'Collective' suggests to me we're not going to agree. Patronizing in this context only means making assumptions (likely to be unwarranted I’d argue) about what

'Collective' suggests to me we're not going to agree. Patronizing in this context only means making assumptions (likely to be unwarranted I’d argue) about what someone else wants. But who is the 'someone' affected by a vote in a general election? How many people? To what extent? What about unknown/known effects on other people who you do not have in mind? You cannot know and the assumptions pile up. So much easier to vote on what you really do know to the extent that you can know or rationalize. As you say, we can surely agree that it isn’t always our immediate concerns that best serve our interests as in the simple example of imagining ourselves out of work or needing medical attention. As you say, this benefits everyone – point being that we also are ‘everyone’.