I’m fairly certain there is no god, and there’s no marginal benefit to learning more about the philosophy of religion.
No matter how much or little I think about politics, the chances of me being the marginal vote are negligible. There are better uses for my time than that mind-killer.
No matter how much or little I think about politics, the chances of me being the marginal vote are negligible. There are better uses for my time than that mind-killer.
That’s true as far as voting goes, but politics is about much more than voting. It is rational to ignore politics only assuming that the situation will remain stable and tolerable where you live. If more interesting times come to pass, then the ability to recognize early signs of trouble and plan accordingly will be extremely valuable (which I can confirm from personal experience). Now of course, you may believe that this is highly unlikely, but to have any certainty about it, you must have a certain level of knowledge about politics and keep track of political developments to at least some minimal extent. So in any case, complete cessation of thinking about politics cannot be rational.
I would be interested, Vladimir, in what developments would increase your probability that it is time for American LWers to exit the United States. In particular, how sharply would increases in racial tension and racial conflict increase that probability?
ADDED. I ask the second question because I tend to believe that ethnic conflict was a major cause of the extremely-bad time in former Yugoslavia.
I would be interested, Vladimir, in what developments would increase your probability that it is time for American LWers to exit the United States. In particular, how sharply would increases in racial tension and racial conflict increase that probability?
Honestly, this is one of the most difficult questions I’ve ever been asked! From my own experience, I can say that the scariest thing about outbreaks of mass violence is how hard it is to realize how bad the situation is getting until you’re already in big trouble. I will try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge, though. (Since your question got strongly upvoted, I trust that my answer won’t be condemned for dealing with an overly political topic.)
For start, ethnic tensions and incidents are by themselves not necessarily a sign of impending social breakdown, even if there are significant local outbreaks of violence and mayhem. In the U.S., in particular, there have been periods of intense racial tensions and conflicts, some which caused fairly large casualties and wide-area devastation (like e.g. the 1967 riots in Detroit, Newark, and elsewhere, or the 1992 riots in LA). However, as bad as these were locally, they didn’t lead to a larger-scale conflict and societal collapse on a nation-wide scale, since the higher levels of government (state/federal) have remained stable and in control.
For things to get really out of control, one of two things must happen: (1) a high level of government is taken over, legally or not, by people willing to start a civil, ethnic, or religious war or mass persecution, or (2) the authority of the government collapses, and the vacuum is filled by the strongest violent organizations that happen to be around (which will then typically proceed to go to war with each other and persecute whomever they don’t like). It seems to me that neither possibility is likely with the U.S. in the foreseeable future (even though close things have happened with some of its local governments, which led to the aforementioned incidents). I’ll give the lists of some reasons why I believe this is so, and I’ll do this by way of contrast with the situation in ex-Yugoslavia:
Restraints on democracy. In ex-Yugoslavia, the post-communist elections offered genuine choice, in the sense that the collapse of the Communist Party’s authority created a situation where anyone was free to run on any platform whatsoever, and the winners, with popular support, would really have the power to steer things in whatever direction they wanted. In contrast, in the present U.S. system, elected politicians have little to no practical control over almost any area of policy, since whatever measures they want to undertake must pass through impenetrably thick layers of bureaucracy and over high obstacles of judicial review.
Of course, (1) is true only as long as the bureaucracies and the judiciary have real authority. However, I don’t see any signs of the state and (especially) federal authority in the U.S. weakening—on the contrary, having some government agency, especially a federal one, get seriously angry at you for whatever reason is a frightful prospect for any individual or organization, and contempt of courts is unthinkable. In contrast, in ex-Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, it was evident that the communist authorities were starting to be seen as laughably impotent.
Political culture and tradition. In places where radical (and typically violent) regime changes are within living memory, government institutions are typically far less stable than in places where they reach far beyond that. The U.S. is certainly in the latter category, even if you count the Civil War as a radical regime change; in contrast, in ex-Yugoslavia, the regime was only 45 years old, with lots of people who were never truly reconciled to it and held (and perpetuated) grudges against it all along. This gives the U.S. government far more slack for blunders and mismanagement before its authority might start to get seriously eroded.
