From the time they are born, most people are told that it's their duty to vote. Instead of voting this Nov. 5, take the time you would have wasted voting and enjoy yourself. The most obvious reason to do so is that your vote doesn't matter. Whether you choose to vote will not decide this race or have any meaningful impact. The less obvious reason for not voting is that voting is almost always in and of itself an immoral act.
The state is no different than a collection of individuals constantly stealing from those it claims imagined authority over. What right does the state have to put juvenile offenders in solitary confinement for months on end, because a group of individuals voted to abuse them? If I came up to you and told you that if you bought or sold alcohol before the age of 25 I would hunt you down and at gunpoint throw you in my basement for a year, you would be outraged! Who am I to tell you what you can do? And yet for some reason most find it ok for individuals under the guise of the state to tell them equally absurd statements such as that raw milk cannot be bought or sold or that alcohol must only be sold to those above the age of 21.
When the imagined entity of the state tells you these statements, it is no different than if an individual or a group of individuals came up to you and told you what you could and could not do, despite your actions having no effect on them in these sorts of voluntary transactions. When you vote, you're endorsing violence against individuals to make them live by your views (if someone refuses the dictums of the state, jail/fines are inherently violent as refusal leads to arrest and refusal of arrest leads to violence; the threat of violence is ever-present in all laws).
The most common response as to how the state can justify its violence is an appeal to something called the social contract. If it wasn't for the violence of the state, we would live a life of constant violence and suffering and therefore violence by the state is justified because it makes us all better off and no rational person would refuse. This view is not reasonable. A lack of a state (coercive nonconsensual force over a geographic area) is not a lack of order. Individuals are not incapable of voluntarily banding together to create order and suppress the minority in society prone to anti-social behavior.
If you absolutely cannot bring yourself not to vote, vote for Robert Sarvis because out of the exploitative choices he will exploit others the least. When you vote you are endorsing force against others who want nothing other than to live their lives peaceably. If this article has done nothing else, I hope it has made you think. A slave who can pick between two (or three) masters is still a slave.
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