[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 [Note: previous statement about stability withdrawn, but I still think there’s a remaining point here in the following sentence] Among other advantages, the threat of being voted out of office is a significant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.
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.