Positive Liberty

In the land of Gnomerica, the gnomes maintain one of the most curious governments in the world. Although their system is alluded to in many of mankind’s proverbs, humans themselves rarely understand it. This exposé is designed to show exactly how it works. The reader is assumed to have a basic familiarity with gnomismatic concepts such as democracy, paper money, and compound interest.

The Gnomericans refer to their system as a “democratic plutocracy.” They consider it infinitely superior to a classical plutocracy, which is, alas, still to be found in many other countries. Democratic plutocracy is based on the principle that those who have money are the rulers, but it adds a refinement that most plutocracies miss. Every dollar (the Gnomerican currency) also counts as exactly one vote in any election, nothing more and nothing less. Whenever a matter of consequence comes before the gnomes, they gather at the nearest bank, which also serves as a polling place. Each adult gnome places an undisclosed quantity of paper money in a sack, then drops it into one of two ballot coffers marked “yes” or “no,” both of which are enclosed in a small private booth to prevent anyone from seeing how he or she votes.

Everyone votes as often as they like. Not only is this a convenience for the indecisive, but it also reduces the work of election monitors in busy precincts; provided that they earned their money honestly, no one ever needs to register to vote. Each gnome pledges as much money as he or she feels appropriate, but no one has any information about anyone else’s votes. Lest anyone ruin themselves on an expensive election, the voting may happen only on the day before each gnomish payday; on election days, no one may offer money at interest. At the end of the election, the sums for “yes” and “no” are tallied in a great ledger-book without regard to the mere number of individuals voting on either side. It’s the money that counts, and in all cases, the names and even the numbers of the voters are kept entirely secret. When all the votes are counted, the greatest sum of money wins.

The process of voting is technically known as a “Glendelfritz Auction,” after the renowned tenth-century gnomish economist and academician Glendelfritz the Gloomy. Glendelfritz was only gloomy by gnomish standards. When he made his first (and last) appearance at a human academic conference, he was so ungloomy that half the participants gave up on economics entirely, ran away, and joined the circus. Human economists have placed his books on the Index, and the “Laughing Economist”–another one of his titles–is only read by those with special dispensation from the Chairman of the Feudal Reserve.

Among his many works, Glendelfritz is credited with a mathematical proof that the concept of the “fungibility of money” is in all cases equal to the concept of the “secret ballot.” It was a discovery that revolutionized Gnomerican society. In his later works, Glendelfritz continued to employ this discovery as one of his central axioms. He went on to prove that stuffing the ballot box is precisely equivalent to counterfeiting, since all genuine money constitutes a de facto valid vote–and vice versa: To stuff the ballot box therefore absolutely requires an act of forgery. The final, unfinished work of this great thinker was a treatise proving that buying votes in a future election is mathematically the equivalent of borrowing money at compound interest. Faced with the fundamentally innocuous nature of the practice, buying votes for an upcoming election is now perfectly legal throughout all of gnomish society. Buying votes for a current election is of course an utter waste of time.

Rather than becoming diverted by such oddities, perhaps a practical example will be useful instead: Let us suppose the issue was a simple one, “Shall we build a road from point A to point B?” If more money was raised for the “yes” side than for the “no,” then the road would be built using all of the money that the election drew from either side. If the election raised a great deal of money, then the road will be built in superb style, with marble paving stones and charming little hostels every few leagues along the way. But the results are not always so splendid. If “yes” draws more money than “no,” but on the whole the election raises only a modest sum, then the road may be little more than a dirt track in the wilderness.

The most controversial projects always raise the most money in this type of auction, and one would expect vexatious consequences, for the “no” side has invested much toward defeating the project. Yet in practice, we observe that the approval of a controversial project often stifles all dissent. If a hotly-contested issue passes, then by its very nature it has raised a great deal of money. The “yes” voters are of course happy to see the project accomplished superbly well. The “no” voters, on the other hand, still have their pride to keep, and rather than admit their folly for having voted no, they can instead lie through their beards and take pride in having paid so much for the project. Everyone gets what they want, whether they knew it or not, and everyone is happy.

