> Your idea of being an expert because you majored in a related topic is amusingly misinformed as well. You are kidding yourself. Never claimed to be an expert

> Your idea of being an expert because you majored in a related topic is amusingly misinformed as well. You are kidding yourself. Never claimed to be an expert. I'm also not "grotesquely misinformed", unless the bar for "merely misinformed, but not grotesquely" is so high that at least 99% of people are "grotesquely misinformed" (which... IDK, maybe, in that case, I guess?). Not an expert, though, and, didn't claim to be. I have no idea why people are taking any of what I've written as "voting for President is bad and you shouldn't do it". I must not have written clearly, yet cannot find what's drawing that reaction anywhere in my posts (but maybe it's there and I'm just not seeing it!). I think I've just written about the best use of limited time & attention: smaller, and earlier in the process, is most effective; and how voter behavior instead reflects polar opposite priorities. Everyone voting in every election would, of course, be ideal (I mean, for me, just certain folks voting in every election would be ideal, but you get what I mean). > In small, local elections, your vote has a more transparent relationship to outcomes. But those outcomes tend to be inconsequential. I'm going to be blunter than I usually am on HN, because you're in dangerously-wrong territory and I'd hate for anyone to run with this outside of HN, for making decisions about voting or political participation: this is super fucking wrong. Local election & initiative outcomes matter a ton. I would encourage anyone who doesn't find themselves seeing, very clearly, why, after a few moments' though, to spend some time over a few days looking at national headlines—not just the one or two top ones, but a bunch each day—and marking down which levels of government are active in or generating each story (yeah, I know, I advised mostly avoiding the news in favor of books, but this is a decent way to do some informal statistical analysis). And that's just what makes national news! Consider which levels of government you interact with most. Which police patrol cruisers do you see most—the FBI? State bureau? Highway patrol? Probably not any of those, and I bet that was an ascending list least- to most-seen (while omitting the ones probably see more than any of those, by a large margin—city & sheriff, say?). School budgets and hiring administrators. Which levels of government are banning books? Very-local, or sometimes state. Who's setting library funding, running the closest 20 parks to where you live, hiring the government officials and setting their policies? Zoning rules? Who's running your utilities, or responsible for collecting your trash? There's so much and it very much matters.