Voting with our actions: Choosing our future.
Milton Friedman used to say frequently, in conferences and speeches, that people "vote with their feet". In authoritarian and non-democratic countries, people don't have the capacity to go to the polls to change government, so that people dissatisfied with these governments resort to immigration as a tool to get better conditions. By migrating people from China to Hong Kong, for example, they vote with their feet for a system like Hong Kong over Chinese.
During the Cold War, people from East Germany started to cross the border into West Germany, the reasons are many, but those people were constantly voting with their feet against socialism.
When the Germans came out of the East, they did not vote for capitalism, little could the East Germans know about capitalism, they had gone from living from the Kaiser's empire to the short and failed Weimar Republic, to then reach National Socialism, finally, they had been caught in the grip of Soviet socialism, so the inhabitants of East Germany never in their lives had lived in something slightly similar to capitalism. East Germans voted with their feet when they left, not by capitalism over socialism, but rather that anything, any system, any government, was better than what they were living. Even the capitalism they were unaware of was much better than the misery they were going through.
Many Germans even preferred to risk their lives to not stay in the conditions in which they were, going through dangerous land borders that the Soviets blocked, and crossing the Baltic Sea at the risk of getting the most fatal consequences, all just to get out of there. Those people were casting a vote saying that anything, even death, was better than staying in the conditions they were in. Anything, no matter the fear of the unknown, was better than socialism.
But where I want to go with this, it's not just about politics, although it's clear that the concept of voting with your feet is about that. Have you learned anything that serves you in daily life? Vote with our actions.
In the same way that in the past examples immigrants voted with their feet, we vote every day, every moment, every second, and every unit of time small enough so that it can be unquantifiable. Every action we do is a vote we cast, in fact, we also cast a vote when we do nothing. That is the democracy of nature.
If we think we are overweight, for example, we can do two things; or we change our attitude to lose weight, that is, we take actions, or on the contrary, either by excuses or by disinterest, we do nothing, that is, we don't take actions.
With these votes we are choosing, not a government, but a future.
Inaction is also a vote in this election; it means that we are satisfied with the status quo and that we will not do anything to change it. Think of it as a re-election, we vote to keep everything exactly like this, or go deeper into what we have been doing.
We can say that we don't like something, that current conditions are wrong, and that we can't "do it". But the reality is this, if we publicly support the red party, and at the polls we vote for the blue, then with our actions we are contradicting what we say.
If we don't like our current situation, and we say publicly that we are unhappy, and in turn we think about it, but in practice we do nothing to change it, then we are simply, even if we don't like it, voting to keep things as they are.
As I said earlier, this is the democracy of nature. Every action we take and every action we don't take is valid. We decided. If we are unhappy with the current state of affairs, then we should simply vote for a change. To finish this publication as I started it, that is, with a quote from Milton Friedman, you are free to choose.
What do you say about yourself? Are you voting for the future you want?
Image Source: 1
I am using my freedom up to the fullest. I lead a life which can be described as "independent" from a corporate structure and hierarchy. I think I earned my spurs in my youth and can now rest on what is called life experience and confidence in having had hard times and crisis and all that together with exciting and adventurous times. I think I am blessed with the freedom to chose a profession, traveling and life concept. I know though that someone else paid and pays a price for my freedom. I am totally dependent on the food delivery and all materials which I am provided with. But I think my mother would think that this was her gift to me as she suffered expulsion, imprisonment, and starvation, half of her life not allowed to move freely (in the sense of leaving a country).
Within her own possibilities there was freedom. In her spirit and garden, she was a self-sufficient woman. Some people never escape the real chains, others do. And some chain themselves even in a country which has free speech and border crossings are easy to make. I would like them all to un-chain and find their potentials for the best.
Voting with the feet, that is a good expression. And to describe the act of voting as a daily act, several times occurring makes it vivid.
I fully agree with everything you say. And the story you told me about your mother is quite inspiring, sad after all, but inspiring, if you look at the example of East German people crossing the border, it is essentially the same. People who risk themselves, to change their conditions.
The idea of 'escape' does not sit easily with me. It has too easily the aspect of ignominy in the sense of when one flees a battlefield. Better to beat a retreat than flee the fight.
And an 'escape' from imprisonment resounds with the echo of capture's indignity. Yet in some cases it can be honorable and the echo overshadowed by a glorious liberation.
If I make an 'escape' then it will be beating a retreat so that the fight can be resumed at a later juncture when better equipped and prepared to declare, "Here I stand, I can do no other." That is the only 'escape' I wish to take.
