In The Dictator's Handbook, Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Professors Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith look at historical examples as well as modern ones and conclude successful politicians do not gain power by helping "we the people," but by knowing how to gain and maintain it. This is done primarily through supporting the correct coalition of backers. To maintain their power, they must use the funds government access provides and divvy them to supporters who brought them to power and will keep them there. Those with the longest and most "successful" careers are...

Politician or Party?
Political news hosts will rail against an opposing party member, declaring they must be replaced for passing legislation the pundit disagrees with. To which I always wonder: who will replace them? And who will replace the people who elected them and their financial backers? Who will be in their position in twenty years’ time? You can keep picking apples from an apple tree hoping for a pear, but it will not happen. If you keep returning to the same tree year after year, you can find variations in taste, color, and size, but you will get the essential fruit every time because it derives from...

Don’t Trust the Voters
In Against Democracy, libertarian professor and political philosopher Jason Brennan argues voting is bad for most people. Based on sixty-five years of data, he shows how completely and efficiently the voting public is misinformed on vital issues each election. The majority of voters are even ignorant of what party is in power, and, for example, during a presidential election, only a minority knew which candidate was more "conservative" or "liberal." They vote with this lack of knowledge, and it negatively affects you and me. Brennan wrote they "impose these ignorant and irrational decisions...

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance
Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via government education and media. As individuals in a democracy, we lose all power. Only masters have power, and their conflicting agendas ensure strife and discord. These groups do not seek individual representation for us but to subjugate individuals outside their grasp to their dictates by force of numbers. In democracy, the biggest...
Libertarian Lessons From Middle-earth
Professor J.R.R Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, has been described as an anarcho-monarchist, and he incorporated those political ideals into Middle-earth. Among them was his stance against coercion. "The story is cast in terms of a good side, and a bad side, beauty against ruthless ugliness, tyranny against Kingship, moderated freedom with consent against compulsion." -J. R. R. Tolkien, “Letter 144” Tolkien wrote, "The supremely bad motive [is] domination of others’ free wills.” Tolkien’s heroes were the free peoples—those who follow Eru’s design. Eru, the god of...
Coercion, Self-Governance, and Democracy
Originally tribes of extended families and like-minded individuals joined together to create a community. They were self-governing and consenting associations of individuals, a unified whole. The head patriarch acted as a king, the head of the community, ensuring justice and leading them in defense. He served the people and their customs; their laws, representing their governance ideals, were the authority. Lords and warriors defended the tribe from subjugation by outside forces. Now imagine a larger tribe overpowers this smaller community, compels them to labor, exploits their resources,...
Achieving Self-Governance For Every American
"[Under Democracy], a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot, he may become a master;...
Big Government, Big War: A Lesson from Feudal Europe
Ancient Rome’s high tax rates enabled maintenance of larger professional armies than were possible in the Middle Ages. Rome partially conquered the world through massive tax-funded government projects, such as investing in roads for their armies to move farther and faster and to subdue distant populations more easily. But Rome's self-destructive abuse of its people, along with its centralized governmental and heavy tax policy, contributed to its downfall. And since central powers could no longer maintain massive standing armies through heavy taxation, governance became localized. The lack of...