the Supreme Court I ever read. The author cleverly categorized every argument made by the attorneys and justices in lingerie terms -- e.g., the "Miracle Bra" argument, the "lift and separate" argument, the "secure underwire" argument, etc. And the names actually fit the points they represented, though I can no longer remember well enough to give an example. If anyone knows where I can find this article, please send me the URL so I can post it here!

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Smoking on the Silver Screen

I heard on the radio yesterday that the UN's World Health Organization is pushing for the MPAA to give R ratings to all movies that show people smoking. The MPAA has been resistant to WHO's pressure so far, and I hope they continue to stand firm. Giving R ratings would reduce or eliminate whatever usefulness the ratings system has. For all its faults, the ratings system has this virtue: it attempts, in a rough and ready fashion, to reflect the values shared by most people, and specifically parents, in this country. Most parents would rather not have their children see graphic depictions of sex and violence, and an R rating currently provides a reasonable indicator of whether a movie has either of those things. The fact that parents are somewhat more permissive about these things now than they've been in the past is reflected -- I think rightly -- in the loosening of standards for receiving an R ratings. Some movies that would have gotten an R in 1970 would probably get a PG or PG-13 now.

If the MPAA started giving R ratings to movies just because they show people smoking, it would mark a shift from trying to *reflect* values to trying to *shape* them. As a result, parents will find an even greater discrepancy between their own standards and the standards embodied in movie ratings. If parents see an R rating in the status quo, they can reasonably infer that the movie contains graphic sex or violence, from which the average parent wishes to protect her child. Under the WHO's proposed change, an R movie *might* contain sex or violence -- or it might just show a person lighting up while having a civil conversation.

And then there's the fact that the rating system is used to prevent young people from seeing certain movies. Under the proposed system, a 16 year old would be unable to see a movie that depicts smoking without parental accompaniment, even though he can see people smoking cigarettes on the street any day of the week. That's onerous for both the teen and his parents. If the ratings system has any value at all, it's reducing the burden of parenting by providing useful information and restricting viewing only of the movies that typical parents would object to their children seeing. Giving an R for smoking doesn't fit the bill.

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Kick 'Em to the Curb

I really enjoyed this Non Sequitur comic that appeared in the paper late last week, but I can't figure out how to post it here without scanning it -- and I'm far too lazy for that. So I'll just describe it instead. Danae (a cynical little girl who appears in the strip occasionally) has started an online advice column. The following conversation ensues.

"Welcome to DEAR-DANAE.COM, your online home for sage advice. What's your problem?"

"Dear Danae -- I always seem to be attracted to the worst possible guys... How can I break this stupid cycle of bad decisions?"

"Stop voting."

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Life-Saving Strategies

On Friday I attended Eugene's Xth Annual Dress-as-a-Movie party. I wore a parchment-colored shirt on which I'd written (in puffy black fabric paint) a whole bunch of Jewish names. You guessed it - I was Schindler's List. And the names I wrote were actual names of people saved by Oskar Schindler.

The shirt provoked a couple of interesting conversations about whether Schindler had actually saved anyone *on net*. Or was there instead a substitution effect, meaning that saving one person merely resulted in a different person going to the concentration camps in his place? If so, then Schindler only affected the names, not the numbers.

After some consideration, I concluded that Schindler probably did save people on net, although perhaps fewer than the total number of Jews he had working in his factories. I'm not a WWII scholar, but it's my understanding that Hitler's "final solution" didn't really kick into overdrive until his imminent defeat was clear - sometime in late '43 or early '44. They were killing Jews (and others) in the concentration camps before then, but the killing machine wasn't really working at full capacity. Only in the very late stages of the war was the machine working at full speed. Schindler's plan effectively moved some Jews from the below-capacity period, when they could easily have been killed, to the full-capacity period, when they just added to the length of the queue - a queue that had not been exhausted by the war's end.

Another argument for why Schindler's plan actually saved people on net is that he presumably picked the most able and healthy people to work in his factory. Even if there were a one-for-one substitution effect, the substitution would have put relatively more unhealthy people - i.e., people more likely to have died in the meantime - in the concentration camps. In other words, having a healthy person work in the factory and an unhealthy person die leads to a higher expected number of life-years lived than the reverse. On the other hand, maybe healthy individuals would have lasted longer in the camps.

It should probably go without saying that I think Schindler's actions were still laudable and courageous. That's clearly the case if we judge by mere intentions. But I also suspect that his actions at least created a positive *expected* effect on the number of lives spared. Regardless of what happened ex post, his strategy made sense ex ante.

One person at the party told me a story - of Jewish origin, incidentally - about a man whom the king had condemned to death. The condemned man promised the king that, if he were spared, he would teach the king's horse to sing. The king agreed. Once they were in private, the condemned man's wife asked, "What are you thinking? You can't teach a horse to sing, and you'll just be executed a year from now!" The man replied, "A lot of things can happen in a year. I might die, the king might die, the horse might die!" That, I think, was the simple essence of Schindler's plan.

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Incentives

One of my colleagues told me she had to leave work early today in order to pick up her son from school at 11:30, because the school was having a "minimum day." "Minimum day?" I asked. "What's that?" She then explained that the state pays public school teachers by the day. A "minimum day" is a day where the teachers are at work just long enough to get one whole day's pay.

