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Why Vote? Freakonomics' take on voting

40 points by dangoldin 18y ago

mstefff 18y ago
Such a great article. And I love when the NYTimes calls me rational.
JoelSutherland 18y ago
Does this ignore network effects? I am pretty silent about my politics, but at least 25 people were aware that I voted early (friends, coworkers, family members). Did this affect their decision to vote and therefore the value of my vote? If a candidate does a great job getting out the vote compared to their opponent, the result of the election will not reflect popular opinion. Instead it will be biased toward that candidate. Those that voted for the candidate will see more value from their vote. That still may not outweigh the hour spent in line.
- dangoldin 18y ago
  Maybe it does but you can also argue it has an inverse effect. If I know someone else voted I may just say "Well they voted so I don't have to."
petercooper 18y ago
I'm glad there's actually a mass media outlet that would post something like this. They are focusing heavily on the numbers though, rather than the system - and it's the system that's the problem. I don't vote because my single vote carries no weight, as the article demonstrates. However, if proportional representation were used, I would vote because my vote would count for something even if very little. With First Past The Post, my vote is more like buying a lottery ticket.. if I vote for the loser then it counts for zero - which is why we end up with two party systems.
- utnick 18y ago
  Although this is true for the presidential election. When people go to the polls tommorow they will be voting for many offices besides president like senate, congress, and local elections where your vote does have equal weight. And those offices will probably affect you a lot more than President will. And the notion of popular vote mandate is important. If someone wins a commanding popular vote margin, their ideas and proposals have a greater chance of getting put into place.
  - jfornear 18y ago
    Those elections are single mandate as well. Your vote only counts if the election is decided by 1 vote, which is never the case. On an unrelated note, I'm so tired of Freakonomics.
- emmett 18y ago
  A vote for the loser does not count for nothing. It makes you an active political entity worth courting. Do you know why social security is inviolate, and no one from either party will ever do anything to stop payments? Because old people vote. If you (and people like you) don't vote, you don't count, and no one will ever listen to you. Voting increases the strength of your demographic, and then shifts the political allegiance of that demographic very slightly towards your views.
  - jfornear 18y ago
    While you are 100% right, this is irrelevant to the argument. As a voter you only have 1 single vote. You are using the word "you" in the plural sense. voter != demographic, voter < demographic
    - emmett 18y ago
      The point is that your vote adds a (very small) incremental value; the sole value is not that it might decide the election.
ConradHex 18y ago
I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it, and 2004 rolled around and I had another chance. Somehow I wasn't able to register in time, and missed it, and spent another 4 years feeling bad. This time I registered plenty early, and voted early, too. Now no matter what happens, I can feel good about doing my part for the next four years. I'd say that was time well spent.
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  >I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it In 2000 a vote for a foreign policy of peace was a vote for Bush. That was his line. Gore was the one who had been threatening Indonesia and getting us dragged into messes in the Balkans. He as much as promised more military action abroad. This all goes to illustrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the campaigning.
  - lacker 18y ago
    Good points to remember in case we all weren't cynical enough already. Bush 2000 = "We don't do nation-building". Bush 2003 = "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
    - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
      Wilson was elected to keep us out of war. He maneuvered us into war, cooperating with the British against the wishes of the people. Ditto for FDR, who also deliberately pursued a policy of provocation against the Japanese. Nixon was elected to end the war. Instead he bombed Cambodia. Reagan pulled a 180 on middle east policy and withdrew from Lebanon. With the possible exception of LBJ I think every president in recent history has contradicted their indicated foreign policy. (LBJ was just bonkers from the get-go.)
  - delackner 18y ago
    If you vote based on what the candidates SAY rather than what they and their associates have DONE with their lives, then you are asking to be lied to. Bush's adult life was: Daddy got him into a good university, which he did nothing with, went AWOL, daddy made it all good. Spent and lost lots of other people's money, went through rehab, became a religious fundamentalist, then ran Texas. Gore's adult life was: Enlisted to please his father, volunteered to go to war out of a sense of obligation, ran for elected office to do what he felt was his obligation to follow in his father's footsteps. Served as a public official his entire adult life. If you think that those two life stories are "the same" or that their campaigns can inform you more than that, I don't know what to suggest to you.
sanj 18y ago
If you don't vote, I could care less about your political opinion.
- hugh 18y ago
  Really? I couldn't.
  - sanj 18y ago
    Correction appreciated! I've grown very, very tired over the last 8 years at hearing people who didn't vote complain about the state of the country. Each of them had an opportunity to register their opinion and they chose not to. Listening to them complain after the fact is a waste of my time.
