The central question of your original comment seemed to me to be: "We’re all ok with this?" You've followed up pointing out that the actual central question wa

The central question of your original comment seemed to me to be: "We’re all ok with this?" You've followed up pointing out that the actual central question was "So, why is it so hard, when confronted with facts about the consequences of your decisions, to really think about the meaning of your actions". As I said in the my first reply, I think it's pretty clear that people in this discussion thread, and most people frequenting this website, are not OK with this. And in response to the more recent comment: plenty of people in this thread are demonstrating that they are thinking about the consequences of their decisions. But as I, and plenty of others here have pointed out, no amount of "thinking about consequences" will change the fact that the consequences of an individual's actions in insolation are profoundly different to the consequences of the same action co-ordinated across the entire society. The voting system works (to the extent that it does work - and I must say where I live, in Australia, it works much better through being legally compulsory and therefore not subject to manipulation of eligibility+attendance), because the cost is low (take a few hours out of your day once every couple/few years) and the payoff relatively high (feel you have a stake in your democracy/society, influence policy, celebrate the victory if your candidate/party wins). Other forms of co-ordinated activity all have equivalent factors of cost vs. payoff that lead to the intended outcome. So I guess there's your answer: to solve this problem, there needs to be a cost vs. benefit formulation that leads to a widespread change in behaviour.