The results are quite different but no less happy if a measure is defeated. If the “no” vote wins, then all of the capital goes to the polity’s General Fund. The General Fund pays for a wide variety of projects that all gnomes agree are important, including maintenance of existing public works, national defense, constable services, education, and support for the aged. Given the rate at which gnomes conceive of and discard projects, the General Fund is suspected of being the largest single currency reserve anywhere in the world, and gnomish public works are legendarily well-maintained. How much money is in the Fund? Let us recall that gnomes are quite wealthy and also very opinionated. The net result is that not a single Gnomerican has paid any kind of compulsory tax in the last six hundred and twenty-eight years. The elections pay for everything. Given that some 90% of elections end in a “no” vote, the General Fund must be a spectacular reserve indeed. Unfortunately, the rules of a strict Glendelfritz Auction render this total a closely-guarded state secret.

Gnomes defend their system on many grounds, but they are most compelling when they point out that an ordinary, non-plutocratic democracy gives no weight to the intensity of one’s opinion. Let us quote from Glendelfritz himself; the following comes from one of his seminars at Gnomerican University:

Suppose that in an ordinary democracy 49% of the populace votes “no.” This 49% considers it a matter of life and death. The other 51% votes “yes,” but does so only because “yes” was the first choice on a long and tedious ballot. They didn’t really feel like reading it anyway, and thus they missed the part about releasing feral baby octopi in the national wading pool; this last was buried on page 462. Clearly, justice has not been done, and a plutocratic election would have solved the problem quite neatly: The 49% would have given all they could possibly afford, while the 51% would give maybe a copper or two each to vote yes. Justice has been done, but only thanks to plutocracy. The great sums of money raised to defeat the scheme can now go toward vital projects like increasing the pay of the faculty Gnomerican University. (loud applause)

An election of this type is the origin of the phrase “giving my two cents’ worth,” which means to offer an opinion of trivial value. It is likewise the origin of the saying “in for a penny, in for a pound,” which references the archaic gnomish currency: If one is going to vote a trivial amount, why not go all the way and vote something substantial? Pennies and pounds were abandoned when both voter turnout and election revenues began to drop; the former was too cumbersome, and the latter too heavy, to serve well in a Glendelfritz Auction.

The general fund is administered by the one hundred richest gnomes of the polity, who together form a body called the Golden Council. Critics point out that the Golden Council is in fact a vestige of an older, purely despotic plutocracy. In a despotic plutocracy, of course, the rich get to rule continuously, rather than dollar-for-dollar. While it may be true that the Golden Council bears some mark of this archaic system, we can hardly doubt that the vestiges of despotism have been thoroughly channeled into useful directions. Further, the Golden Council’s members commonly vote large sums of money in every election. This has two main effects: First, it acts as a check on the concentration of wealth. Second, the Golden Council overwhelmingly tends to vote “no” on every project; by doing so, they keep some measure of control over their own money: Recall that in the event of a measure’s defeat, all of the money raised at the auction/election goes back to the General Fund, which (of course!) is administered by the Golden Council itself. These powerful “no” votes act as a force of conservatism, and one that is frankly quite needed in gnomish society.

In an ordinary, tyrannical plutocracy, the rich make all the decisions, time after time, at no cost to themselves, and the gnomes find this practice monstrous indeed. Actions, they point out, should have consequences. When a rich man’s wealth is gone, he then has to make some more money before he can vote again, and this encourages productivity, even on the part of the leisured political class. Can a single, very wealthy gnome impose his views on everyone else? In a despotic plutocracy, such an individual would be king for life. But in a democratic plutocracy, he is king only for a limited time, and after that, he will have spent all his money.

Such a fate has befallen more than one member of the Golden Council. When a member spends so much at elections that he no longer qualifies to serve, the public executioner destroys the ceremonial bench upon which he sits. Although gnomes long ago abolished the death penalty, they still have executioners. Mostly they smash things or blow them up, both of which are common punishments in Gnomerica. The practice of ejecting a gnome from his seat on the Golden Council is known as “bankrupt,” from two Old Gnomish words that mean “bench” and “break.” It is a matter of considerable public shame to go bankrupt, for it indicates that the gnome in question was foolish enough to value politics more than earning a good, honest living. The latter is what everyone in Gnomerica really aspires to, after all.

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