- jamesbritt 18y ago
  "If you don't vote, I could [sic] care less about your political opinion." Odd phrasing aside, what if (for example) my political opinion is that voting is immoral because it legitimizes a corrupt or intrinsically broken system? Why is abstaining from a process so dismissed? I've heard people say, if you don't vote you can't complain, yet if you opt in to a system then how can you bitch when it doesn't swing your way? If you vote, then you can't complain; you can't have it both ways. (I'm not quite convinced of this myself, but I'm puzzled by people who won't even consider it.)
  - petercooper 18y ago
    +1 Just wanted to add some more to this, as I recently had a debate about this with someone who was very pro-voting. Abstaining from religion is no longer dismissed, yet politics, as you say, remains a sticking point. In the 1500s, religious adherence was the norm in the West. In the 2000s, adherence to democracy as a political system is the norm (I have no doubt this will change in centuries to come). Consider voting within a democratic system to be equivalent to choosing a religion. If you are not religious, ideally you would not choose a religion. Likewise, if you do not believe in the democratic system, ideally you would not vote. Democracy is a system that many people take for granted, but is only one of many options. Voting in the democratic system implicitly means you support democracy. If you do not support democracy, therefore, it would be quite rightly against your principles to vote.
tarkin2 18y ago
Voting is an aggregate activity. When you think of it as an individualist activity, as an economist would, you fail to see it for what it is -- an aggregate. Imagine if you are in a line of people passing bricks from a collapsed building to another location. If you looked at this activity from an individual's perspective you'd said, "Passing this brick to that other person isn't clearing the rubble." And you'd be right. It's not. But then you are not the activity in entirety; you are only part of the activity. And because this activity is social, it depends on human behavior. This attitude, then, falls under the category of the fallacy of composition: what's rational for one actor is not rational if everyone does the same. Voting is not an individual activity, it's a group activity and looking at it as if it's a individual activity belies that. When you analyze group activities as if they're individual activities you get erroneous conclusions. I can see why Taleb gets annoyed with economists now.
- ryporter 18y ago
  In your scenario, if I don't pass along my brick, then the chain is broken (or, others at least have to do more work). However, in an election, if I don't vote, then no one has to pick up my slack. We'll still elect a president tomorrow. What is the negative externality that I'm imposing on others by not voting? If anything, I see it as a (very small) positive externality, because I'm letting everyone else decide who they want as president.
  - tarkin2 18y ago
    The brick example was used to shed light upon the difference between individual and group activities. It's does not match the activity of voting, I know. However... Your use of the phrase "imposing on others" is telling. It implies you are separate from the others who vote, but in a democracy, during voting, you are not. You are all part of one system, and you all work towards the democratic task. When you choose not to vote, you exclude yourself from that system. One single absence will indeed not damage the system significantly enough to destroy it. But, as I said, this system replies on human behavior, and more specifically socialization. When you post articles on the New York Times website, when you post here and when you chat to friends about the futility of voting and when you tell them you have not voted you affect them; you influence them. Human behavior is incredible herd-like. Your choice not to vote affects others, others affect others, and that affects, in this case detrimentally, the democratic system. And this, again, goes back to the fallacy of composition. It was rational for you not to vote. Yet, because you live in society, that decision affects others, and when it affects enough people that newly formed decision becomes highly irrational.
utnick 18y ago
Not everything should be looked at from an economist's point of view. If an old lady in front of you drops her purse, there is no economical reason for you to help her out. It is a waste of your time and she can pick it up herself. If she can't pick it up herself, someone else walking the street will help her out. No need to trouble yourself. However, most people here would help her out because its just the right thing to do.
- dangoldin 18y ago
  And it's not like we all act rationally anyways.
- dougp 18y ago
  I was a sweeper at a theme park and I would see people drop things or leave things on benches(cameras, wallets, keys etc) and then run to pick them up. I would say 50% of the time they would thank me and give me a tip. Usually about an hours pay.
- jmcannon 18y ago
  Actually, this was the article's point exactly. You would help her out to satisfy a social expectation. What would others think if you didn't? You might ask how that changes if you and the old lady are alone. You would probably say that you'd still help her out, though I'd say that's just a response trained within a particular environment in which there is a help-old-ladies social expectation.
  - dhimes 18y ago
    I don't think so. I think there are good survival reasons to behave socially for each others' benefit. That is, I believe some of the "helping is the right thing to do" may come from natural selection: social cooperation increases our chances for survival and reproduction.
  - yummyfajitas 18y ago
    Not just social expectation (many would do it if there were no observers), but also increasing self satisfaction. Most people, myself included, derive utility from the belief that they are a good person.
