Infrequently Asked Questions
A longer and (even more) boring answer is in my campaign
bio. The short answer is that I've been a software engineer here on the
Peninsula since 1990, first at Sun
Microsystems and then at Yahoo. My wife Melisse is a
California
native and a financial analyst at Genentech. We have two daughters
living
at home here in San Carlos (Zoe b. May 2000, Shannon b. Aug 2003) and a
son
living
in our hearts (Blake
b. Sep 2001 d. Sep 2001).
Why are you running?
(Please ignore my hidden extra agenda.)
I'm running to provide a voice to voters who are tired of the
obsolete 20th-century dichotomy between liberal and conservative, and
who are looking for an intelligent alternative that combines the best
of both.
I'm running to challenge voters to
Of course, given the effort
involved in running and the probable small impact of my campaign, it's
not rational to run for the above reasons. So the primary reason
I'm running is for the moral satisfaction of being able to say to
myself (and having history record) that I stood up for what is right.
(It's sort of like why I never ever litter, even if I know that nobody
else would know: I would
know, and it would spoil my righteous indignation at litter.)
I'm not running because I believe that holding office is "public
service". The two greatest forces for material well-being in
human history have been freedom and knowledge. The two greatest forces
for misery have been tyranny and ignorance. As the potential guarantor
of freedom, government is indeed capable of facilitating enormous good.
But as the traditional usurper of freedom, government has caused
grotesque amounts of suffering in human history, and nearly all of it
has been inflicted by officials who
believed they were doing "public service".
Anyone of good conscience who seeks or holds government
office needs to keep firmly in mind that governments more easily do
harm than good, and that merely holding government office doesn't
automatically make one's actions a "public service".
What makes you qualified to run for
Congress?
I'm not! I lack:
- campaign financing,
- name
recognition,
- a mainstream political party base,
- political connections,
- campaign
experience,
and
- a government resume.
However, I am qualified to run a
citizen's
race that offers voters a clear set of principles to stand up for.
And if I somehow found myself elected, I'd be able to apply those
principles
to the votes that come before the House, using my solid
grounding in the fundamentals of political philosophy, ethics,
constitutional
law, economics, and history. I'd probably not be very good at getting
new
laws passed, but my goal would instead be to get laws repealed.
And of course I'd make no effort to win special benefits for our
district (or any constituency therein) at the expense of other
taxpayers.
How can you possibly think you might be
elected?
I don't!
|
Eshoo |
Republican |
Libertarian |
Other
|
1992
|
(56.7%)
|
(39%) Huening
|
(2.8%) Olson
|
1.5% P&F
|
1994
|
(60.6%)
|
(39.4%) Brink
|
|
|
1996
|
(65%)
|
(31%) Brink
|
(1.5%) Dehn
|
1.6% P&F 1% NL
|
| 1998 |
129,663 (68%) |
53,719 (28%) Haugen
|
3,166 (1.6%) Dehn
|
2,362 (1.2%) NL
|
| 2000 |
161,720 (70%) |
59,338 (26%) Quraishi
|
4,715 (2%) Dehn
|
|
| 2002 |
112,085 (68%) |
46,216 (28%) Nixon
|
5,891 (3.5%) Carver
|
|
As of 2003-12-31, Eshoo had $320K on hand, Haugen had $4K on
hand. I currently have given myself permission to spend up to $5K.
How many votes do you think you will get?
Here is my prediction.
Prediction Date
|
Anna Eshoo -
Democrat
|
Chris Haugen
- Republican
|
Brian Holtz
- Libertarian
|
2004-01-01
|
68%
|
28%
|
4%
|
Why waste my vote on a candidate with no
chance of winning?
Which vote is more "wasted": a vote that ratifies a predetermined
outcome, or a vote that helps get attention for the principles you
believe in?
Which vote is more "wasted": a vote that reassures your major party
that you don't question its behavior, or a vote that voices your
opinion of how that party should evolve?
All votes are "wasted", in
the sense that no single vote ever decides a significant election. If
such an election came down to one vote, there would be a recount, and
the winning margin would almost surely no longer be one vote.
