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Comment by dragontamer | Hacker News Reader

Because the opposite is worse.

An organization who controls who and what votes is far scarier than letting idiots vote. We in America have destroyed any organization (government led, or whatever) that attempts to limit the number of voters.

Mind you, who should decide who can and can't vote? The free market? The Government?

The answer is no one. The right to vote is considered sacred and that is a good thing. No one can or should deny others the ability to vote.

EDIT: I'm surprised that I have to lecture you on this. I thought you were a libertarian? Aren't you all for personal rights and liberty? The freedom to vote is absolutely essential, and a holy right regardless of your political background.

But it is THAT much more important if you're a self-proclaimed libertarian. Personal freedom is the king of the Libertarian philosophy.

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"The freedom to vote."

That isn't a natural right. That is born out of the system of governance that we've decided is best. There is no natural right to vote — not in the same way we have a natural right to speech or defense or anything else of that manner.

Democracy is dangerous. Our founding fathers despised true democracies, which is why they founded this country as a Constitutional Republic, and notably one that not everyone could vote. Many call them racist and sexist, and no doubt that was part of it, but they also understood that having a bunch of uneducated people voting could be disastrous. NO ONE should be allowed to vote your natural rights away, yet you see this in democracies all the time. You're right, though, the trick is figuring out an acceptable way to proof voting privileges.

Even the word "democracy" didn't come into popular use until the progressive era.

So yes, when we follow true Constitutionalism, voting is important because we should be selecting our leaders to uphold that limited government. But in our current system, we've given government so much power that we allow people to elect leaders that are going to give them the most, all whilst selling off the power they have taken from us to companies that want to protect their business model.

And once again, you really need to stop doing the whole, "I'm surprised you aren't smarter" bit.

YOU are the one who believes "Eventually the actors in the economy figure out how to route around the damage being done." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7219852

Your own argument against voting defeats your own statement. You don't even trust your fellow citizen the right to vote, and yet you believe that citizens are smart enough to "route around damages" being done to the economy.

Listen here. I'm the one bringing up anti-market and pro-communist points against you. The fact that YOU are the one who wishes to limit voting is deeply ironic.

My quote was within the context of a free market.

Democracies are anathema to anarcho-capitalist societies, because NO ONE should be able to vote to force you to do something you choose not to. Again, this is the pure governance/political theory I'm using to explain why I'm not being ironic in my thinking.

I never said I had thought of a good way to test voting. I only said that I thought it strange that we were attacked for suggesting that we even think about it — particularly when this "right" to vote is actually only a privilege granted by our various constitutions, and not a true, natural right.

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