Our world has too much escapism: escaping to the moon and mars, escaping to virtual reality, escaping everything we can.
Look at the examples that I placed, East Germany and China, are very important. When the East Germans crossed the border they were not leaving their country, they were returning home, the same with the Chinese. North Korea would be a great example too. These people lived under a prison and under a sentence that they had not earned, they did not escape, they liberating themselves.
I am in favor of being responsible, because if we are responsible for something we must answer for that, but not for an unjustified punishment against humanity, those governments were not elected, nor were they any representation of the people they governed, were absurd and authoritarian impositions that emanated from an external element to them.
That is why I say in turn, vote with actions, vote with your feet is often an option, although not always the best, and many times it is even worse, voting with our actions is the best way to, not escape, and not even face a situation in which you must escape, but avoid in the first instance that these situations happen.
Yes, your examples are well chosen; my comment was inspired by them b/c it got me thinking of a different, related example. I asked myself,
With socialism and communism it is always a game of resistance, because they are self-destructive systems, and that by wanting to take charge of everything they collapse under their own weight. Sooner or later the system collapses, the question always is; How long are you willing to endure? and, Is it possible to advance his collapse by a coup de grace?
Usually the answer is reduced to resist, because if a country chose socialism by itself, it is possible that its population is too weak to carry out a rebellion, and if the country did not choose socialism on its own, then very probably the country that imposed it would take care of avoiding any problem.
In Hungary there was a revolution in 1956, and its success was great, managing to overthrow the government, however, after the Soviet intervention everything returned to the control of the handful of communist Hungarians who ruled the country. Thousands of Hungarians died.
So if, at one point, the simple fact of continuing to live in an apolitical way is resistance, because socialism is ephemeral. Sometimes voting with your feet is a good option, but as long as you have where to go, the Germans had it, the Chinese had it, the Koreans had it, not so with many other peoples. Otherwise, vote with your actions.
Then, you're talking about dissidents, correct? - dissidents who when in their country civilly fight their government but when disempowered at home 'escape' abroad in the knowledge they can continue to fight from there. 'Escape' is still an issue in my mind.
Firstly, an ordinary man isn't in the position to be capable of fighting from abroad or 'escaping' abroad.
More importantly, the man who can and does, should ask himself whether he 'escapes' abroad becoming a dissident b/c he cannot serve his cause best by remaining in his country and bearing the burden of the fight there, and so he ought to leave; or b/c he prefers to flee to the more pleasant life found abroad.
The fact of fleeing, requires first the fact of belonging somewhere, because you can't flee if you don't belong somewhere first. I will explain myself. If a house that is not yours begins to burn, and you leave, it is not flee, since you do not belong there, on the contrary, if your house is burned, and your family is there in the fire and you leave, then you are fleeing, because you are not doing anything to prevent your house from getting damaged.
So the answer is simple, if you leave the place you belong by external imposition, then you are fleeing, and it is unworthy, because you are leaving your family and your friends in pain. If on the contrary you go from a place to which you do not belong, then you are not fleeing, because you simply do not belong there. Having answered that, it should be noted that there is no honorable escape, that is, you can not leave the country and make an external struggle, the national problems must always resolve within the border of the nation, without foreign intervention.
In the examples I put, people never left their country, because North Korea and South Korea are not two countries; East Germany and West Germany are not two countries; and China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are not four countries. All these are one country, but they have two or more States, so the people who move from one place to another are not leaving their country at any time.
Help me understand you. You propose that if a person, say, with a Chinese passport feels so unhappy about the politics of his country as not to belong in his country though wants to belong, he may state this politically by becoming a resident of Hong Kong or Macao or a citizen of Taiwan?
Yes.
Thank you for posting!
I especially like when you said someting like: inaction is a vote to keep things the way they are.
I've never thought of it that way before.
Now you do it. ;)
Interesting article. People want to choose their own destiny.
It appears today, at least in industrialized nations, many are struggling to maintain the slightest amount of autonomy they still have so they can create the lives they want.
I believe we only have the illusion of choice in regard to the voting booth. The plutocracy and corporatocracy have assumed control of elections and candidates. We can vote however we want. Indeed, even at local levels, races are now financed by global actors.
Voting with our feet may be the last choice left for many and even then it may not be that easy to move elsewhere for economic reasons, stalking by the taxman, immigration laws (depending on who one is and where one is going).
Well, in the United States they have easy access to guns, I doubt that this can be found in another country, so leaving the United States in search of more freedom and true democracy will be quite difficult. In Europe there is not, in Asia either, in Africa and Latin America less. Voting with actions, not just with your feet, can be very helpful.