Indeed, as mentioned, without altruism, voting behaviour is fairly inexplicable.
I vote to reward or penalize politicians based on their previous choices, rather than to create better outcomes. That is, I look back, not forward.
There are some exceptions, e.g. when a candidate before assuming office is sending unusually credible signals, e.g. glorifying torture or some such. Other than that, I mostly ignore promises, and instead implement reciprocity for past decisions.
Edited after more reflection:
Whereas the expected benefit of voting to you alone is the Brexit harm to you / 3 million, = $3 trillion / 2 (effect on UK only) / 65 million (UK population) / 3 million = 0.7 cents – illustrating why voting needs at least a tiny bit of altruism to be rational.
This is interesting. I do expect for things like marginal tax rates, my emotions are scope-insensitive and my reciprocity mostly symbolic/psychological.
However, if I share interests with many other voters who voted for those interests, all of their votes benefited my interests and I can reciprocate not just for/against politicians, but also for/against all these other voters. If I like low tax rates, I can benefit every voter who’s voted for low tax rates by voting for low tax rates.
More importantly, some issues have much higher impact on my utility than marginal tax rates. If I could choose between $1 billion personal purchasing power, and the liberty to buy a deadly dose of pentobarbital if/when I choose to die peacefully, I’d take the pentobarbital. Which means that politicians who’ve reduced the probability that this liberty is legal for me have forced an opportunity cost of over $1 billion on me. Perhaps voting is still not the best way to implement reciprocity in such a case, but outside of direct attacks on ex-politicians, e.g. what the Christians did to Els Borst, it’s one of the remaining ways to get back at them and therefore still well worth doing.
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.
I vote to reward or penalize politicians based on their previous choices, rather than to create better outcomes. That is, I look back, not forward.
There are some exceptions, e.g. when a candidate before assuming office is sending unusually credible signals, e.g. glorifying torture or some such. Other than that, I mostly ignore promises, and instead implement reciprocity for past decisions.
Edited after more reflection:
This is interesting. I do expect for things like marginal tax rates, my emotions are scope-insensitive and my reciprocity mostly symbolic/psychological.
However, if I share interests with many other voters who voted for those interests, all of their votes benefited my interests and I can reciprocate not just for/against politicians, but also for/against all these other voters. If I like low tax rates, I can benefit every voter who’s voted for low tax rates by voting for low tax rates.
More importantly, some issues have much higher impact on my utility than marginal tax rates. If I could choose between $1 billion personal purchasing power, and the liberty to buy a deadly dose of pentobarbital if/when I choose to die peacefully, I’d take the pentobarbital. Which means that politicians who’ve reduced the probability that this liberty is legal for me have forced an opportunity cost of over $1 billion on me. Perhaps voting is still not the best way to implement reciprocity in such a case, but outside of direct attacks on ex-politicians, e.g. what the Christians did to Els Borst, it’s one of the remaining ways to get back at them and therefore still well worth doing.
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.