zitterbewegung 18y ago
I can get a free cup of coffee from starbucks and extra credit in my classes if I vote so that justifies why I am voting. The opportunity cost for me not voting is too high for me.
- dangoldin 18y ago
  But that's because you place value on telling the truth. Not everyone is like that.
- hugh 18y ago
  You get extra credit in your classes for voting? That doesn't really sound like an appropriate use of power by your professors. It sounds far more like inappropriate use of academic power in order to rustle up more votes for you-know-who.
- khafra 18y ago
  Here in Tampa Bay, a local strip club magnate who keeps running for city council offered no-cover entry (A $35 dollar value!) for displaying an "I voted" sticker.
jsdalton 18y ago
Here's one of my favorite reasons to vote: Your vote does have an impact on the vote count. I like to check out the vote tallies when the election is over -- and when it says "324,879" instead of "324,878" or whatever, I think, "Hey, that's me!" This also works whether you live in a swing state like Ohio or a forgone conclusion like California. And in all seriousness, vote count does matter, even if the outcome is a "sure thing." The size of a victory plays a very big role in giving a mandate for the winner to get things done. So hackers...seriously, get out there and vote, even if it only makes a 1/305,563,000 difference.
kingkongrevenge 18y ago
Reasons not to vote: Voting for federal candidates is an affirmation of the legitimacy of the power of the government, which you may reject. Your vote will make you complicit in the next federal campaign to blow up foreigners, or the current campaign to imprison millions of Americans for victimless crimes. I assure you Obama WILL blow up innocent foreigners; every president finds some excuse to do it at some point. A vote for "none of the above" IS a vote. The politicians NEED sufficiently high turnout to legitimize their power. Elections are about as genuine as pro-wrestling. They never have anything to do with how government actually proceeds after the race. Rhetoric has consistently contradicted actions in my lifetime. Pretending you participated in an informed decision making process is delusional. You're stuck choosing between coke and pepsi when you really want a glass of milk. The republican and democratic parties have locked up the racket for themselves. They are different brands of the same corporatocracy and mostly create the illusion of choice with careful marketing. Every couple years they push the right buttons to get their brand's simpletons whipped into a sufficient frenzy to trek to the polls. Then they proceed with business as usual. Voting, emotional investment in the political process, and keeping informed about the political process are distractions from far more socially productive activities. If every campaign volunteer had resolved not to vote or really care about the election, and instead spent their time doing something of value on their block, the aggregate outcome would far surpass the positive difference in outcomes between any pair of candidates. Lastly, your vote really doesn't matter, statistically speaking.
- geuis 18y ago
  Your vote DOES matter, statistically speaking. Disregarding the oddness of the electoral college, in most elections where the number of votes is directly relational to the outcome of the contest, the individual statistical importance of each vote decreases as the overall volume of votes increases. In elections where fewer votes are registered, the significance of each vote on the outcome increases. In an election involving hundreds of millions of people, you can claim correctly that overall influence of your vote is tiny. That does NOT mean it doesn't matter. However, to properly represent the desire of the voter pool in aggregate, all people must participate. The outcome of an election is not to decide what you individually want, its to decide what the populace in general wants. As to your other political statements, some I agree with, some not. I used to be very politically active(anti-war rallies, protests, supporting local candidates, volunteering, sign waving, etc). If you're from a country where you can't vote, then your opinions aren't helping your fellow man. You need to get off the computer and go stand up to your corrupt leaders. You might get shot, but when enough people stand up things change. Hey, its kind of like voting!
ars 18y ago
It's also sort of interesting to vote. What machine will they use this time? What's on the ballot? Will it work? How many people will be there? Will there be big problems? People like novelty.
vaksel 18y ago
to me the only reasons to vote is if you are in a swing state. Anywhere else its a huge waste of time because your state is predetermined to go one way or the other.
Prrometheus 18y ago
This is pretty much my reason for voting: "2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy." I fantasize that my vote for Bob Barr will throw the election into a tie, creating a giant entertaining mess even bigger than the aftermath of the 2000 election. Also, I will get some warm fuzzies over the next 4 years knowing that I didn't vote for the winner when they inevitably screw up. Lastly, I am a contrarian by nature. I will enjoy being the only one of my friends that did not vote for Barack Obama, much as I enjoy being the only one who does not pray in a church.
- eru 18y ago
  I always appreciate a contrarian mind. By the way: Are there any Republicans on the internet left? If you follow the media (especially here in Europe) the Democrats should have taken landslide victories for the last eight years.
  - Prrometheus 18y ago
