As if long wait times, Byzantine paperwork requirements, and unwelcome taxes and fees weren’t enough, we can add one more offense to state vehicle license bureaus’ tabs: Erroneous voter registration.

According to New Jersey governor Mike Sherill, his state’s Motor Vehicle Commission improperly registered about 6,600 noncitizens to vote due to a “software error” in 2023 and 2024, leading to about 400 illegal ballots being cast in the state.

Some downplay factors:

First, those 400 votes, if all cast in one election (the 2024 general election) came to about 1/10th of 1% of votes cast, while the narrowest statewide margin of victory was the 5.9% by which Democrat Kamala Harris bested Republican Donald Trump in the presidential race.  Even at the congressional level, the closest race was decided by more than 1% … and Republican Tom Kean Jr., won that race. QED, if the “software error” was actually a nefarious Democrat plot to screw the GOP, it failed miserably.

Second, elections are hardly “representative” of the populations subjected to rule by the winners. In New Jersey’s 2024 election, only 46% of that population voted. The other 54% either weren’t allowed to vote or chose not to. Some “representative democracy,” huh?

Third, New Jersey’s elections are already thoroughly rigged by both “major parties” — the state’s election laws are even worse that those in most other states when it comes to ensuring that only Democrats and Republicans even appear on the ballot.

The “software error” seems, consequentially, like a tempest in a teapot.

But, if we’re going to have elections, we should have honest elections so at least everyone can know where they stand.

State “motor voter” laws — especially those which, like New Jersey’s, automatically register people who interact with the license bureau to vote, only later allowing them to opt out — don’t just risk inaccuracies like those produced by this episode, they abandon a key element in any supposed democracy: Consent.

When you beg the state of New Jersey for a driver’s license, government ID card, etc., the bureaucrat behind the counter doesn’t request your permission to add your name to yet another database and co-opt you as a “member of the electorate.” It just happens without so much as a “by your leave.”

Some countries go even further, requiring their regimes’ subjects to vote and fining, withholding various government permissions from, or even jailing, those who don’t cast ballots.

I personally know people who choose not to vote, or to be registered to vote.

Some just don’t care about politics.

Others actively oppose lending their names and reputations to a system they oppose.

They do not consent to that system and don’t consider it “representative” of their rights, interests, or desires.

If someone signed your name on a legal contract you didn’t agree to or a petition you didn’t agree with, you’d be angry — and you’d be right. Both of those things are reasonable descriptions of voting and politics anyway — the “social contract” claim for political government is nonsense — but automatic voter registration and (elsewhere) mandatory voting are the height of “Temu representative democracy.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Thousands of people collaborated to build and defend a global monetary network with no CEO, no president, and no master,” Max Borders says of Bitcoin. “Nobody gave them permission, because nobody could. It was developed peacefully in freedom.”

Borders uses Bitcoin as an example of what he calls “subversive innovation” — finding ways to lower your transaction costs for the things you want to do, raise the costs of those who might want to interfere with your plans,  and reduce the costs of walking away from systems that don’t deliver what you want from them.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. No, really, I couldn’t. Which is why I recommend Borders’s “Underthrow” Substack. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s always interesting … and he reminds me of a late friend who doesn’t get talked about enough these days.

In 1973 — more than 20 years before he ran for president as a Libertarian, twice — Harry Browne wrote and published How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World. The book describes various “traps” — social and political constraints that bully us into roles we might not prefer to play  — and how to escape those traps so as to maximize one’s own freedom.

I highly recommend the book, and was privileged to have known its author who, unfortunately, died in 2006. The highest compliment I can think of to offer Mr. Borders is that his “subversive innovation” concept widens the (already broad) horizons one joyfully carries away from How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.

Borders’s formula offers a path toward disarming and eliminating, rather than merely avoiding or escaping, the traps Browne describes. That’s the “subversive” part.

To subvert, according to the 193 edition of Webster’s dictionary, is “to overturn from the foundation.”

Subversive innovation isn’t about tearing down the existing system. It’s about building your own, stronger foundation and letting the old one fall apart without its ruins falling on you.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are the obvious current example — sound money that can be created and exchanged without the old system’s cooperation makes fiat currency passe — but they’re just one. Anything that improves your life without the state’s involvement or permission makes your situation better and the state’s worse.

People like Browne and Borders have a gift for dragging me away from my usual political pessimism and pointing me toward the promise of a better future. I hope you’ll come there with us!

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On July 20, citing “discriminatory treatment of American products” by the Canadian regime, US president Donald Trump signed three proclamations raising Americans’ taxes.

Again.

Trump’s latest tax hike comes in the form of a 50% tariff on Americans’ purchases of Canadian imports “ranging from wine to hockey sticks to cement.”

Tariff supporters try to sell their desired tax increases on American consumers as “retaliation” against other regimes for “unfair” treatment of goods made by American workers and exported by American companies.

Odd form of retaliation, that — “you’re hurting YOUR people … fine, we’ll hurt OUR people — that’ll show YOU!”

And for for the most part, those other regimes aren’t the manufacturers of or buyers of those exports/imports, any more than the US regime is the manufacturer or buyer of whatever the company you work for happens to export or the imported goods you choose to buy.

So no, tariffs aren’t “retaliation” for “unfairness.”

What are they, then?

They’re a way of protecting politicians’ domestic business cronies from competition, at the expense of domestic consumers.

Suppose you want a particular widget, and — all other things being equal, which isn’t necessarily so — the Canadian version of that widget sells for $1.00 while the American version sells for $1.49.

If Trump slaps a 50% tariff on the Canadian version, it suddenly costs $1.50 … meaning the US manufacturer magically becomes price-competitive with the Canadian manufacturer with the added expense coming out of your pocket rather than the US manufacturer’s bottom line.

In the past, a supposed positive feature of tariffs involved “job creation” in domestic industry, but that was always an iffy proposition and advances in automation have pretty much eliminated the “if” part.

Few if any “new jobs” get created — and the same people filling those positions are, like everyone else, paying more  for the goods they want and need, while reducing the workforce available to produce goods and services that don’t need “protection” to sell at reasonable prices.

To put a finer point on it, tariff proponents and perpetrators urinate on your back and try to convince you it’s raining.

The proper “retaliation” for foreign tariffs on US goods — the response that benefits everyone except politically connected business owners and the politicians they connive with — is unilateral “free trade.”

In free markets, producers and customers drive the best deal they can … and that deal is only made if both parties see themselves as better off for having made it.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY