Libertarian Colin Gibson was elected to Ward 4 Moderator on November 7th. Colin won 738 to 331. There were 8 write-in votes. Colin is an advocate of crypto currency, police accountability, and agorism. Colin is known by many in the liberty community, and presumably by some in the anti-liberty community. However, there is no indication that he is known by the population at large, and he states that he did not run a campaign. Colin ran against Inbal Rejwan-Day. She was not an incumbent as Woullard Lett was the outgoing moderator according to a phone call to the Manchester City Clerk on November 9th at 1pm.
I do not consider this an achievement of republicanism (more commonly, but less accurately known as democracy). I hold no delusions that the majority of people living under Manchester intended to elect a libertarian. But statism is no more an efficient means of management than it is a moral one. And attempting or pretending as the case may be, to spread power across the general population is an even more ridiculous form of organization.
Running an organization is a work. Whether its moral work or aggressive work is not relevant to the amount of time it takes. Expecting people to run the government, in addition to their actual jobs and whatever else they may have going on in their lives is unreasonable. Most people do not have the time to dedicate to hiring qualified people, whatever that means to them, and many do not have the inclination. If this method of hiring was suggested with any other organization, it would be rightfully laughed off. What makes you, I, or the guy down the street any more qualified to choose the CEO of the US than they are to choose the CEO of Shell? Nothing that I am aware of. There are instances where one or more candidate declares their intention to kill, steal, or generally be predacious more so than the other candidate. At the same time, I’ve seen some applications and resumes seriously submitted that had some very silly things listed on them. But this is not the norm. In most instances, people are left attempting to choose from equally horrible or equally cryptic candidates, OR they are asked to Sophie’s Choice not only their rights but the rights of the entire population. Which would you prefer: to loose gun rights or for chemo patients to be prevented from accessing marijuana?, is not an academic question for most  people who are eligible to vote in the US gang’s elections.
It dilutes feelings of responsibility. Of course, people are actually responsible for the actions that they take, and this includes ordering that a particular individual be given power, but people do act differently when they can point out that they are not the only person who choose a particular action. This gives reason to believe that large groups of people making a decision will make poorer decisions than a smaller group or a single person. People often vote for things that they would never enforce themselves, regardless of whether they had to means to do so.
A temporary manager of a gang has more perverse incentives than a private property owner, or even than a long-term manager of a gang. A person who is given run of a landmass for eight years or so has an incentive to milk it for all its worth and let his successor deal with the ruins. Even the State itself recognizes this when it puts fiduciary responsibilities on usufruct/right of use holders.
It creates poor time preferences. Even a well meaning official is judged on odd criteria. Instead of the long-term good of the area, elections shift the focus onto hyper-short time frames, incentivizing officials to focus on short-term rather than long-term solutions and encouraging voters to look for the same.
Democracy and republicanism are worse than mob rule. In democracy 50% + 1 may enforce their will on the minority. Under republicanism there may be further restrictions. In mob rule, 50% + 1 may look around, decide they don’t like those odds, and go off to mind their own business. Both systems allow people to undertake immoral acts that they would not otherwise undertake. This contributes to, but does not outright cause as people are responsible for their own actions, the moral degradation of societies.
Republicanism creates an even greater need for the occupying gang to convert members to its teachings. The DOE and public schools have the task of making sure that enough people subscribe to whatever it is that that particular gang wants to get done. The gang no longer needs just compliance- it needs your faith. If the gang does not successfully destroy independent thinking in enough eligible voters those voters may decide to do something other than what the gang wants, and that is not the point of any form of government.
To some extent, its an illusion anyway.
 
I do not believe that all elections are full fabrications, but “if voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” There are some palliative actions that can be achieved through voting. However, not only is there no way to vote yourself into freedom, there is no way to vote yourself long-term into a position that the State does not want you to be in. At no point is Jannet Yellen or any of her successors going to announce “Well, the people have spoken and they don’t want us anymore; time to go home.” And illusions cost money. It is more expensive for tax-victims to fund the State plus the illusion of control than it is to fund the State only. So to add insult to injury republicanism is a more expensive form of statism.
I am not saying that you shouldn’t vote. That is a convoluted trolly-problem that I am not going to tackle here. What I am saying is that voting is palliative, it has limits, and if used it should be used in addition to rather than instead of other methods of gaining freedom.