    There are. There was a lot of Republican activity on the internet during the primaries. However, young Republicans and proprietors of prominent Republican websites were never big McCain fans. And of course, Obama is a pop star. So, Republicans have been silent on the internet of late. Over the last eight years, many people have soured on the Republican Party because of Bush. Most young Republicans I know despise him. There won't be a lot of energy behind Republican Party candidates again until its leaders support the small-government principles that excite young activists.
    - aswanson 18y ago
      Most young Republicans I know despise him. Was it after a few catastrophic war/spending decisions, or did they always think he was a bad choice? For the life of me I can't see how the party propped him up over McCain back in 2000. In my eyes, even back then, he was such an obvious cipher.
metaguri 18y ago
Someone may have said this already, but not succinctly, so I'll have a go: If I understand right, nobody votes, and then who gets elected? You vote to contribute to the sample size, fool! 2 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another is a questionable victory, but 66,000 for one and 33,000 for the other is decisive.
bokonist 18y ago
People do not vote out of self-interest. People vote because of how it makes them feel about themselves. Its not unlike going to church. While this may sound like an OK thing, in reality it is disastrous. We elect leaders who make us feel great about ourselves by promising to fix the world. They then churn out giant bureaucracies to actually implement the world saving policies. But by then, no one is paying attention to whether the feel good policy actually works. The bureaucracy ends up being very effective at looking out for its own self interest, and incredibly ineffective at actually solving problems. Thus the result of a Red-state voter wanting to feel like a bad ass warrior is the creation of the giant military bureaucracy that creates threats in order to justify its own existence. The result a Blue-state voters desire to end poverty is a welfare state that in many ways has made inner city poverty much worse than it was in 1900 ( which is hard to do, considering the incredible improvements in technology).
- delackner 18y ago
  Really, do explain how inner city poverty is "much worse" than it was in 1900? Infant mortality? No. Access to safe and nutritive food? No. Access to housing? No. Do tell. "If turn-of-the-century infant death rates had continued, then an estimated 500,000 live-born infants during 1997 would have died before age 1 year; instead, 28,045 infants died" (1) (1) Hoyert DL, Kochanek KD, Murphy SL. Deaths: final data for 1997. Hyattsville, Maryland: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, 1999. (National vital statistics report; vol 47, no. 20).
  - bokonist 18y ago
    Read a few modern accounts of urban poverty, like "The Corner" and "Gang Leader for a day". Then compare it to accounts from the early 1900's such as "The Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia", "Land of the Dollar", and "How the other half lives." It will blow you away. Yes, the technology today is far better and knowledge of science far greater. We have penicillin and vaccinations. Fwer babies die at all income levels. But the gang violence, drug addiction, and perpetual unemployment problems are all much, much worse. Nothing like our modern inner city slums existed 100 years ago. Technology gave us low infant mortality. Politics lost us our cities - http://detroityes.com/home.htm http://detroityes.com/home.htm
deleted 18y ago
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cousin_it 18y ago
Reminded me of "Ten ways to make a political difference" by political theorist Nick Szabo. The article is pretty biased by his libertarian roots, but voting is still at number ten, the least effective. http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/08/ten-ways-to-make-difference.html http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/08/ten-ways-to-make-di...
swombat 18y ago
I am a Swiss living abroad and I always vote by mail-in ballot. I don't vote out of a feeling of social obligation, I vote because I believe it does make a difference, however small, and that if I convince myself and people I know to vote, that difference keeps adding up. If I didn't have the mail-in option, however, chances are I wouldn't vote - even if I was back home in Switzerland. I don't vote for a social perception, I vote because I care about the issues being voted about (note: we don't vote on people very often, we mostly vote on issues; I don't usually vote on people). Obviously I can't argue with the results of the study. Perhaps mail voting does decrease voting likelihood. At the same time, I'd argue that people who vote out of a sense of social obligation rather than because they have an opinion on the issues at hand would be better off abstaining. If you don't care about the outcome, don't vote. Chances are, if you don't care, you won't have bothered to research the issues anyway, so your vote would merely be statistical noise or, worse, uninformed "vote like my party" trash. We're really better off without your vote then. This article would be disturbing if it wasn't so pitiful. The only thing proven by this article is that the economist's perspective is awfully limited, and completely inapplicable when it comes to deciding how to behave in the "real world". If everyone behaved like economists as described in this article, most social functions wouldn't be able to exist, and we would probably soon devolve into a collection of pitiful warring tribes.
Tichy 18y ago
Could there something else at work in the siwss experiment, too? If the cost is higher to vote (walking through the rain etc.), maybe the perceived chance is greater that your vote has a greater weight, because fewer people will show up to vote. If you make it through a tornado, you might even wind up being the only person at the voting booth. Perhaps with the cheap mail-in ballots people feel too assured that everybody else will vote, anyway, so their own vote is less important.

