This is the second in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?
There's no such thing as a "right to vote". There's the power to vote, but no-one has a natural, God-given right to vote. We have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but none of those require or imply the right to vote. An absolute dictatorship could respect our God-given natural rights, and be entirely just. For instance, most families don't operate as democracies, and yet most families respect these basic rights.
One my my friends (I hope she's still my friend) responded to my earlier post about the 19th amendment and said that she doesn't want to apply economic principles to civil rights. However, economic principles apply to every human endeavor, whether we recognize it or not. No one needs to come put a price tag on your forehead for there to be a cost associated with the rights and powers you enjoy. That cost is there automatically, regardless of your approval, and economics is merely the study of the costs and benefits associated with everything humans do.
Costs and benefits often aren't monetary -- generally economists refer to "utility" to describe how valuable something is to a person. Love and affection, the power to vote, $1000, clean air -- all of these items have utility to people, and different people will value them differently. When it comes to the power to vote, I hypothesized that if you were to walk up to a random guy on the street and offer him a 20% permanent raise in exchange for his power to vote, he'd probably sell it to you. Most people don't vote, and many who do don't take it very seriously. If Joe Shmoe won't sell his vote for a 20% raise, maybe he will for 50%, or 100%, or 1000%. There's a price, you just have to find it and be willing to pay it. Some people may place infinite value on their power to vote, but I doubt there are many such people -- especially if you separate the power to vote from the natural rights we hold so dear.
With all that understanding, it's quite reasonable to wonder whether or not giving women the power to vote was a wise idea. I agree that it has moral value, and we gain some utility as a society from that good morality, but does that moral utility out-weigh the utility of every effect that has arisen because women can vote? It's possible that that moral utility is more valuable to you than anything else, but I doubt that's the case.
The question is whether or not our present circumstances are overall better or worse than they would be if women had never been given the power to vote. Yes, there is some degree of utility that arises from the moral good that was done in granting women that power, but that utility is not of infinite value.
For instance, the War on Drugs would probably not exist if women couldn't vote; the War on Drugs costs us billions of dollars a year and incarcerates millions of otherwise-innocent people. It also encourages a lot of violent crime associated with the black market. On the other hand, the War on Drugs probably reduces drug use, and reduces the societal costs associated with that. So, your opinion of the War on Drugs can influence your opinion of the total utility gained or lost when women were given the power to vote. There are many other issues that have been affected by the 19th Amendment, and all of them should affect the way you value the power of women to vote.
Courtney has some links to the conversation going on at Dean's World. In the comment section there she promised a post on the subject herself -- but so far, nothing!
Continued in part 3, "Why Do We Need Democracy?"
Update:
Dean Esmay explains some of the thinking during the early suffrage movements.
I think I see what you're saying, but couldn't we evaluate the pros and cons of letting men vote in much the same way?
Of course! It's a bit more difficult because there's no specific instance to go back to and judge from (like the 19th Amendment), but it can be done. It's also reasonable to wonder what effect, if any, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18 has had.
The main reason I applied the question to women was that I saw the conversation on Dean's blog, and it was the 83rd anniversary of the 19th Amendment. For different groups, the costs and benefits of allowing them to vote will be different. In fact, varying combinations would probably yield quite disparate results.
Part of the question revolves arould who has the authority to decide who votes, and to a large extent that authority belongs to those who have the raw power. In some places that might be a king and his army, or it might be men in general, or it might be a certain subset of rich nobles. They're the ones who have to weigh the value of allowing other groups to vote. (They also have to weigh the value of killing each other and trying to take over, and however else they may want to use their raw power.)
The fact that voting is not a natural right doesn't mean it's not a right. There's no natural right to bear arms, or to be tried by a jury of your peers, or to petition the government for redress of grievances either. In terms of natural rights, most of the ones that are ever recognized are liberty rights: the right to live your life according to your own conception of what is best for you. However, we also realize that such rights are best protected under a system where a government keeps others from interfering with them. But with government power comes the possibility of government interfering with the natural rights of the individual. For that reason, we have what are known as procedural rights, of which voting is one. Those rights are a way to protect natural rights, like the right to have your own ideas and express them freely, within the artificial system we've constructed. They're not natural rights, but we don't live in a "natural" society, so we need to ensure some made up rights in order to protect the rights endowed to us by our creator.
Whoops, hit post too soon. Here's the rest:
Because we recognize that we need those made up, procedural rights to protect our natural rights, it would be immoral for our society to deny those procedural rights to anyone who possesses those natural rights. Otherwise, the majority would be able (and was able) to impose its will on that silent minority and infringe on their natural rights. That's what happened to women pre-1920, whether they realized it and wanted a change or not. While the infringement on their natural rights was indirect, it did exist until women were granted the procedural right to vote so that they could protect their own natural rights to live their lives as they saw fit. That's why deciding whether to extend the franchise to women, or to any other group of people who don't currently have it, is a question of much, much more than consequences. It's a question of giving people the tools they need to ensure that the force of government isn't used, as it has been in the past, to trample their natural rights. Is it artificial? Sure. But within the context of our political system, it's no less unfair to deny someone the right to participate in the government that decides who gets locked in prison than it would be to simply lock that person in prison. That's why the consequences matter far, far less than the fact that every person who possesses natural rights and is forced to live under the rules of our government has a right to help determine who makes those rules. It's not just about who would make the best decisions; it's about making sure that every human has, as s/he was meant to have, a right of self-determination.