Ideological uniformity. The U.S. politics may seem ravaged by countless bitter controversies, but from a wider perspective, there is a remarkable ideological consensus with a very narrow (though, on most issues, slowly but constantly moving) Overton window. Only a small percentage of the population, and virtually nobody in the mainstream media, elite academia, and other influential sources of public opinion, hold any positions outside of it. In ex-Yugoslavia, the problem was primarily the ethnic rather than ideological conflict, so a better historical example of a country torn by truly deep ideological rifts might be the the Weimar Republic. Where such deep ideological rifts exist, of course, it’s hard to prevent political violence from becoming a regular part of the political struggle, and it’s unlikely that both the winners and the losers of political contests will accept its results peacefully.
Ethnic/religious identity politics. I wanted to compose a long paragraph about this very important issue, but then I realized it can’t be done without giving a lot of very controversial statements. So I’ll just make the general observation that in the U.S., there still exists a strong taboo against violence-threatening forms of identity politics at the higher levels of government, and in most places also at the local level. (The local exceptions to this rule have indeed led to instances of local violent societal collapse, as in the cities that were left ravaged and devastated by the ethnic/race riots and breakdown of public order some decades ago.)
(Besides these considerations, coups by security forces led by renegade elements in the government are another common source of violent political instability, but these are highly unlikely in the U.S., with its extremely strong tradition of lawful control over the armed forces.)
So, on the whole, I would start to get worried if I saw the following signs in the U.S.:
Weakening bureaucratic/judicial authority of the state and federal governments, especially the latter, which would enable elected politicians to exercise direct authority.
Loss of faith in the political institutions. By this I don’t mean the usual cynical and critical attitudes towards politics and politicians, i.e. when people think that they fall short of the official ideal, but a real loss of respect for that official ideal, thus opening the way for radical alternatives.
Erosion of the ideological uniformity, with radical positions starting to get taken seriously in the mainstream discourse, instead of being seen as loathsome extremism or charming but hopelessly naive idealism.
The principal lines of opposition in mainstream politics acquiring an ethnic dimension. By this I mean contests for public office where the candidates are primarily seen as representatives of conflicting ethnic groups, and such contests becoming the rule rather than an occasional local exception.
All of this still seems rather far-fetched in the present-day U.S., so on the whole, I don’t think exiting the U.S. for fear of violent social breakdown will be a rational step in the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, my view of the general direction in which the U.S. is moving is quite pessimistic, although I see a slow decay rather than a violent breakdown as the most likely course of events. Here I mean a continuing slow degradation of the quality of government, a gradual worsening of the present economic malaise, the life for most people getting uglier, more dysfunctional, and less dignified, the public intellectual life getting more mendacious and detached from reality, and so on. With this in mind, it may well be rational for many people to leave the U.S. (or move to a different place within the U.S.) in search of better opportunities. However, these are complicated issues, which would get us right into the middle of numerous controversies.
In the U.S. many important functions are handled by the individual states. For example, most legal matters, including for example murder trials, are handled in “state court”. Also, the organizations most involved in taking licenses away from bad doctors, dentists and lawyers are state-based rather than Federal-based (and heavily intertwined with state politics). Of course the effectiveness of these organizations has a big effect on a resident’s quality of life.
So, in addition to the question of whether it is a good idea to exit the U.S., another relevant political question for U.S. residents is whether it is time to exit his or her state of residence. At least one highly-rational person I know has decided to end a long residence in California. (He moved to Florida.)
It is rational to ignore politics only assuming that the situation will remain stable and tolerable where you live.
It is also rational to ignore politics assuming that it’s not possible for you to “recognize early signs of trouble and plan accordingly” easily and reliably enough.
[T]he chances of me being the marginal vote are negligible.