40 points by dangoldin 18y ago

Such a great article. And I love when the NYTimes calls me rational.

Does this ignore network effects? I am pretty silent about my politics, but at least 25 people were aware that I voted early (friends, coworkers, family members). Did this affect their decision to vote and therefore the value of my vote? If a candidate does a great job getting out the vote compared to their opponent, the result of the election will not reflect popular opinion. Instead it will be biased toward that candidate. Those that voted for the candidate will see more value from their vote. That still may not outweigh the hour spent in line.

dangoldin 18y ago
Maybe it does but you can also argue it has an inverse effect. If I know someone else voted I may just say "Well they voted so I don't have to."

petercooper 18y ago

I'm glad there's actually a mass media outlet that would post something like this. They are focusing heavily on the numbers though, rather than the system - and it's the system that's the problem. I don't vote because my single vote carries no weight, as the article demonstrates. However, if proportional representation were used, I would vote because my vote would count for something even if very little. With First Past The Post, my vote is more like buying a lottery ticket.. if I vote for the loser then it counts for zero - which is why we end up with two party systems.

utnick 18y ago
Although this is true for the presidential election. When people go to the polls tommorow they will be voting for many offices besides president like senate, congress, and local elections where your vote does have equal weight. And those offices will probably affect you a lot more than President will. And the notion of popular vote mandate is important. If someone wins a commanding popular vote margin, their ideas and proposals have a greater chance of getting put into place.
- jfornear 18y ago
  Those elections are single mandate as well. Your vote only counts if the election is decided by 1 vote, which is never the case. On an unrelated note, I'm so tired of Freakonomics.
emmett 18y ago
A vote for the loser does not count for nothing. It makes you an active political entity worth courting. Do you know why social security is inviolate, and no one from either party will ever do anything to stop payments? Because old people vote. If you (and people like you) don't vote, you don't count, and no one will ever listen to you. Voting increases the strength of your demographic, and then shifts the political allegiance of that demographic very slightly towards your views.
- jfornear 18y ago
  While you are 100% right, this is irrelevant to the argument. As a voter you only have 1 single vote. You are using the word "you" in the plural sense. voter != demographic, voter < demographic
  - emmett 18y ago
    The point is that your vote adds a (very small) incremental value; the sole value is not that it might decide the election.

ConradHex 18y ago

I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it, and 2004 rolled around and I had another chance. Somehow I wasn't able to register in time, and missed it, and spent another 4 years feeling bad. This time I registered plenty early, and voted early, too. Now no matter what happens, I can feel good about doing my part for the next four years. I'd say that was time well spent.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
>I didn't vote in 2000, because it was too much trouble. I spent the next four years regretting it In 2000 a vote for a foreign policy of peace was a vote for Bush. That was his line. Gore was the one who had been threatening Indonesia and getting us dragged into messes in the Balkans. He as much as promised more military action abroad. This all goes to illustrate the ultimate meaninglessness of the campaigning.
- lacker 18y ago
  Good points to remember in case we all weren't cynical enough already. Bush 2000 = "We don't do nation-building". Bush 2003 = "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."
  - kingkongrevenge 18y ago
    Wilson was elected to keep us out of war. He maneuvered us into war, cooperating with the British against the wishes of the people. Ditto for FDR, who also deliberately pursued a policy of provocation against the Japanese. Nixon was elected to end the war. Instead he bombed Cambodia. Reagan pulled a 180 on middle east policy and withdrew from Lebanon. With the possible exception of LBJ I think every president in recent history has contradicted their indicated foreign policy. (LBJ was just bonkers from the get-go.)
- delackner 18y ago
  If you vote based on what the candidates SAY rather than what they and their associates have DONE with their lives, then you are asking to be lied to. Bush's adult life was: Daddy got him into a good university, which he did nothing with, went AWOL, daddy made it all good. Spent and lost lots of other people's money, went through rehab, became a religious fundamentalist, then ran Texas. Gore's adult life was: Enlisted to please his father, volunteered to go to war out of a sense of obligation, ran for elected office to do what he felt was his obligation to follow in his father's footsteps. Served as a public official his entire adult life. If you think that those two life stories are "the same" or that their campaigns can inform you more than that, I don't know what to suggest to you.

sanj 18y ago

If you don't vote, I could care less about your political opinion.

