Asymmetrical Information

Prohibition of alcohol became the law of the land on 16 January 1919 before women received the right to vote on 18 August 1920. Obviously men were able to develop the nanny state on their own. Martha Stewart has seen the light from her jail cell and is now discouraging jailing folks for violating the prohibition on drugs.

The granting of voting rights to women (Amd. 19)is only part of (and perhaps the least toxic part of) the legislative fulfillment of the Progressive movement in America.

If you want to find the underpinnings of the nanny state, look to the amendments--technical as they may appear--that eliminated a key bulwark of states' rights (Amd. 17), made the national legislature a full-time, professional job (Amd. 20), and--of course--gave them access to the really big money (Amd. 16).

This sounds like the kind of question you'd get from a smartass anti-libertarian.

"In order to avoid being treated like a child by the government, would you give up one of the things that ultimately protects you against being treated like a child by the government?"

But then, I'm a non-libertarian so I'll be real interested if you get a sincere "yes" from actual libertarian women.

Hmmm - let's also agree that women's suffrage got its start where? In Upstate NY. List some other things that got off the ground not at all far from your grandmother's house -- Mormonism and Spiritualism --- correlation or causation? I have MY days on the shores of Seneca Lake when I wonder . . . .

"It's widely argued that the beginning of the nanny state was the granting of voting rights to women."

That's a pretty silly argument, considering all the government intervention that came before the 19th Amendment. If you want to blame the nanny state on someone, blame the Grange.

No.

If you remember 1900 House, it was the invention and distribution of vacuum cleaners, washing machines and such that gave women the time to spend in politics and to mobilize to get the vote.

Would one give *them* up for a more conservative political environment?

I've never heard this argument before; who has made it? I don't understand the connection between women voting and nanny-stateism, except that nannies are mostly women. I blog more about my confusion here.

It wasn't when we gave them the vote.

It wasn't when we bought them shoes.

It was when we taught them to talk.

It's a silly argument but not entirely so. The women's suffrage movement coincided, and sometimes intermingled, with a lot of other movements like temperance, worker's rights, etc. A lot of people do not understand that women did not want the vote merely for abstract reasons, they wanted it because a lot of them were getting screwed over by the system and without the vote had no power to change it. This was especially true for women workers (if you heard that women only really started working during the wars, you were woefully misinformed) who were treated unfairly and taken advantage of at the time. It was no coincidence that women's suffrage and changes in labor laws tended to occur at the same time (which is not to say that women got the power and voted these things in, often it was a matter of building support for both of these things simultaneously). Additionally, women's rights movements often tied themselves to other outsider / opposition type groups, such as, often, socialists, for example. Though it can be argued that this sort of loaded down women's rights plus a bunch of other things was one of the reasons behind some of the unpopularity of women's rights issues early on, and that it was not so much a case of public opinion changing on women's rights but on women's rights groups dropping the baggage and focusing on the core issues which eventually led to widespread support for women's suffrage. In short, no, women's suffrage was not inextricably linked to nanny-state-ism. Moreover, if you look at the key moments in the rise of such (income tax, social security, "great society", etc.) you'll see that they occured on their own schedules due to different forces than did the rise of women's rights.

Additionally, it doesn't much matter whether women might predominantly support a nanny state or not. In a true democracy they deserve the vote, and they deserve to dictate policy for right or wrong just as any other voice in a democracy. If they are wrong then the correct way to fix that is by swaying them with logic and reason, not disenfranchisement. Most importantly, women do not have any greater right to disenfranchise other women than do men, nor should they.

Read Peter Lindert's Growing Public for a good explanation of the origins of the welfare state. In a nutshell, it it correlated with expansion of voting rights (not just to women, but to all classes), greater exposure to international trade, macroeconomic shocks (i.e., the Great Depression), and, at least in Europe, World War I.

Considering that there is no compelling reason to believe that granting voting rights to women has no more effect on the growth of the welfare state than any general expansion of the franchise, it is not much of an issue (except hypothetically).

Jane Galt makes the following bold and unsubstantiated statement:

It's widely argued that the beginning of the nanny state was the granting of voting rights to women.

Really who exactly is it that is making this argument?

Well, John Lott wrote a paper on that very topic. It appeared in the Journal of Political Economy.

Here's the abstract:

This paper examines the growth of government during this century as a result of giving women the right to vote. Using cross-sectional time-series data for 1870 to 1940, we examine state government expenditures and revenue as well as voting by U.S. House and Senate state delegations and the passage of a wide range of different state laws. Suffrage coincided with immediate increases in state government expenditures and revenue and more liberal voting patterns for federal representatives, and these effects continued growing over time as more women took advantage of the franchise. Contrary to many recent suggestions, the gender gap is not something that has arisen since the 1970s, and it helps explain why American government started growing when it did.

Women give up the right to vote?

Right.

"All you have to do is 'Not Eat This Apple' and everything will be nice...."

"All you have to do is 'Not Open This Box' and everything will be nice...."

And, if Eve and Pandora aren't enough, there's always the Bluebeard story:
"All you have to do is 'Not Open This Door' and everything will be nice...."

Therefore:
"All you have to do is NOT VOTE and everything will be nice...."
just doesn't sound feasible....

The question WAS posed requesting we stipulate the assumption. Pose it more clearly as a fable, if you like. Satan appears to a conservative woman and tells her ...