An individual vote has so little influence on the outcome of an
election that economists have given a name to the problem of why
seemingly rational people bother to vote: the voter's
paradox. The answer seems to be not because of the influence of
their single votes, but because of a desire to identify with the social
groups having a similar opinion. Thus, a rational person votes in order
to feel good about himself. If you can feel good about yourself
by voting for the lesser of two evils, then knock yourself out.
(Literally. On election day, instead of voting against me, hit yourself
on the head with a hammer.)
What if voting for you helps elect the
greater of two evils?
In 2002, Anna Eshoo was among the 98
percent of House incumbents seeking reelection who won it, and 2004
will be no different. If
voting
for a third-party candidate who shares your principles actually helped
tip the outcome, then that would put pressure on the major party you
spurned to actively pursue your principles (instead of ignoring or
paying lip
service to them).
What if you were elected?
The republic would probably fall, and barbarians would probably rape
our cattle and stampede our women...
If
I were elected, I'd apply my principles
and platform to the votes that came before
Congress. I'd probably be pretty ineffective at influencing
legislation, but I'd do my best to embarrass the incumbent politicians
over their pandering to special interests and their trampling of the
Constitution. Maybe each month I'd give to the sponsor of the
most blatantly unconstitutional legislation a roll of toilet paper with
the Constitution printed on it. Stuff like that. Knowing my
election was a fluke and having little chance of re-election, I'd be
like a kamikaze un-politician for the principles of Constitutionalism
and
Market Liberalism.
And of course I'd loudly refuse to fight for special benefits for our
district (or any constituency therein) at the expense of other
taxpayers.
If elected, will you listen to the
voice of the people?
Listen, yes. Heed, no. The majority doesn't determine what's
right and
what's
wrong.
How will you campaign?
Primarily by promoting this website, answering candidate
questionnaires
and
media inquiries, and participating in public forums. I doubt I'll kiss
many babies or knock on many doors. I don't want people to vote for me
because I have a firm handshake or they think I'm a nice guy. I
don't fundamentally care whether people vote for me, since I care more
about spreading the idea of market liberalism than about getting
votes. The campaign is only a means to the end of
spreading the message of free minds and free markets. I'd rather have
someone hear my detailed message and vote against me than ignore the message
while voting for me, because
the message will eventually win even though I won't. What's true
and right always wins in the long run.
Why is your campaign targeting "opinion leaders"?
Most of the general public will (temporarily) buy into the most recent
or most personalized candidate pitch they get. (People who don't have
such a pitch don't bother becoming candidates.) As such, reaching these
people is not as important, as they will just be won back by the next
candidate they encounter.
The people I want to reach are opinion leaders: people who influence
others' opinions and who themselves are harder than average to
influence, but who care about the issues and have a hard time
completely ignoring what is right when it is presented well.
What is your political history?
My policy had been to register and vote Libertarian at the state and
local level to signal my principles, but vote Republican in federal
elections to try to limit the harms caused by Democrats in D.C. My
theory was that the Republicans
almost
never implement their worst ideas (restraints on civil liberty),
whereas
the Democrats almost always implement theirs (restraints on economic
liberty).
But now that the Republicans finally control both Congress and the
White
House, their handouts to seniors, farmers, and Big Business have been
almost
as shameful as what the Democrats have always done. I can no longer
blame
pork-barrel and special-interest fiscal policy exclusively on the
Democrats.
I would vote for a socially-moderate Republican or a market-friendly
Democrat if one were in a close race against an extreme leftist or
rightist, but otherwise I'll be using my vote to send as clear a signal
as possible about what principles I believe in.
What is your record of public service
or civic involvement?
I do not believe that holding
office is automatically "public
service". As the potential guarantor
of freedom, government is indeed capable of facilitating enormous good.
But as the traditional usurper of freedom, government has caused
grotesque amounts of suffering in human history, and nearly all of it
has been inflicted by officials who believed they were doing "public
service". Anyone of good conscience who seeks or holds government
office needs to keep firmly in mind that governments more easily do
harm than good, and that merely holding government office doesn't
automatically make one's actions a "public service".
Voters should be extremely wary of office-seekers who view political
power -- the power to coerce using lethal armed force -- as just a
slightly different form of altruistic community involvement. My
altruistic efforts are guided by two basic observations:
- The two greatest forces for
material well-being in
human history have been freedom and knowledge, while the two greatest
forces
for misery have been tyranny and ignorance.