Don't ever let anyone tell you incentives don't matter.

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Beef Imbroglio

It took me a while to suss out the relevant facts in this article about the case of Charter v. USDA, but I think I've finally figured it out. First, some background: The Supreme Court ruled in the case of United States v. United Foods (2001) that individual firms cannot be forced to make contributions for generic advertising. For example, milk producers and distributors can't be forced to help pay for those "Got Milk?" ads that you see all the time. The justification for this decision -- and I think it's a good one -- is that freedom of expression includes more than the right to say what you want to say; it also includes the right *not* to say things you *don't* want to say. And as a corollary, you also have a right not to be forced to subsidize others who are saying those things you don't want to say.

The issue at hand in Charter v. USDA: Major beef producers lobbied for the Beef Act (don't know what year it was passed), which creates a "checkoff" on tax returns. If you check that box, you're agreeing to let the government keep a little more of your money and use it to advertise and promote beef. For reasons that I cannot fathom, lots of taxpayers actually check that box, creating revenues of $80 million annually. But running the program requires funding, and the funding comes from a $1 "assessment" per head of cattle sold. Independent cattle producers have argued, I think correctly, that this is virtually indistinguishable from what the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional last year.

But the USDA (and the beef associations that lobbied for the Beef Act) defend this program on grounds that the speech in question is "government speech" protected under the First Amendment. The idea is that the government has a right to express ideas, just as private parties do. In this case, the government is simply employing private parties to express the government's message. A federal district court judge bought this argument and ruled in favor of the government. There will be an appeal, of course.

The problem with the "government speech" position, as I understand it, is that it relies on the notion that government actors have the same rights that private citizens do. Yet there are many things private actors can do that are forbidden to government, and rightly so. The Bill of Rights is not there to protect government action, but to limit it. The fact that the funds in question are acquired coercively by the state makes all the difference in the world. Using the First Amendment to justify forcing people to support views they don't necessarily agree with turns the Bill of Rights on its head, allowing it to be used against private citizens for the benefit of government.

Moreover, accepting the "government speech" argument in this case creates a perverse incentive for private interests to lobby for special-interest legislation, because it opens a gaping loophole to the prohibition on forced speech enunciated in U.S. v. United Foods: get the government to do the talking for you.

My non-expert opinion: the district court's decision will be overturned on appeal. But I'd like to hear the opinions of some actual lawyers.

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Escape from Bondage

I have a certain affection for initiatives and referenda, if only because they avoid the bundling problem that arises from voting on candidates and party platforms instead of specific issues. Bundling is one (though by no means the only) reason that special-interest legislation is so common. A politician can alter his minor policy positions just enough to accommodate special interests, thus attracting their votes and campaign dollars, while maintaining his visible policy positions to avoid alienating the rest of the voting public. (Even if you knew your representative supported the ridiculous honeybee subsidy, would that be important enough to outweigh his position on abortion and the death penalty?) By treating issues separately, ballot measures let voters deal with each issue on its own merits. They can also allow the voters to take positions that spook politicians, like legalizing medical marijuana.

But as always, there is a downside. Ballot measures can mislead voters into thinking they can have a free lunch, instead of realizing the trade-offs entailed by "good causes." Yesterday, Californians approved a whole slew of bond issues for "good causes" like school construction and maintenance (see my post below), after school programs for kids, housing and emergency shelter, etc. Sure, there was a dollar amount on each bond issue, with fine print explaining that all this money would eventually have to be paid back by the state. But what do those dollar figures even mean? To the average person (who doesn't even know the size of the yearly state budget - I sure don't), $13 billion spent by the state might as well be $1.3 billion or $130 billion. The real significance of the dollar figure is what the money could have been spent on, such as other government programs or (good heavens!) the personal spending choices of future taxpayers. That information, of course, is not included on the ballot.

Hence my agreement with the following sentiment expressed by Gary North in an article about the pure entertainment value of voting: "I love any election in which there is a bond issue on the ballot. I get to vote 'no.' The more worthy the cause appears to be in the minds of its supporters, the more I enjoy voting 'no.' … So, every other year, I get to go into a voting booth, close the curtains, pick up the hole-puncher, and punch chad-free holes into the 'no' slots of every bond issue. Pop, pop, pop: I love that sound!"

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A More Thoreau Analysis

And as long as I'm quoting from 19th century philosophers, I might as well give the floor to my man Henry David Thoreau for a moment. "All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting *for the right* is *doing* nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail." -- from "Civil Disobedience," 1849.

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Government by Consent of Some of the Governed

I am not an anarchist. I am not an anarchist. I am not an anarchist. There are some days I have to repeat that mantra more often than others, and this is one of them, for on this day we allegedly consent to the policies of our government. Lest anyone think this form of consent is anything like (say) the consent that distinguishes consensual sex from rape, let us hearken to words of Herbert Spencer: "Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to everything his representative may do when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him, and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected someone holding opposite views -- what then? The reply will probably be that, by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why, then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted -- whether he said yes, whether he said no, or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this." - from "The Right to Ignore the State," 1851.

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