Yes, interesting points. I haven’t really given any thought to voting as a reward/punishment, but many voters do this. Though of course it’s mixed up with forward-looking voting, since (for many people) you vote against a politician who did something bad so that they won’t be around to do more bad things.
And politicians anticipate punishment-voting as a deterrent to them doing bad things, since there isn’t much other deterrent (except the law).
Also an interesting point re voting as reciprocation to similar voters as a kind of solidarity group. (Parties are themselves solidarity groups, but so of course are special interest groups and other supporters of particular policies.)
I’m not sure whether or how all this affects the calculus. Eliezer wrote an article on voting a while back in which if I recall his line was something like ‘it’s all too complicated to model, so just stick to simple reasoning’.
Re your pentobarbital example, this could be something where the 0.7 cents direct effect on you is bigger—though it would indeed have to be something approaching a $1 billion effect to count (since the expected benefit to you is this / 3 million, in the UK). Though that said almost all issues like this affect quite a few other people too, so altruism makes it worthwhile anyway.
Yes, interesting points. I haven’t really given any thought to voting as a reward/punishment, but many voters do this. Though of course it’s mixed up with forward-looking voting, since (for many people) you vote against a politician who did something bad so that they won’t be around to do more bad things.
And politicians anticipate punishment-voting as a deterrent to them doing bad things, since there isn’t much other deterrent (except the law).
Also an interesting point re voting as reciprocation to similar voters as a kind of solidarity group. (Parties are themselves solidarity groups, but so of course are special interest groups and other supporters of particular policies.)
I’m not sure whether or how all this affects the calculus. Eliezer wrote an article on voting a while back in which if I recall his line was something like ‘it’s all too complicated to model, so just stick to simple reasoning’.
Re your pentobarbital example, this could be something where the 0.7 cents direct effect on you is bigger—though it would indeed have to be something approaching a $1 billion effect to count (since the expected benefit to you is this / 3 million, in the UK). Though that said almost all issues like this affect quite a few other people too, so altruism makes it worthwhile anyway.