Here you run into an ethical dilemma. Do you think that it’s generally better for voter turnout to be high than low?
If not, that would seem to be inconsistent with a desire for the US to continue being fairly politically stable (if you don’t have such a desire, please explain). [Note: previous statement about stability withdrawn, but I still think there’s a remaining point here in the following sentence] Among other advantages, the threat of being voted out of office is a significant check against politicians doing more than a certain amount of visibly bad things.
If so, then it’s unethical for you not to vote yourself, because you’d be contributing to a tragedy of the commons that you don’t want. It would be like being against music piracy but torrenting songs anyway since, after all, your individual downloads will have near-zero impact by themselves. Even if you ignore broader ethical principles like behaving as you would want people in general to behave, you specifically not voting has knock-on effects on those around you, and in diminished amounts on those around them.
Do you think that it’s generally better for voter turnout to be high than low?
If not, that would seem to be inconsistent with a desire for the US to continue being fairly politically stable
This is a non-sequitur, despite its status as cached wisdom.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where it really, truly mattered who won an election.
Furthermore, the political class has a transparent interest in spreading the meme that high voter turnout is good, since a faction that wins an election with high turnout has a greater mandate to assume more power.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome.
This is a really good point, so I’m withdrawing my statement about stability.
To pick another standard meme, what about popular involvement in the political process as a way of promoting just policies over unjust? That is, by unjust policies I mean policies that provide insufficient benefits to people who have little power. This is a separate question from stability, as a stable government can still have extremely unjust policies (or vice versa, though I can’t think of examples as easily).
I, sometimes proudly, do ignore the broad “ethical principle” of behaving as I would like others to behave. I don’t hold that as a moral belief.
Also, you can’t win this argument by appealing to negative consequences, because there are none. Yes, you did list some alleged benefits to democracy, but these benefits don’t go away for the nation if me (or even me + all my friends) stop participating. I don’t have any fantasies about the marginal effect of my personal participation.
I, sometimes proudly, do ignore the broad “ethical principle” of behaving as I would like others to behave. I don’t hold that as a moral belief.
Well, then to go back to the basics of ethics: if you were in the market for a bicycle, and had an opportunity to steal a really nice one from a stranger without any possibility of getting caught, would you steal it?
I’m saying I don’t always act a certain way. Producing a counterexample where I do act that way doesn’t disprove my position.
I used to have a reasoned moral code that favored consistency, but I slowly dropped these when I moved into the real world and witnessed lots of people not following my precious moral system. There’s no point cooperating if others don’t cooperate, too. For iterated games, tit-for-tat >= always cooperate.
There are some moral beliefs (i.e. don’t steal/lie) I usually feel a compulsion to follow regardless of the utility. I blame/thank evolution. In small circles, I lean more towards the golden rule (i.e. don’t overbill). But in larger circles, playing the cooperate card because you would want others to is not a strategy I endorse.
What do you think causes the difference between your behavior in small groups vs. in large groups? Perhaps if voting had small-group consequences you’d be more likely to. For example, suppose it were easy on social networks to see an overall “political participation score” for any given person, based on how many of the elections available to them they voted in.
There’s already big signalling benefits to voting. I think it explains why most people do it. However, it feels dirty for me to do something out of concern for my image, so I abstain.
Back when Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize, I remember reading a summary of her work that says self-management of the commons is possible when communities are a certain size. I forget the magic number, but I think it was something like 120,000.
You can say the same about astronomy, biology, chemistry, history and just any part of human knowledge that does not interfere with your daily life.
Imagine someone who could not find his country on map, does not know who is president or PM, does not know how his government functions, does not vote because he does not understands what are elections.
Is such person worthy of admiration or respect? I do not think so.
I’m concerned with margins, not extremes. I can find my country on the map. I have an idea of how close my country is to revolution. I can come up with impressive-sounding political theories to discuss with others that signal the personality traits I value.
