Democracy in a multicultural place like modern America is increasingly a sham. When you have, say, black people voting as a 96% bloc, it becomes clear that this is not an abstract choice so much as a statement of tribal identity and power. And in response to this, other groups form tribal blocs. Well guess what: even you rationalist white guys aren’t exempt from this dynamic! Democracy is a nice idea, but it is trumped for most people by deeper tribal and religious allegiances. Multicultural democracy simply devolves into contests between competing tribes. And if you don’t think of yourself as a member of a tribe, then you will simply lose power. So I first identify my tribal allegiances, then I look at the candidates and ask: Which one will give me and my tribe more power? To me this is the correct and rational way to vote, and it has nothing to do with abstract issues like “existential risk.” The existential risk that matters most to me is tribal disempowerment!
The correct and rational way to vote is to stay home and do something productive instead, unless you’re a weirdo like me who gets some utility (entertainment value?) from spending hours researching candidates in the rueful knowledge that there’s effectively zero probability of actually affecting anything via the effort.
The only way I can see to eliminate the tragedy of the commons of voting (anybody can have more personal time for themselves at the cost of making the commons of “how good is the election outcome” worse) would be allowing people to delegate their votes. If people who respect my intelligence can easily delegate to me, and there’s no major transaction costs for me to delegate our votes to someone whose decision making ability I respect, and so on, then eventually the election “shares” entrusted to non-delegating voters grows to the point where they start to have rational incentives to put in the time to validate that trust.
Of course, in practice this would just make tribalism worse, make secret ballots impossible, and leave elections in the hands of whichever bosses and/or union leaders were the best at bullying votes out of people. So now I’m out of ideas.
Actually I don’t vote, I was just having some fun with words. The correct way to win in a democratic system is to manipulate people on a large scale via propaganda, fear-mongering, “dirty tricks”, strategically timed scandals, etc. This is precisely how the game is played by the Sith Lords behind the scenes, and the reason why voting is a total insult to the more intelligent citizens of a democracy.
Democracy in a multicultural place like modern America is increasingly a sham. When you have, say, black people voting as a 96% bloc, it becomes clear that this is not an abstract choice so much as a statement of tribal identity and power. And in response to this, other groups form tribal blocs. Well guess what: even you rationalist white guys aren’t exempt from this dynamic! Democracy is a nice idea, but it is trumped for most people by deeper tribal and religious allegiances. Multicultural democracy simply devolves into contests between competing tribes. And if you don’t think of yourself as a member of a tribe, then you will simply lose power. So I first identify my tribal allegiances, then I look at the candidates and ask: Which one will give me and my tribe more power? To me this is the correct and rational way to vote, and it has nothing to do with abstract issues like “existential risk.” The existential risk that matters most to me is tribal disempowerment!
The correct and rational way to vote is to stay home and do something productive instead, unless you’re a weirdo like me who gets some utility (entertainment value?) from spending hours researching candidates in the rueful knowledge that there’s effectively zero probability of actually affecting anything via the effort.
The only way I can see to eliminate the tragedy of the commons of voting (anybody can have more personal time for themselves at the cost of making the commons of “how good is the election outcome” worse) would be allowing people to delegate their votes. If people who respect my intelligence can easily delegate to me, and there’s no major transaction costs for me to delegate our votes to someone whose decision making ability I respect, and so on, then eventually the election “shares” entrusted to non-delegating voters grows to the point where they start to have rational incentives to put in the time to validate that trust.
Of course, in practice this would just make tribalism worse, make secret ballots impossible, and leave elections in the hands of whichever bosses and/or union leaders were the best at bullying votes out of people. So now I’m out of ideas.
Actually I don’t vote, I was just having some fun with words. The correct way to win in a democratic system is to manipulate people on a large scale via propaganda, fear-mongering, “dirty tricks”, strategically timed scandals, etc. This is precisely how the game is played by the Sith Lords behind the scenes, and the reason why voting is a total insult to the more intelligent citizens of a democracy.