There’s a general election in South Africa today. And whether or not you vote (I would encourage you to do so) the most important thing to remember is that there’s a difference between a soft and a hard mandate.

Voting is no different than a sports match. We all want our team to win. On an emotional level, the level of our survival instincts, logical fact-based thinking doesn’t matter much. Humans will gladly sacrifice facts, in favour of survival. This can be useful if you live in a world of cave bears and mountain lions where a split-second reaction time is the difference between life and death. But in our more complex modern era, and especially with election time, unfortunately it leads to an over emphasis on the perceived effectiveness of voting.

We say and believe that voting will drastically change things, but experience shows it often doesn’t. Politicians know this and exploit it, whipping followers into a frenzy while counting on the fact that, with time, it’s business as usual. Again, this is not say you shouldn’t vote. But it is to say that you should not overestimate the immediate impact of an election, whatever the outcome may be.

And you should try to separate facts from emotional thinking. Voting is a soft exercise of an individual’s political power. Our vote places a soft mandate on elected leaders to execute on their promises. They can still choose to execute, or not, and the consequences of execution / non-execution are not immediate and sometimes never materialize.

The link between what politicians promise, prior to an election, and the consequence of breaking that promise is a very flexible link, at best.

If the ruling ANC were to lose their majority in today’s election, that would be a vote of no confidence. But that does not immediately change their operating reality. There’s room to manoeuvre, so to speak, and, unless there’s a massive sea change, they could very well continue as per normal. The more important point is that they’ve been losing their majority since the early 2000’s. Yet, if anything, their behaviour has deteriorated.

There are however ways in which to place harder mandates on elected officials.

For example: if a large portion of taxpayers suddenly emigrated financially, whether or not the ANC wins a majority, a steep drop in tax revenue would have a more immediate effect. Government’s budget would shrink and they would either have to more carefully consider their actions going forward. Or risk financial instability. That’s not to say this will force them to behave responsibly. But it is to say that the impact on their decision-making reality would be more palpable.

This is called “voting with your feet” and it’s a harder mandate. It’s comparable to changing a service provider because the competitor provides a better service. And it’s already happening, albeit very slowly, because emigrating is difficult. For precisely this reason. Unlike businesses, governments who want to avoid changing their modus operandi can force their citizens to stick around.

Fortunately there’s an easier (and more effective way) of doing this: You can opt out by divesting from the national fiat currency and investing in an alternative that cannot be manipulated by desperate governments.

This does not mean you should evade paying taxes. Everyone should pay what they legally owe. However, using an alternative form of money, as far as it is legal, and for as long as it is legal, is a powerful vote of no confidence that draws demand away from a fiat currency system that allows governments to more easily borrow and act less responsibly, paying for things they cannot afford.

The wider adoption of Bitcoin draws a much harder bottom-line, it is a stronger forcing function, when compared to the ballot box. Not least of all because there is no guarantee that the people who are voted in, will not behave in ways eerily similar to the ones they replaced.

Simply put, politicians can choose to execute, or not, on the promises they made. And there may or may not be consequences to non-execution.

However, politicians cannot forcibly make a fiat currency retain value if people are opting out, en-masse. And if the government issued fiat currency loses value, in favour of something that exists outside of government control, it’s a safe bet to say that politicians will tread more carefully when considering whether or not to execute on what was promised.