But I think I’d benefit more by studying the details of physics than the details of politics.
I’m fairly certain there is no god, and there’s no marginal benefit to learning more about the philosophy of religion.
No matter how much or little I think about politics, the chances of me being the marginal vote are negligible. There are better uses for my time than that mind-killer.
b1shop:
That’s true as far as voting goes, but politics is about much more than voting. It is rational to ignore politics only assuming that the situation will remain stable and tolerable where you live. If more interesting times come to pass, then the ability to recognize early signs of trouble and plan accordingly will be extremely valuable (which I can confirm from personal experience). Now of course, you may believe that this is highly unlikely, but to have any certainty about it, you must have a certain level of knowledge about politics and keep track of political developments to at least some minimal extent. So in any case, complete cessation of thinking about politics cannot be rational.
I would be interested, Vladimir, in what developments would increase your probability that it is time for American LWers to exit the United States. In particular, how sharply would increases in racial tension and racial conflict increase that probability?
ADDED. I ask the second question because I tend to believe that ethnic conflict was a major cause of the extremely-bad time in former Yugoslavia.
Honestly, this is one of the most difficult questions I’ve ever been asked! From my own experience, I can say that the scariest thing about outbreaks of mass violence is how hard it is to realize how bad the situation is getting until you’re already in big trouble. I will try to answer your question to the best of my knowledge, though. (Since your question got strongly upvoted, I trust that my answer won’t be condemned for dealing with an overly political topic.)
For start, ethnic tensions and incidents are by themselves not necessarily a sign of impending social breakdown, even if there are significant local outbreaks of violence and mayhem. In the U.S., in particular, there have been periods of intense racial tensions and conflicts, some which caused fairly large casualties and wide-area devastation (like e.g. the 1967 riots in Detroit, Newark, and elsewhere, or the 1992 riots in LA). However, as bad as these were locally, they didn’t lead to a larger-scale conflict and societal collapse on a nation-wide scale, since the higher levels of government (state/federal) have remained stable and in control.
For things to get really out of control, one of two things must happen: (1) a high level of government is taken over, legally or not, by people willing to start a civil, ethnic, or religious war or mass persecution, or (2) the authority of the government collapses, and the vacuum is filled by the strongest violent organizations that happen to be around (which will then typically proceed to go to war with each other and persecute whomever they don’t like). It seems to me that neither possibility is likely with the U.S. in the foreseeable future (even though close things have happened with some of its local governments, which led to the aforementioned incidents). I’ll give the lists of some reasons why I believe this is so, and I’ll do this by way of contrast with the situation in ex-Yugoslavia:
Restraints on democracy. In ex-Yugoslavia, the post-communist elections offered genuine choice, in the sense that the collapse of the Communist Party’s authority created a situation where anyone was free to run on any platform whatsoever, and the winners, with popular support, would really have the power to steer things in whatever direction they wanted. In contrast, in the present U.S. system, elected politicians have little to no practical control over almost any area of policy, since whatever measures they want to undertake must pass through impenetrably thick layers of bureaucracy and over high obstacles of judicial review.
Of course, (1) is true only as long as the bureaucracies and the judiciary have real authority. However, I don’t see any signs of the state and (especially) federal authority in the U.S. weakening—on the contrary, having some government agency, especially a federal one, get seriously angry at you for whatever reason is a frightful prospect for any individual or organization, and contempt of courts is unthinkable. In contrast, in ex-Yugoslavia in the late 1980s, it was evident that the communist authorities were starting to be seen as laughably impotent.
Political culture and tradition. In places where radical (and typically violent) regime changes are within living memory, government institutions are typically far less stable than in places where they reach far beyond that. The U.S. is certainly in the latter category, even if you count the Civil War as a radical regime change; in contrast, in ex-Yugoslavia, the regime was only 45 years old, with lots of people who were never truly reconciled to it and held (and perpetuated) grudges against it all along. This gives the U.S. government far more slack for blunders and mismanagement before its authority might start to get seriously eroded.
Ideological uniformity. The U.S. politics may seem ravaged by countless bitter controversies, but from a wider perspective, there is a remarkable ideological consensus with a very narrow (though, on most issues, slowly but constantly moving) Overton window. Only a small percentage of the population, and virtually nobody in the mainstream media, elite academia, and other influential sources of public opinion, hold any positions outside of it. In ex-Yugoslavia, the problem was primarily the ethnic rather than ideological conflict, so a better historical example of a country torn by truly deep ideological rifts might be the the Weimar Republic. Where such deep ideological rifts exist, of course, it’s hard to prevent political violence from becoming a regular part of the political struggle, and it’s unlikely that both the winners and the losers of political contests will accept its results peacefully.
Ethnic/religious identity politics. I wanted to compose a long paragraph about this very important issue, but then I realized it can’t be done without giving a lot of very controversial statements. So I’ll just make the general observation that in the U.S., there still exists a strong taboo against violence-threatening forms of identity politics at the higher levels of government, and in most places also at the local level. (The local exceptions to this rule have indeed led to instances of local violent societal collapse, as in the cities that were left ravaged and devastated by the ethnic/race riots and breakdown of public order some decades ago.)
(Besides these considerations, coups by security forces led by renegade elements in the government are another common source of violent political instability, but these are highly unlikely in the U.S., with its extremely strong tradition of lawful control over the armed forces.)
So, on the whole, I would start to get worried if I saw the following signs in the U.S.:
Weakening bureaucratic/judicial authority of the state and federal governments, especially the latter, which would enable elected politicians to exercise direct authority.
Loss of faith in the political institutions. By this I don’t mean the usual cynical and critical attitudes towards politics and politicians, i.e. when people think that they fall short of the official ideal, but a real loss of respect for that official ideal, thus opening the way for radical alternatives.
Erosion of the ideological uniformity, with radical positions starting to get taken seriously in the mainstream discourse, instead of being seen as loathsome extremism or charming but hopelessly naive idealism.
The principal lines of opposition in mainstream politics acquiring an ethnic dimension. By this I mean contests for public office where the candidates are primarily seen as representatives of conflicting ethnic groups, and such contests becoming the rule rather than an occasional local exception.
All of this still seems rather far-fetched in the present-day U.S., so on the whole, I don’t think exiting the U.S. for fear of violent social breakdown will be a rational step in the foreseeable future.
On the other hand, my view of the general direction in which the U.S. is moving is quite pessimistic, although I see a slow decay rather than a violent breakdown as the most likely course of events. Here I mean a continuing slow degradation of the quality of government, a gradual worsening of the present economic malaise, the life for most people getting uglier, more dysfunctional, and less dignified, the public intellectual life getting more mendacious and detached from reality, and so on. With this in mind, it may well be rational for many people to leave the U.S. (or move to a different place within the U.S.) in search of better opportunities. However, these are complicated issues, which would get us right into the middle of numerous controversies.
Thanks, Vladimir M, for this long and valuable reply to my question.
As well as non-American-specific analysis.
To paraphase Trotsky: “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.”
In the U.S. many important functions are handled by the individual states. For example, most legal matters, including for example murder trials, are handled in “state court”. Also, the organizations most involved in taking licenses away from bad doctors, dentists and lawyers are state-based rather than Federal-based (and heavily intertwined with state politics). Of course the effectiveness of these organizations has a big effect on a resident’s quality of life.
So, in addition to the question of whether it is a good idea to exit the U.S., another relevant political question for U.S. residents is whether it is time to exit his or her state of residence. At least one highly-rational person I know has decided to end a long residence in California. (He moved to Florida.)
It is also rational to ignore politics assuming that it’s not possible for you to “recognize early signs of trouble and plan accordingly” easily and reliably enough.
Here you run into an ethical dilemma. Do you think that it’s generally better for voter turnout to be high than low?
If not, that would seem to be inconsistent with a desire for the US to continue being fairly politically stable (if you don’t have such a desire, please explain). [Note: previous statement about stability withdrawn, but I still think there’s a remaining point here in the following sentence] Among other advantages, the threat of being voted out of office is a significant check against politicians doing more than a certain amount of visibly bad things.
If so, then it’s unethical for you not to vote yourself, because you’d be contributing to a tragedy of the commons that you don’t want. It would be like being against music piracy but torrenting songs anyway since, after all, your individual downloads will have near-zero impact by themselves. Even if you ignore broader ethical principles like behaving as you would want people in general to behave, you specifically not voting has knock-on effects on those around you, and in diminished amounts on those around them.
This is a non-sequitur, despite its status as cached wisdom.
I see no reason to expect that higher voter turnout implies greater political stability. In fact, my intuition is exactly the opposite: assuming a genuine freedom to vote, low turnout is a marker of stability, since it signals that voters don’t much care who wins, which suggests that not much of importance depends on the outcome. You wouldn’t want to live in a country where it really, truly mattered who won an election.
Furthermore, the political class has a transparent interest in spreading the meme that high voter turnout is good, since a faction that wins an election with high turnout has a greater mandate to assume more power.
This is a really good point, so I’m withdrawing my statement about stability.
To pick another standard meme, what about popular involvement in the political process as a way of promoting just policies over unjust? That is, by unjust policies I mean policies that provide insufficient benefits to people who have little power. This is a separate question from stability, as a stable government can still have extremely unjust policies (or vice versa, though I can’t think of examples as easily).
I, sometimes proudly, do ignore the broad “ethical principle” of behaving as I would like others to behave. I don’t hold that as a moral belief.
Also, you can’t win this argument by appealing to negative consequences, because there are none. Yes, you did list some alleged benefits to democracy, but these benefits don’t go away for the nation if me (or even me + all my friends) stop participating. I don’t have any fantasies about the marginal effect of my personal participation.
(Note: I didn’t vote you down.)
Well, then to go back to the basics of ethics: if you were in the market for a bicycle, and had an opportunity to steal a really nice one from a stranger without any possibility of getting caught, would you steal it?
I’m saying I don’t always act a certain way. Producing a counterexample where I do act that way doesn’t disprove my position.
I used to have a reasoned moral code that favored consistency, but I slowly dropped these when I moved into the real world and witnessed lots of people not following my precious moral system. There’s no point cooperating if others don’t cooperate, too. For iterated games, tit-for-tat >= always cooperate.
There are some moral beliefs (i.e. don’t steal/lie) I usually feel a compulsion to follow regardless of the utility. I blame/thank evolution. In small circles, I lean more towards the golden rule (i.e. don’t overbill). But in larger circles, playing the cooperate card because you would want others to is not a strategy I endorse.
What do you think causes the difference between your behavior in small groups vs. in large groups? Perhaps if voting had small-group consequences you’d be more likely to. For example, suppose it were easy on social networks to see an overall “political participation score” for any given person, based on how many of the elections available to them they voted in.
There’s already big signalling benefits to voting. I think it explains why most people do it. However, it feels dirty for me to do something out of concern for my image, so I abstain.
Back when Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize, I remember reading a summary of her work that says self-management of the commons is possible when communities are a certain size. I forget the magic number, but I think it was something like 120,000.
You can say the same about astronomy, biology, chemistry, history and just any part of human knowledge that does not interfere with your daily life.
Imagine someone who could not find his country on map, does not know who is president or PM, does not know how his government functions, does not vote because he does not understands what are elections.
Is such person worthy of admiration or respect? I do not think so.
I’m concerned with margins, not extremes. I can find my country on the map. I have an idea of how close my country is to revolution. I can come up with impressive-sounding political theories to discuss with others that signal the personality traits I value.
But I think I’d benefit more by studying the details of physics than the details of politics.
Why? You cannot change the laws of physics and they have no impact of your daily life either.