The advantage is always with those imposing the sanctions who sing a narrative in endless repetition; always, until it induces the thought “Methinks they do repeat too much”. Disappointment with politics and the efficacy of voting is now a social reality. Why? I am suggesting it is because the choices it offers are too few, and its means of differentiating between things is too little.

The means of improving our lives are seldom political choices, that is, means to be had through voting; and anyway they come years apart, and are usually of little effect.

Every hour, we elect. We elect to do or not to do, to consider or dismiss, to say or not, to go or stay, or as Shakespeare had it, to be or not to be. Actually there are two formal voting systems which are collectively organized. In one we vote either by ballot papers or electronically via the internet to appoint politicians, company directors, club officers or sporting captains. We have learned to do this democratically, the essence of which method involves each having an equal number of the “rights to choose”; we get one right each per person or per share which is represented.

It is difficult to speak of the other formal voting system without shame. Shame? How? Because in this voting system nobody is given any votes at all! And more shameful than this, almost nobody chooses to notice this parsimony. Then how do we get votes? We have to get them from those who already have them. 

We get them from others through serving; a wage system. We get them from others by giving of our substance; surrendering our assets, our goods or services. OK, so we get them from others who have had them from others. That will work. Of course it will work. But it only works if, ultimately, they are had from others who did not have them at all. Otherwise they don’t and can’t exist, of course. 

With money, the economic vote, we elect the means of living: the means of sustenance, of entertainment, of shelter, of learning and informing the spirit. This is the great ballot, the election of life in all its aspects, but in this poll, this plebiscite, we are given no votes at all. Money-votes must be obtained from those others who don’t have them at all, but own the means of creating them out of nothing. These others, as policy, do not distribute them democratically with all sharing freely and equally.