The Illusion of Choice

Why voters fall for classic false dilemmas and how private action trumps public folly

(The Penrose Triangle. Source: Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, appraising the situation from Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Welcome to another Sunday Session, dear reader, that time of the week when we stand back and take stock of the bigger picture... and remind ourselves just how infinitesimal our humble plot is within it.

It must have been a tough week for the true believers, the civic soldiers and the badge collectors, that is... individuals who believed the destiny of the United States of America, and perhaps even the fate of the Free World, hinged on their (or anyone’s) single vote. 

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. (And what a good thing, too!)

Aside from the fact that the two parties are more alike than different, in that they cheerfully converge on matters of deficit spending... foreign policy misadventures... money printing... cronyism... central banking... panem et circenses... 

Aside from the fact that both parties operate within the confines of a wholly corrupted system, a “swamp,” full of vile critters which answer not to the “will of the people,” whatever that is supposed to be, but to an unseen army of lobbyists, special interest groups and deep state goons lining their pockets and pressing their greasy palms...

Aside from the fact that both parties work to undermine the “legitimacy” of the very process in which they are participating, accusing the other side of all manner of fraud and chicanery, sowing seeds of doubt, then denying any results that don’t go their way...

Aside from the fact that the corporate-captured media plays to the extremes of both sides, fanning the flames at the thin tails to drum up ratings, when most decent folk just want to get on with their own backyard barbecues, little league games and family feuds... 

And aside from the fact that the age of true statesmen, of noble leaders, of angels among men is long gone and largely mythological anyway...

... Homo Credulous still goes “all in” on elections that he can’t possibly (statistically, mathematically, demonstrably) have any discernible impact on. 

Indeed, as we’ve observed in this space before, the very phrase “making the world safe for democracy” was, itself, a marketing slogan, specifically designed to drag America into a war (the “war to end all wars”) that nobody at home wanted and which would have been better left un-fought anyway. 

Nevertheless, “Democracy itself is on the ballot,” cry hysterical pundits on both sides of the aisle, as if majority rule boasts an unimpeachable historical track record. (If you are not already thinking of a half dozen tyrants who were duly elected to public office, think harder...)

Germany held no fewer than five “free and fair” democratic elections in 1932... at the conclusion of which the Nazi Party was (by far) the strongest in the land, and thus was able to form a ruling coalition, supported by the majority of allegedly open-eyed voters. And this from a nation of peoples that had brought us Gutenberg... Luther... Schopenhauer... Bach... Goethe... Beethoven... Nietzsche... Einstein... 

Of course, the efficacy (not to mention accuracy) of one’s political actions dissipates in direct proportion to the distance one ventures from one’s own garden.

Leo Tolstoy made the point in the second epilogue to his epic tome, War & Peace. History, said he, was like a giant ship steaming across the open ocean. When we look back over her journey, at turns calm and tempest tossed, we imagine great leaders, fierce generals and noble statesmen – such as Napoleon, in his example – as having consciously chartered her course. In reality, the generals of the ages are not at the helm, but rather in the dingy, thrashed about in the tumultuous wake behind. 

In our Age of Democracy, many good men have gone to an early grave vowing to “vote the bums out.” And yet, look around you... Are there less bums in the nation’s capitol now than there were during the days of Adams or Jefferson or Washington? Can it really be a matter of “voting harder” next time?

Perhaps the more important distinction is not between Left vs. Right, Elephant vs. Donkey, Red vs. Blue... but Federal vs Local, Collective vs. Individual, Public vs. Private. More in today’s essay, below...

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The Illusion of Choice

By Joel Bowman

"If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

~ U.S. President Barack Obama, 2012

"Whence does [the State] draw those resources that it is urged to dispense by way of benefits to individuals? Is it not from the individuals themselves? How, then, can these resources be increased by passing through the hands of a parasitic and voracious intermediary?"

~ Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Tell me, sir, "yes" or "no," have you stopped beating your wife?

Of the myriad rhetorical tools employed in public discourse today, there are dangerous few more insidious than the false dilemma. Little surprise then that, whenever the election circus rolls into towns across the country, this Weapon of Dialectic Destruction (WDD) finds itself a favorite of slick politicians working to curry favor with an increasingly ovine voter mass.

Simply put, the false dilemma is a sly trick of exclusion whereby a speaker (always generously) offers his or her audience the apparently favorable choice between two unfortunately poor options.

"With which horn do you wish to be gored, sir?"

The recently Nobel-decorated Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, furnished an infamous case study back in 2008, when he told a hastily convened meeting in the conference room of the House Speaker, the permanently startled Nancy Pelosi:

"If we don't do this [enact TARP legislation], we might not have an economy on Monday."

News of the backroom political panic soon hit the streets. One could almost hear the trillions of excited neurons misfiring in earnest around vacant braincases from sea to shining sea...

"Sure, creating a giant, taxpayer-sponsored slush fund from which Bernanke and his minions could (and would) dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to their bankster cronies is not exactly optimal... but not having an economy on Monday? Surely that's worse, right?"

But were these the only two options? Your money... or your economy?

What about letting profligate institutions go broke? What about adhering to the market principle of Too Stupid to Succeed rather than capitulating to the State's self-serving version: Too Big to Fail? 

Where might the economy be now, fourteen years on, if the weak hands had been eliminated from the market then, ceding what remaining value they had on the books to institutions that had exercised prudence and good judgment, while future bailout recipients busily indulged in excessive risk-taking and reckless profligacy?

