The new word on the street is that the Libertarian Party - yes, the LIBERTARIAN PARTY - might decide to charge fees for seats at its 2010 national convention. If you want a more substantial reaction to this than I'm going to give, Gary Chartier gives a good summary of the "thick" response.
Now, I could totally understand someone steeped in free market economics giving a supply-demand defense of floor fees. Seats on the floor are a scarce resource for which there is much demand, and it is right and equitable that these seats be offered at a price that reflects the demand for and scarcity of these seats, so as to avoid the effects of distributing goods at a price lower than their demand and scarcity, which in this case would be overcrowding. The fee might also help pay for the hall.
My knee-jerk reaction is that charging money for access to a political decision-making process smears the distinction that Classical Liberalism has traditionally made between the public and private sphere. I imagine that the LP is still officially minarchist, and as such they at least nominally hold to the public-private distinction. Only the most hardcore anarcho-capitalists want everything privatized and allocated through market exchange. I'm an anarchist, but even I recognize some distinction between public and private spheres. Part of "the democratic ideal" is everyone's entitlement to a say in the decisions that affect them. Charging money for that say is essentially charging people for something that they should already have by reason of their rightful autonomy.
I'm not really someone to talk, though, because - well - I'm an anarchist, and even though I do vote I've more or less given up hope on party politics.
I have to say, though - what's next, renting pews in church? Oh wait, we've already had that. Some people have even been sued for not paying their pew rent.
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About Me
- Isaiah
- I am a part-time philosopher and a former immigration paralegal with a BA in philosophy and a paralegal certificate from UC San Diego.
I would actually be less likely to object to the pew fee than the political party fee. Not that I would pay a pew fee, because I feel no need to sit in a pew in the first place, but would find it less strange to do so.
ReplyDeleteI mean, we already pay for seats at the theater (both the movie kind and the "real" kind with live actors), that are a form of entertainment. And for someone like me who really doesn't believe that churches hold the key to any deep connection to the universe, that's what sitting through a church service would be--a kind of play where the actors entertain you with stories illustrating themes of life and the human condition.
Of course, with that reasoning, you could say that libraries should charge kids to come sit in a circle and be read stories, in which case on some level it really wouldn't be the same. There is something about being read to for free that makes the place just seem welcoming.