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424 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury 9 Nov 2023 \ parent \ on: The 10 Phases of Voting meta
I think it's fair to say that voters are unhappy. I also think it's fair to say that most people are stupid as hell, and the expressions of their desires are generally idiotic, they are nearly at war with each other, actual families are splintering because of divisiveness, and so the results tend to reflect that. I view this as a critique against democracy in the same way that I'd interpret being unhappy with the view on a drive through Nebraska as a critique against cars.
I agree that voting is a pretty lukewarm type of civic involvement. I also think it's worth more than zero; and a growing contingent of people who opt out of the process are doing actual harm over time, for the reasons discussed before. Choices aggregate to something. For god's sake, we have a stacked deck of Supreme Court justices because a handful of people in a couple of elections won the day. The consequences of that will play out for decades.
I hesitate to get personal, but I really do think there's something to this vegan vs voting thing. Can we agree that the marginal effect you're having on the world is basically zero, by not adding your modicum of demand to something you consider immoral, and allocating it to vegetables or whatever? And yet I wouldn't say "I don't think going vegan does anything" because it sends a lot of tiny tendrils out. There is assuredly some SN lurker whose mind has just been blown to discover that, in the land of performative carnivory, where eating beef has become a virtue for some reason, there's this anarchist maxi who's also vegan? The mind reels.
I submit that voting, or not, has that same energy. Or rather: participating in some modest way in civic life, of which voting is a small but important expression.
Yeah. I'm not. Robert Putnam wrote a book on this in the 90s. There are more credible baskets to put your eggs in.
You offered a bunch of interesting thoughts there. Let's see if I can address them.
First off, note that I was not critiquing the concept of democracy, but rather stating my belief that the United States isn't one. I have plenty of critiques of democracy that don't strike me as relevant to the discussion so far.
This point about choices aggregating to something might be the crucial point of the conversation. With most of our actions, I agree with the view you're putting forward. The world is subtly shaped in innumerable and unimaginable ways by our daily choices. I view voting as an exception to this normal. It's a highly garbled signal and the value of the inputs is what the output ends up being. In most cases, my feeling is that if you vote and it doesn't change the outcome of the election, then there is no complex web of subtle effects. It's more like a black hole. There are a bunch of caveats to offer and many cases where I think voting makes sense, but that's the basic framework for why I think the two cases are different. It's also why I think engaging in political discussions is worthwhile, while thinking voting is not.
Also, it's at the individual level where I think voting is pointless, but I don't think it's pointless for someone with a huge audience to encourage their followers to vote. No individual voter is responsible for the current Supreme Court, but Tucker Carlson certainly might be.
It's interesting to me that you bring up the idea of making minds reel, because that's exactly what happens when people hear that I don't vote. It precipitates way more unusual brain activity, precisely because it breaks from their expectations for a highly educated and informed person. Often it leads to conversations about the political system that partisan tribalism doesn't usually allow.
You talk about contagion from people like me not voting, but 1) I would welcome that and 2) everyone I know irl still votes, so I'm not inclined to put any more stock in that than you put in my concerns about voting crowding out genuine civic involvement.
I will offer up that there are times where I have voted and where I consider it to make sense. In primary elections, delegates might be decided by a single vote, and that can change the downstream political calculus in positive ways. There might be a variety of thresh holds facing third parties and if there are enough candidates facing enough of these, then your vote might have a significant chance of determining the outcome. Also, I was a big enough Ron Paul fan that I just wanted his vote tally to be as high as possible. I'm sure there are plenty of others that people could come up with.
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I feel like a conversation that we've put this much into needs a dismount. So thanks for talking it through. There's a bunch to think about in the stuff you've said.
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I look forward to more in the future. You're a very enjoyable writer, btw.
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