We'll never know, of course... because Bernanke, Paulson, Pelosi & Co.'s false dilemma scared enough people into thinking there was "no other option."

Classic False Dilemmas

Known variously as the either-or fallacy, the fallacy of exhaustive hypotheses or, more colloquially, plain ol' black and white thinking, the false dilemma is both deceptive and destructive. First, because it lures unsuspecting listeners into a misguided belief that their choices are limited to those offered by the speaker and, second, because it attacks the creative process by which new ideas "come to market" by slamming the door closed on alternative possibilities.

Take the above quote, from none other than President Barack Obama. Speaking to supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, back in 2012, Mr. Obama channeled the insufferable Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren in declaring that:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen.

Implied here is the false notion that, without roads built by the State... there would be no roads. Without schools constructed by the State... there would be no education. Without the "unbelievable American system"... creative individuals wouldn't be allowed to thrive.

In other words...

Choose the State or choose illiteracy.

Choose the State or choose dirt tracks on which to haul your goods.

Choose the State or nobody will help you... nobody will cooperate with you... and you will be alone, unable even to survive, much less thrive.

Textbook false dilemmas, each and every one of them.

Circular Logic

Nowhere here is a free-market alternative presented. And it's little wonder why. At the precise point the free market ends, the tyranny of the State begins. Nowhere do the two overlap. (Crony capitalism, corporatism, mixed market economies and the rest are NOT free markets.) Clearly, therefore, it is in the State's best interest to see that free market activity is marginalized as far as possible in order that the State itself might occupy ever more space in people's minds and, by extension, in the economies they are "allowed" to build.

So profoundly have certain false dilemmas bored their way into people's "thinking" that supposedly able-minded individuals have stricken the very possibility of free-market cooperation from their mental maps.

Indeed, some confused people even contend that, were we to ignore the iron-fisted directives of the State, we would promptly descend into a Mad Max-style dystopia, in which a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies would roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wished.

Strange then that these same people would "remedy" this apocalyptic nightmare by supporting the State... itself a collection of unchecked territorial monopolies that roam the planet, stealing and damaging property at whim and torturing, imprisoning and killing whomever they so wish.

These individuals are sorely misled... victims of the classic false dilemma. 

They are so misled, in fact, that they find themselves circling back to a position that sees them fervently supporting an entity that tirelessly labors to turn their worst fears into harsh reality. Worse still, they continue to mislead others by repeating such vapid nonsense.

Spontaneous Order

Unlike the State's obedient apologists, advocates of the free market don't pretend to know the best solution to each and every problem - something F.A. Hayek called the "pretense of knowledge." Rather, they humbly cede the discovery process to free individuals acting in their own self-interest.

When confronted with a problem deserved of our very best solution, it is helpful to first ask, "Is there a peaceful, market-based solution here? Might, for example, freely associating individuals work together to meet the obvious demand for schools, roads and bridges? Might free competition stand guard against coercive monopolies? Might the market process of creative destruction weed out inept and/or corrupt businesses, rather than reward them with stolen property?"

Like the election process itself, in which well-intentioned voters saddle themselves with the misguided obligation to choose the "lesser of two evils," the false dilemma lulls individuals into thinking there is no alternative, no preferable option, no choice that does not, at least to some degree, rely on compromising their values and morals. No choice that does not involve the hired gun of the State. No choice, in other words, that does not render them party to evil.

Surely we can think a little harder than that, dear reader, beyond the iniquities perpetrated by the political left and the right. Instead of a system based on violence and coercion, peaceful, cooperative individuals learn in time to welcome and celebrate a system such as here described by Hayek:

Spontaneous order is a system which has developed not through the central direction or patronage of one or a few individuals but through the unintended consequences of the decisions of myriad individuals each pursuing their own interests through voluntary exchange, cooperation and trial and error.

When it comes to false dilemmas, we need not slavishly impale ourselves on one of the State's two horns, but only to open our eyes to what is in our direct control. We advocate not fatalistic inaction, but rather private action. (Hint: It’s why we write for a private research publication and not a public policy platform.) 

We are invited by minds like Voltaire to tend our own garden and Goethe to sweep our own doorstep. Perhaps if we invested more time becoming better men ourselves, better fathers and husbands and neighbors, we would not depend so meekly on others to lead our better lives for us.

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And that will do for another Sunday Sesh, dear reader. And yes, we’re sure you have plenty to say… so please, say it! The comments section below will be open to one and all on these rough ‘n’ tumble Sunday editions, so feel free to share your thoughts, including (here’s an idea) some practical ways one might affect change in his immediate community.

We’ve seen private businesses and voluntary associations make enormous positive impacts on a whole range of issues during our various wanderings (fodder for another essay, perhaps…) No don’t doubt you have, too. So, let’s hear about them!

While you’re having at it with your private, free-market solutions, your editor is going to relive the glory days of his misspent youth by attending a music festival for the first time in… well, a very long time. The Argentine crowds are famously enthusiastic when it comes to this kind of thing, so we’re cranking the tunes and getting in the spirit.

The event is supposed to draw up to 200,000 people over the weekend. And this, after the British band Coldplay just concluded an unprecedented 10-night sellout run at the 65,000-capacity Estadio River Plate last week. (The previous record was held by Roger Waters, who played 9 sellout shows “back in the day.”) We’ll let you know how it goes.

Finally, Bill will return with his regular musings tomorrow. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, we trust you’re having a good one.

Until next time...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman