Given that I wouldn't obstruct your ability to support the public goods that you value...what justification do you have for obstructing my ability to support the public goods that I value?
In 510 BC, the Greek city-state of Athens developed its system of direct democracy. One of the Greeks who was a boy at this time was Themistocles.
In 492 BC, the Persian Empire went on its first invasion of Greece. This invasion was halted at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC by the citizens of Athens. Themistocles took part in this battle, and was possibly a Strategoi, or general.
Themistocles, in the later years, became a politician in Athens. He always advocated Athens becoming a major naval power, both in order to protect themselves from hostile powers and to project their own power throughout the Mediterranean. However, because Athens was governed by a direct democracy, Themistocles had to get a majority of the citizens to agree with that, especially since the Athenians themselves would have to row the boats and man them - an expensive proposition since every Athenian who was a rower was one less Athenian growing crops.
It should also be noted that the Athenians used as a check against politicians the practice of "ostracism." Every year, the citizens would vote whether or not they wanted to perform an ostracism. If they voted, "yes," every citizen was required to write on a shard of pottery the name of a politician they wanted banished from the city for 10 years. These shards were put into urns. The urns were emptied and the names were counted. Whoever got the most votes, and as long as that person got 6,000 votes, that politician was exiled.
So politicians of Athens had a very good incentive to not be too unpopular with their citizenry. Thus, should a politician propose an unpopular policy, even though it may be necessary for the city to undergo, they could face banishment.
In 483 BC, a massive new seam of silver was discovered at Laurium, which was controlled by the city of Athens. When the citizens were debating what should be done with this newfound wealth, of the two camps were Aristides and Themistocles.
Aristides was a rival of Themistocles. Aristides proposed that the silver be mined and that the wealth would be evenly distributed to all the citizens of Athens.
Themistocles, however, wanted to use that wealth to to go to the building of 200 triremes. Themistocles suspected that Persian ambitions on conquering Greece had not yet diminished. He wanted to build a navy that could resist Persia's military might.
But he couldn't ask the citizens to give up this wealth to face the threat of a far-off empire that the Athenians had already repelled. After all, why would the average Greek citizen give up the personal wealth they could put in their own pocket instead for a threat that may never rise against them again? For Themistocles to ask the citizens of Athens to give up that personal wealth would risk him being banished.
So Themistocles decided that he would not mention the threat that Athens faced from Persia. Instead, he said that Athens was at risk from Aegina, an Greek island that was a rival to Athenian interests. Because Aegina was an island city-state, it also developed as a naval power.
So Themistocles lied to the citizenry of Athens.
He was able to convince them to build up a navy to face against the Aeginetans, who were a much closer threat. The silver was spent on ships and the supplementary purchases required to maintain a fleet of ships.
3 years later, in 480 BC, Xerxes I of Persia decided to invade Greece. Luckily, and thanks to the forethought of Themistocles, Athens was able to provide a navy to counter the one the Persians brought with them. With the Spartans holding the Persians at the pass at Thermopylae and the Athenians using their navy to stop the Persians from seeking a maritime route around the pass. Because the Athenian navy was able to maintain maritime dominance, Xerxes was forced to continue his ground attack through Thermopylae. Although the Greek defenders, led by the Spartan king Leonidas, eventually lost the defense of Thermopylae, they killed 20,000 of Xerxes' troops despite being only 5,000 in number. The great cost of this land battle helped to blunt the rest of Xerxes' invasion.
If Themistocles had not lied and had not convinced the citizens of Athens that a naval buildup was in their best collective interests despite the personal loss Xerxes would have been able to bypass the Spartans by sea, and would have had a greater force with which to pitch against the Greeks.
So what justification do I have for obstructing your ability to support the public goods you value?
I justify it by saying that I do not know whether you, or every other citizen of this country, are a good judge of which public goods to support. And that is why we have elected officials to represent us in this manner. And as they gain experience legislating and executing policy, those politicians are likely better judges of the budgeting money for government policies than you or I are.
