An Economist’s Reflections on Aristotle’s Politics

My foreword to the Laissez Faire Books / Classical Wisdom ebook edition of Aristotle’s Politics (2015)

Reviewing Aristotle’s Politics on Amazon, a reader opined, “even though Aristotle’s ideas are brilliant, I don’t like the way he expresses himself.” Everybody can have his opinion, but this one is problematic. First, Aristotle’s Politics, as it has been handed to us, is quite certainly not exactly what Aristotle wrote or said. Moreover, one is advised to approach with some humility a classic book that is still influential after 25 centuries. In this spirit, I will try to provide some keys about how Politics fits in today’s knowledge of politics, economics, and liberty. Continue reading

Don’t Waste Your Vote

If someone tells you that he doesn’t want to “waste his vote” and will thus vote strategically for the least bad candidate with a chance of winning, tell him the following. He should also make sure that his least bad candidate only wins by a small majority. If he thinks that C is the only good candidate but that only A and B have a decent chance of winning and that A is the least bad, he wants to make sure that A wins with only a small margin.

Now, if he can make his preferred (or least disliked) candidate win because of his own vote, surely he can also make him win by only 10 votes. This is what is called voting strategically.