- By far the biggest sins held against our generation by future
humans will be our failures to preserve the diversity of Earth's
languages and species. There is no resource
we can waste that will
create any significant material privation for them.
My altruistic efforts are thus directed in four primary directions:
Will you run again?
Probably, unless 1) a better LP candidate is available, 2) one of the
two major parties gets a lot more libertarian, or 3) I get too
disillusioned about the electorate. (I was somewhat depressed by
a recent Ann Eshoo town hall meeting, which was packed with senior
citizens whose primary concern was increasing their government
"entitlements".)
Who has endorsed your candidacy?
Nobody you've heard of. Nobody I've
heard of. :-) Actually, I'll be contacting some academics and bay
area business leaders
Can I contribute to your campaign?
This campaign is more about getting ideas to the voters than it is about
getting votes from
the voters, so I'm not interested in traditional techniques for
increasing name recognition: yard signs, TV and radio ads, etc.
However, I'll accept contributions toward my scheme in which I bet my
constituents that they won't vote against me.
Why are you betting voters they won't vote
against you?
I'm skeptical of the ability of traditional advertising to get my
campaign's message out to voters in my district. So why not just
pay voters to get the message out to themselves? If I'd be
willing to pay (say) $2 to have a registered voter in my district
consider my campaign's positions, why not cut out the middleman and pay
that money directly to the voter? The way I arrived at this scheme is
by asking: what kind of media can I buy where I'm guaranteed that I
only pay if the voter actually considers my message? If anybody
knows of any other scheme that satisfies this criterion, I'm all ears.
Why do voters have to take your quiz to win
the bet?
The only way I can think of to verify that a voter has considered my
positions is to have her pass a short quiz on them (with cheating
encouraged, via hyperlinks to my campaign material.)
Why only pay voters who declare they
probably will vote against you?
- I don't want to be accused of buying votes.
- It might grab the attention of the voters I want to reach: those
who are open-minded about having their political beliefs tested.
- It might get some man-bites-dog attention: this guy's paying
people not to vote for him!
- It might make my payments not count toward the $5000 FEC
expense-reporting threshold for my race -- but I doubt it.
How do you know your offer won't be abused?
I only send money if the name and address are on my district's list of
registered voters and I haven't yet sent money to that name and
address. So the only challenge is to prevent an abuser from
mass-producing pre-answered quizzes and distributing them in my
district like $2 coupons. This unlikely form of abuse could be
prevented by asking the quiz-taker for her last name and street name,
and using it to generate a randomized quiz with a unique digital
signature. A simpler technique is to have the quiz ask for a phone
number at which the voter can be contacted for possible random auditing.
What if you are prosecuted for vote-buying?
Put on public jury trial for paying a few dozen (or at most a few
thousand) people to vote against me
in a race that I'm going to lose by about
150K votes to 5K votes? Hurt me
with that problem! No, I'm more worried about some kind of
low-key cease-and-desist notice from some FEC bureaucrat.
42 U.S.C. 1973i(c) reads:
Whoever knowingly or willfully gives
false information as to his name, address or period of residence in the
voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to
register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose
of encouraging his false registration to vote or illegal voting, or
pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to
vote or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both
So what's illegal is any payment for "voting". My payment will be for a
declaration that the voter will not be
voting for me. It would be one thing for Bush to pay people not to vote
for Kerry. But little ol' me paying people not to vote for me is a much
different case, for which I'd be willing to get into a little trouble.
A backup plan is available. Instead of the $2 going to the voter, it
goes to the opponent of mine that the voter chooses. To prevent an
opponent from flooding me with forged responses, I could require the
voter to send $2 that I would return to her in a stamped self-addressed
envelope. Then the worst case becomes my opponents publicizing my quiz
to her supporters -- which doesn't bother me one bit.)
Can I volunteer in any way?
Tell only your most intelligent friends about marketliberal.org. We
don't want to dumb this movement down. :-)
Join my campaign's Yahoo! Group
to keep tabs on its progress, in case
anything exciting threatens to happen.
How can I contact you?
I prefer email (brian@holtz.org),
but am often
available for online chat via my Yahoo!
Messenger account.
(I won't add you to my Messenger friends list if I don't know you, but
you're welcome to join my campaign's Yahoo! Group.)
Did you really read the whole thing? If you have that much
free
time, go here.
