… is from page 236 Bruno Leoni’s 1960 Il Politico article “Voting Versus the Market” (originally titled “Political Decisions and Majority Rule”) as reprinted in the appendix to the 1991 Liberty Fund edition of Leoni’s soaring 1961 volume, Freedom and the Law:
Voting appears to be not so much a reproduction of the market operation as a symbolization of a battle in the field. If we consider it well, there is noting “rational” in voting that can be compared with rationality in the market. Of course voting may be preceded by argument and bargaining, which may be rational in the same sense as any operation on the market. But whenever you finally come to vote, you don’t argue or bargain any longer. You are on another plane. You accumulate ballots as you would accumulate stones or shells – the implication being that you do not win because you have more reasons than other, but merely because you have more ballots to pile up. In this operation you have neither partners nor interlocutors but only allies and enemies.