hugh 18y ago
Really? I couldn't.
- sanj 18y ago
  Correction appreciated! I've grown very, very tired over the last 8 years at hearing people who didn't vote complain about the state of the country. Each of them had an opportunity to register their opinion and they chose not to. Listening to them complain after the fact is a waste of my time.
jamesbritt 18y ago
"If you don't vote, I could [sic] care less about your political opinion." Odd phrasing aside, what if (for example) my political opinion is that voting is immoral because it legitimizes a corrupt or intrinsically broken system? Why is abstaining from a process so dismissed? I've heard people say, if you don't vote you can't complain, yet if you opt in to a system then how can you bitch when it doesn't swing your way? If you vote, then you can't complain; you can't have it both ways. (I'm not quite convinced of this myself, but I'm puzzled by people who won't even consider it.)
- petercooper 18y ago
  +1 Just wanted to add some more to this, as I recently had a debate about this with someone who was very pro-voting. Abstaining from religion is no longer dismissed, yet politics, as you say, remains a sticking point. In the 1500s, religious adherence was the norm in the West. In the 2000s, adherence to democracy as a political system is the norm (I have no doubt this will change in centuries to come). Consider voting within a democratic system to be equivalent to choosing a religion. If you are not religious, ideally you would not choose a religion. Likewise, if you do not believe in the democratic system, ideally you would not vote. Democracy is a system that many people take for granted, but is only one of many options. Voting in the democratic system implicitly means you support democracy. If you do not support democracy, therefore, it would be quite rightly against your principles to vote.

tarkin2 18y ago

Voting is an aggregate activity. When you think of it as an individualist activity, as an economist would, you fail to see it for what it is -- an aggregate. Imagine if you are in a line of people passing bricks from a collapsed building to another location. If you looked at this activity from an individual's perspective you'd said, "Passing this brick to that other person isn't clearing the rubble." And you'd be right. It's not. But then you are not the activity in entirety; you are only part of the activity. And because this activity is social, it depends on human behavior. This attitude, then, falls under the category of the fallacy of composition: what's rational for one actor is not rational if everyone does the same. Voting is not an individual activity, it's a group activity and looking at it as if it's a individual activity belies that. When you analyze group activities as if they're individual activities you get erroneous conclusions. I can see why Taleb gets annoyed with economists now.

ryporter 18y ago
In your scenario, if I don't pass along my brick, then the chain is broken (or, others at least have to do more work). However, in an election, if I don't vote, then no one has to pick up my slack. We'll still elect a president tomorrow. What is the negative externality that I'm imposing on others by not voting? If anything, I see it as a (very small) positive externality, because I'm letting everyone else decide who they want as president.
- tarkin2 18y ago
  The brick example was used to shed light upon the difference between individual and group activities. It's does not match the activity of voting, I know. However... Your use of the phrase "imposing on others" is telling. It implies you are separate from the others who vote, but in a democracy, during voting, you are not. You are all part of one system, and you all work towards the democratic task. When you choose not to vote, you exclude yourself from that system. One single absence will indeed not damage the system significantly enough to destroy it. But, as I said, this system replies on human behavior, and more specifically socialization. When you post articles on the New York Times website, when you post here and when you chat to friends about the futility of voting and when you tell them you have not voted you affect them; you influence them. Human behavior is incredible herd-like. Your choice not to vote affects others, others affect others, and that affects, in this case detrimentally, the democratic system. And this, again, goes back to the fallacy of composition. It was rational for you not to vote. Yet, because you live in society, that decision affects others, and when it affects enough people that newly formed decision becomes highly irrational.

utnick 18y ago

Not everything should be looked at from an economist's point of view. If an old lady in front of you drops her purse, there is no economical reason for you to help her out. It is a waste of your time and she can pick it up herself. If she can't pick it up herself, someone else walking the street will help her out. No need to trouble yourself. However, most people here would help her out because its just the right thing to do.

dangoldin 18y ago
And it's not like we all act rationally anyways.
dougp 18y ago
I was a sweeper at a theme park and I would see people drop things or leave things on benches(cameras, wallets, keys etc) and then run to pick them up. I would say 50% of the time they would thank me and give me a tip. Usually about an hours pay.
jmcannon 18y ago
Actually, this was the article's point exactly. You would help her out to satisfy a social expectation. What would others think if you didn't? You might ask how that changes if you and the old lady are alone. You would probably say that you'd still help her out, though I'd say that's just a response trained within a particular environment in which there is a help-old-ladies social expectation.
- dhimes 18y ago
  I don't think so. I think there are good survival reasons to behave socially for each others' benefit. That is, I believe some of the "helping is the right thing to do" may come from natural selection: social cooperation increases our chances for survival and reproduction.
- yummyfajitas 18y ago
  Not just social expectation (many would do it if there were no observers), but also increasing self satisfaction. Most people, myself included, derive utility from the belief that they are a good person.

zitterbewegung 18y ago

I can get a free cup of coffee from starbucks and extra credit in my classes if I vote so that justifies why I am voting. The opportunity cost for me not voting is too high for me.