But isn't it equally fair to consider the reverse? Satan appears to a liberal male and points out that many have widely argued:
Men are violent, callous, territorial ... (This may not be true -- it's SATAN, after all. But we also know Satan can twist the truth to suit his ends.) Would that, would ANY, "liberal" man take the devil's bargain? To magically repeal the vote from ALL men, in the hope -- but not the promise -- of leading to a kinder, gentler, more cooperative society?

And finally -- is there any reason to suppose Satan would find it easier to find a conservative women willing to make Jane's deal than to find a liberal man to make mine?

Would you all get your heads out of your snit and answer the question Megan asked? It's a hypothetical ("assuming this is...true").

No, I will not ever give up my right to vote.

But I disagree with your premise that the "nanny state" began with women's right to vote. I believe it began with the "PILL" ... when family size and timing were made controllable. Review the attitudes of the late 1950's....women stayed at home with the children...she was a homemaker.

The arrival of the 60's and the pill started changes in attitude, which I might add are now turning around. A GREATER NUMBER OF WOMEN ARE CHOOSING TO STAY HOME WITH THEIR CHILDREN. MORE WOMEN ARE HOME SCHOOLING.

CONSERVATIVE VALUES WILL BE JUST FINE WITHOUT ME GIVING UP MY RIGHT TO VOTE!

What were pre-suffrage laws such as those which limited womens' right to own property, to act contrary to the wishes of her husband or father, to hold jobs and become professionals, and so on, if not "nanny state" laws? And if they were enthusiastically voting for nanny state laws designed to treat grown men like children, they were also voting against other laws designed to treat grown women like children.

"It's a silly argument but not entirely so. The women's suffrage movement coincided, and sometimes intermingled, with a lot of other movements like temperance, worker's rights, etc. A lot of people do not understand that women did not want the vote merely for abstract reasons, they wanted it because a lot of them were getting screwed over by the system and without the vote had no power to change it."

"Temperance" and "worker's rights" weren't really a way to protect themselves from getting screwed over, but a way to screw other people over, taking away other people's money and one of their significant pleasures. Maybe it was all motivated by revenge? But any way you look at it, these were unquestionably setbacks in the cause of liberty.

As for the question, if we could find a libertarian king and give him a never-ending supply of anti-aging treatments, I'd be cool with ditching that whole voting thing. Since neither of these things are available, I guess we're stuck with voting to protect our liberties until something better comes along.

"if we could find a libertarian king and give him a never-ending supply of anti-aging treatments"

And maybe the libertarian king's treatments could be made from dry water and administered by honest liars. :)

But no, even if one accepts the premise as true (which I emphatically do not, for both psychological and historical reasons), one can not achieve liberty by means of structural disenfranchisement, unless one takes the anarchist stand (which necessarily renders the question moot). Punishing classes of people for the supposedly unacceptable behavior supposedly practiced by a supposed subset of their membership is what our _enemies_ (marxists, gender-war feminists, labor unions, radical environmentalists, etc) do.

Perhaps women had more real power when they could not vote and thus could not be blamed for everything bad that happened. Nagging is much more effective when your husband can't turn around and say, "Well, honey, you girls can vote now so why isn't the world a wonderful place?"

In the same vein, I wonder if we disenfranchised African-Americans if urban poverty and crime would diminish? And how about Mexican Americans - get rid of all those pesky immigration issues? If we really thought about it, maybe we could get Democracy down to something so simple even a Libertarian could understand it.

While I'm not certain that the premise is valid -- but we'll move forward on the assumption that it is -- if women gave up their voting rights, a more conservative, traditional (read: patriarchical) government would surely follow.

Given this inference, the question, "Would [conservative/libertarian women] give up the right to vote in order to secure a more conservative political environment?" suffers from qualitative definition -- what if the new political order did not emphasise individual rights/liberties?

Which is to say, if [conservative/libertarian women] gave up the voting franchise how could they be sure that the government would safeguard their rights/liberties without the direct feedback mechanism of the ballot box?

The fundamental issue at hand is whether or not someone's life has value to the political or physical future of the state. In the case of the U.S., there is a production value also, and hopefully, by appeasing women, they will become more involved and more productive in service of the society/state. Unfortunately, the quid-pro-quo doesn't come, and eventually, voters get disenfranchised when they don't see their productivity being rewarded by the state's performance as a whole. Women are more sensitive to future planning (at least the 9-month hereditary kind, as compared to a man's goal-planning of 8 hours to a beer), and thus, seem more sensitive as a rule, to what the state is doing for the future of their children.
And, check your premises, since the state has not guaranteed even fundamental nutrition to people, ever. The only 'nanny'-izing that the state does is done on a statistical basis of how much money they can distribute in order to maintain order, not any kind of 'care' to speak of. So, if you give up the right to vote for nannyism, you first have to determine what a nanny would provide. If you are giving up the right to choose (supposedly) your rules in exchange for basic needs, then you have to determine if you even HAD the right to rule yourself(election fraud?)in the first place, and if you are going to get taken care of, needwise, in the second place. History says "It ain'ta gonna hap'n". auntiegrav.blogspot.com

Next week on Stupid Uncomfortable Questions:

If you could sell your mother into slavery and get ALL THE CANDY IN THE WORLD, would you do it?

If you could sell your mother into slavery and get ALL THE CANDY IN THE WORLD, would you do it?

No, but I’d sell my kid brother for a carton of Morleys and a six-pack. Any takers?

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If you could sell your mother into slavery and get ALL THE CANDY IN THE WORLD, would you do it?
>>>>>>>>>
As a lovely Italian girl who was in Athens once put it, "You buy my mother? She virgin!"

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