Why should I vote?

[FortunaMaximus]

lol, every vote counts. Even if it's an utility curve loss, it's a conversation starter at parties, no? Tight lady Republicans in business attire. Hmm.

See, there are utility curves AND there are utility curves. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Piers]

Curiousity. At least that was my motive the one time I voted in a general election.

[shemp]

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Im going to take it as a personal mission to start breaking down poor arguments.

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Maybe you should take as your personal mission arguing in good faith. Here you've defined the problem away by asserting that it is against your interests to vote.

[surftheiop]

And this is on of the reasons why we have George Bush as president, because a few thousand intellectuals in Floridia realized they gained no utility by voting so they didnt vote, now they have Bush as president and fully deserve it.

While if they would have realized that as a group they have utiliy (they could have swung election) then they would also realize that as a part of the group each person has some utility.

[JaredL]

Barring civic duty type arguments, which you've eliminated, if it is costly to vote then there are two not mutually exclusive reasons you would vote:

1. You drastically overestimate the probability with which your vote is pivotal (ie removing your vote the election is a perfect tie or your preferred candidate is behind by exactly one vote). This probability is pretty much zero unless it's a mayoral election and you live in a town with a few families or something.

2. If your vote were pivotal and you didn't vote (and your candidate lost), you would feel completely devestated, possibly suicidal.

If it is costless for you to vote, which is most certainly not the case, then you should vote due to the infinitesimal expected loss in utility from having not voted when your vote would be pivotal.

Jared

[Bork]

I had a philosophy professor who talked about a concept called collective responsibility. We were talking about chicken wings, but to make it more clear lets discuss babies. Say I love to eat delicious babies and there is a massive baby farming industry.

My action of going to kentucky fried babies to get some spicy baby isn't going to cause any harm to any extra babies. That is the market is so big that my purchase won't have any effect on the number of babies produced and slaughtered. Even if I go in for a bucket of baby legs every week it won't harm any babies. However I am still morally responsible for some baby deaths because of what he called collective responsibility. It involves dividing up the moral responsibility for all the baby harm among all the baby consumers etc. Otherwise everyone could be eating babies and since the market is so big none of them would be really in anyway responsible for the harm.

Basically you split up the responsibility among all the non-voters who could have if they had wanted to changed the outcome as a group. Now if its a case where the group of non-voters can't change the result(and they are aware of this) then they didn't do anything wrong. Really there is no reason to vote unless you put some value (possibly moral or pragmatic) on what the results are. Once you do that you have a reason to vote, because if you don't you will be part of the collective that could have done a good, and share the responsibility amongst them. The collective of non-voters is actually one big potential swing voter most of the time (pivotal like jared said).


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I dont vote because no matter if I voted or chose not to, myself and the rest of the population would be unaffected.

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To re-iterate you are exactly right about this, but you are part of a group that could have acted with good affects, but decided against it. That group did wrong, and you are a part of it.

[fnord_too]

JV,

It sounds like your main argument against voting is that it in no way adds to your personaly utility. This is the stuff Nash equilibriums are made of. Often in systems any single entity shifting their position only hurts their utility, though if multiple entities switched all of their utilities would rise.

The terrible fact is that often to get to a better place you need to sacrafice your own utility and hope others do, too. Humans don't really do that well. This is the main reason I am not a libertarian, I believe in many cases it takes (will take) strong regulation to move systems away from sub optimal Nash equilibriums.

[J_V]

Very interesting.

Could you expound on your libertarian idea further?

[fnord_too]

It is not that much of an idea. Libertarians, as I understand it, are against regulating business and personal lives except where they spill over to the rights of others. I totally agree with staying the hell out of peoples personal lives. I guess I disagree with them on where the spill over occurs in business, but even if there were no big items like environmental impact or national security or major health risk in play, systems still get stuck in sub optimal states.

Basically, as I understand it, Von Neumann and Morganstern argued that pure capitalism would maximize system utility because each of the players are trying to maximize their personal utility. Even given totally rational players with the same utility function, Nash showed that this theory is incorrect.

Here's a quick example, without numbers or graphs but I will make an effort to find where I first saw this illustration of the concept.

Say we are talking about transportation with a city. Say everyone's utility function is the same, convenience. Everyone has the choice of buying a car or using public transportation, but the more people who use cars the lower everyone's utility is since the roads are more crowded. The marginal increase in utility for each person, up to a point, will be to buy a car. When the system reaches equilibrium (where taking the bus or driving are equally convenient), the level of convience for everyone is lower than if everyone just rode the bus, but anyone switching from car to bus will be taking a hit in their convenience utility, though if everyone did they would all benefit.

This is a pretty simplistic example, but it does illustrate the point. Another good illustration is the one Russell Crowe gave in "A Beutiful Mind" where he is explaining how if everyone goes for the super hot chick and ignores her friends then no one gets laid, but if they ignore the hot chick and go after he less hot (but definitely doable) friends they could all get laid.

[fnord_too]

Here is a decentlink. The transportation example is one of the clickable chapters on the left.