dangoldin 18y ago
But that's because you place value on telling the truth. Not everyone is like that.
hugh 18y ago
You get extra credit in your classes for voting? That doesn't really sound like an appropriate use of power by your professors. It sounds far more like inappropriate use of academic power in order to rustle up more votes for you-know-who.
khafra 18y ago
Here in Tampa Bay, a local strip club magnate who keeps running for city council offered no-cover entry (A $35 dollar value!) for displaying an "I voted" sticker.

jsdalton 18y ago

Here's one of my favorite reasons to vote: Your vote does have an impact on the vote count. I like to check out the vote tallies when the election is over -- and when it says "324,879" instead of "324,878" or whatever, I think, "Hey, that's me!" This also works whether you live in a swing state like Ohio or a forgone conclusion like California. And in all seriousness, vote count does matter, even if the outcome is a "sure thing." The size of a victory plays a very big role in giving a mandate for the winner to get things done. So hackers...seriously, get out there and vote, even if it only makes a 1/305,563,000 difference.

kingkongrevenge 18y ago

Reasons not to vote: Voting for federal candidates is an affirmation of the legitimacy of the power of the government, which you may reject. Your vote will make you complicit in the next federal campaign to blow up foreigners, or the current campaign to imprison millions of Americans for victimless crimes. I assure you Obama WILL blow up innocent foreigners; every president finds some excuse to do it at some point. A vote for "none of the above" IS a vote. The politicians NEED sufficiently high turnout to legitimize their power. Elections are about as genuine as pro-wrestling. They never have anything to do with how government actually proceeds after the race. Rhetoric has consistently contradicted actions in my lifetime. Pretending you participated in an informed decision making process is delusional. You're stuck choosing between coke and pepsi when you really want a glass of milk. The republican and democratic parties have locked up the racket for themselves. They are different brands of the same corporatocracy and mostly create the illusion of choice with careful marketing. Every couple years they push the right buttons to get their brand's simpletons whipped into a sufficient frenzy to trek to the polls. Then they proceed with business as usual. Voting, emotional investment in the political process, and keeping informed about the political process are distractions from far more socially productive activities. If every campaign volunteer had resolved not to vote or really care about the election, and instead spent their time doing something of value on their block, the aggregate outcome would far surpass the positive difference in outcomes between any pair of candidates. Lastly, your vote really doesn't matter, statistically speaking.

geuis 18y ago
Your vote DOES matter, statistically speaking. Disregarding the oddness of the electoral college, in most elections where the number of votes is directly relational to the outcome of the contest, the individual statistical importance of each vote decreases as the overall volume of votes increases. In elections where fewer votes are registered, the significance of each vote on the outcome increases. In an election involving hundreds of millions of people, you can claim correctly that overall influence of your vote is tiny. That does NOT mean it doesn't matter. However, to properly represent the desire of the voter pool in aggregate, all people must participate. The outcome of an election is not to decide what you individually want, its to decide what the populace in general wants. As to your other political statements, some I agree with, some not. I used to be very politically active(anti-war rallies, protests, supporting local candidates, volunteering, sign waving, etc). If you're from a country where you can't vote, then your opinions aren't helping your fellow man. You need to get off the computer and go stand up to your corrupt leaders. You might get shot, but when enough people stand up things change. Hey, its kind of like voting!

ars 18y ago

It's also sort of interesting to vote. What machine will they use this time? What's on the ballot? Will it work? How many people will be there? Will there be big problems? People like novelty.

vaksel 18y ago

to me the only reasons to vote is if you are in a swing state. Anywhere else its a huge waste of time because your state is predetermined to go one way or the other.

Prrometheus 18y ago

This is pretty much my reason for voting: "2. Perhaps we vote in the same spirit in which we buy lottery tickets. After all, your chances of winning a lottery and of affecting an election are pretty similar. From a financial perspective, playing the lottery is a bad investment. But it's fun and relatively cheap: for the price of a ticket, you buy the right to fantasize how you'd spend the winnings - much as you get to fantasize that your vote will have some impact on policy." I fantasize that my vote for Bob Barr will throw the election into a tie, creating a giant entertaining mess even bigger than the aftermath of the 2000 election. Also, I will get some warm fuzzies over the next 4 years knowing that I didn't vote for the winner when they inevitably screw up. Lastly, I am a contrarian by nature. I will enjoy being the only one of my friends that did not vote for Barack Obama, much as I enjoy being the only one who does not pray in a church.