Actually, no, I disagree. The right to carry weapons and protect one's safety is fundamentally different from the power to vote.
"it would be immoral for our society to deny those procedural rights to anyone who possesses those natural rights"
Children have lots of rights, but not the power to vote. Same with felons. Same with non-citizens.
As I said, a dictatorship with no voting whatsoever could respect everyone's rights just perfectly without any voting. I don't think it would be my preferred form of government, but it wouldn't be inherently unjust.
Trial-by-jury isn't a natural right either, but it protects a natural right to liberty and personal property, for example. Similarly, voting isn't a natural right, but as you said, it is effective for preserving natural rights.
Anyway, despite what you may believe, women were not oppressed in 19th century America, and in fact many women were against the suffrage movement.
I think that whether women in 19th century America were oppressed isn't a question whose answer is up to you. I think it's up to 19th century American women to decide whether they were oppressed. Clearly, at least some of them felt that they were, and they have the right to agitate for the end of the oppression they felt. The ones who didn't feel oppressed were free not to vote.
Sorry, I don't think oppression is a matter of opinion. There are different degrees of oppression, but it's a simple matter of fact. Just because someone thinks they're oppressed doesn't make it so, and just because someone doesn't think they're oppressed doesn't make it so, either.
Consider women in Saudi Arabia, who actually are oppressed. From what I've read, most of them don't even realize it and don't mind. They're still oppressed, however; women in Saudi Arabia can't drive, can't wear the clothes they want, can't own property, can't walk around in public alone, &c. That's oppression.
Re: Women voting
Children don't have the power to vote, but they will gain it in time. Non-citizens don't have the power to vote, but they can become US citizens if they wish and thereby gain that power. Citizens can avoid losing the vote by not committing felonies.
But it is manifestly unreasonable to demand that women become men if they wish to vote.
Your prime argument against women voting seems to be: "Women vote stupidly. Men vote intelligently. Therefore, perhaps women ought not vote." This assumption is mind-bogglingly idiotic, unless you have data showing that women as a whole are dumber in the voting booth than men are. (Note that the transition period immediately after suffrage doesn't count; I would expect women to vote foolishly during that period due to political inexperience.)
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Re:
The right to vote is precisely like the right to bear arms. Compare:
"Voting isn't really a right because a dictatorship could theoretically respect our real rights."
"Bearing arms isn't really a right because everyone in the country could theoretically avoid killing, raping, and stealing from one another."
Bearing arms and voting are both necessary to protect our other rights from other people in this imperfect world.
This is kind of an odd discussion. There seems to be a misunderstanding of what it means for a right to be "natural".
A natural right exists in a state of nature, in the absence of government. It could be infringed by other animals, but the natural man would fight to defend it.
Among natural rights are life, property, territory, procreation, abortion (for the mother), child-rearing (for the mother), speech, transit (ie paths through or between territories), air, water, and mate-selection (for the female). All these exist without government. Nobody grants them to us. We are born with the innate determination to fight for them, and they are infringed only by force.
The right to self-defense, and therefore to bear arms, is certainly a natural right.
In agreeing to a social compact, we allow various infringements on our natural rights in exchange for government-granted and protected civil rights. Trial by jury is a clear example of a civil right. There is no jury in the absence of government. It is a granted right.
This is just definition of terms. I don't mean to argue for or against any particular social compact. The debate seems to be imbued with the prevailing sense of morality. Some people even go so far as to speak of the "right to education" or FDR's "freedom from want". To me, these are privileges, not rights. They come at somebody else's expense, a clear distinction.
I happen to believe that the world works better when women have dominion in the home, and men in the field. So a woman should not have the right to vote, but she should have the right to kick a man out of her house and spend all his money. I know this is offensive to modern sensibilities, but I think it is the natural division of responsibilities. Women are generally superior in child-rearing, bargaining, organization, socializing, and efficiently allocating the household's resources. Men are generally superior in defense, reasoning, innovation, and competing for limited resources. I don't think it's innate intelligence. I think it's a matter of where our brain power is devoted, which may be a result of our physical differences. Whatever the cause, it is very natural, and very much in line with the societies of small native american tribes, as I've understood them.
But we don't live in tribes, so we are constantly redefining what it means to be human. I don't know what's best for us. I do, however, like to see unorthodox ideas discussed openly.
O95: I don't think you'd get much agreement as to your list of natural rights, particularly regarding abortion and mate-selection (and transit, for that matter).
As for mate-selection specifically, plural marriages are quite common historically, and would seem to defy your perspective.
You're wrong, you know. About the "right to vote" argument, based on the fact that it's not listed explicitly in the Constitution. The Constitution specifically states that "...among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." It has been shown time and time again that these rights are not a limited laundry list; there are innumerable unalienable rights that the Constitution does not list because the Founding Fathers considered it redundant and unnecessary.
Mollbot: Where did I mention the Constitution? You're the first one who said anything about it in this post.