eru 18y ago
I always appreciate a contrarian mind. By the way: Are there any Republicans on the internet left? If you follow the media (especially here in Europe) the Democrats should have taken landslide victories for the last eight years.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  There are. There was a lot of Republican activity on the internet during the primaries. However, young Republicans and proprietors of prominent Republican websites were never big McCain fans. And of course, Obama is a pop star. So, Republicans have been silent on the internet of late. Over the last eight years, many people have soured on the Republican Party because of Bush. Most young Republicans I know despise him. There won't be a lot of energy behind Republican Party candidates again until its leaders support the small-government principles that excite young activists.
  - aswanson 18y ago
    Most young Republicans I know despise him. Was it after a few catastrophic war/spending decisions, or did they always think he was a bad choice? For the life of me I can't see how the party propped him up over McCain back in 2000. In my eyes, even back then, he was such an obvious cipher.

metaguri 18y ago

Someone may have said this already, but not succinctly, so I'll have a go: If I understand right, nobody votes, and then who gets elected? You vote to contribute to the sample size, fool! 2 votes for one candidate and 1 vote for another is a questionable victory, but 66,000 for one and 33,000 for the other is decisive.

bokonist 18y ago

People do not vote out of self-interest. People vote because of how it makes them feel about themselves. Its not unlike going to church. While this may sound like an OK thing, in reality it is disastrous. We elect leaders who make us feel great about ourselves by promising to fix the world. They then churn out giant bureaucracies to actually implement the world saving policies. But by then, no one is paying attention to whether the feel good policy actually works. The bureaucracy ends up being very effective at looking out for its own self interest, and incredibly ineffective at actually solving problems. Thus the result of a Red-state voter wanting to feel like a bad ass warrior is the creation of the giant military bureaucracy that creates threats in order to justify its own existence. The result a Blue-state voters desire to end poverty is a welfare state that in many ways has made inner city poverty much worse than it was in 1900 ( which is hard to do, considering the incredible improvements in technology).

delackner 18y ago
Really, do explain how inner city poverty is "much worse" than it was in 1900? Infant mortality? No. Access to safe and nutritive food? No. Access to housing? No. Do tell. "If turn-of-the-century infant death rates had continued, then an estimated 500,000 live-born infants during 1997 would have died before age 1 year; instead, 28,045 infants died" (1) (1) Hoyert DL, Kochanek KD, Murphy SL. Deaths: final data for 1997. Hyattsville, Maryland: US Department of Health and Human Services, CDC, National Center for Health Statistics, 1999. (National vital statistics report; vol 47, no. 20).
- bokonist 18y ago
  Read a few modern accounts of urban poverty, like "The Corner" and "Gang Leader for a day". Then compare it to accounts from the early 1900's such as "The Slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia", "Land of the Dollar", and "How the other half lives." It will blow you away. Yes, the technology today is far better and knowledge of science far greater. We have penicillin and vaccinations. Fwer babies die at all income levels. But the gang violence, drug addiction, and perpetual unemployment problems are all much, much worse. Nothing like our modern inner city slums existed 100 years ago. Technology gave us low infant mortality. Politics lost us our cities - http://detroityes.com/home.htm http://detroityes.com/home.htm

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cousin_it 18y ago

Reminded me of "Ten ways to make a political difference" by political theorist Nick Szabo. The article is pretty biased by his libertarian roots, but voting is still at number ten, the least effective. http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/08/ten-ways-to-make-difference.html http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2007/08/ten-ways-to-make-di...

swombat 18y ago

I am a Swiss living abroad and I always vote by mail-in ballot. I don't vote out of a feeling of social obligation, I vote because I believe it does make a difference, however small, and that if I convince myself and people I know to vote, that difference keeps adding up. If I didn't have the mail-in option, however, chances are I wouldn't vote - even if I was back home in Switzerland. I don't vote for a social perception, I vote because I care about the issues being voted about (note: we don't vote on people very often, we mostly vote on issues; I don't usually vote on people). Obviously I can't argue with the results of the study. Perhaps mail voting does decrease voting likelihood. At the same time, I'd argue that people who vote out of a sense of social obligation rather than because they have an opinion on the issues at hand would be better off abstaining. If you don't care about the outcome, don't vote. Chances are, if you don't care, you won't have bothered to research the issues anyway, so your vote would merely be statistical noise or, worse, uninformed "vote like my party" trash. We're really better off without your vote then. This article would be disturbing if it wasn't so pitiful. The only thing proven by this article is that the economist's perspective is awfully limited, and completely inapplicable when it comes to deciding how to behave in the "real world". If everyone behaved like economists as described in this article, most social functions wouldn't be able to exist, and we would probably soon devolve into a collection of pitiful warring tribes.

Tichy 18y ago

Could there something else at work in the siwss experiment, too? If the cost is higher to vote (walking through the rain etc.), maybe the perceived chance is greater that your vote has a greater weight, because fewer people will show up to vote. If you make it through a tornado, you might even wind up being the only person at the voting booth. Perhaps with the cheap mail-in ballots people feel too assured that everybody else will vote, anyway, so their own vote is less important.