ยป Why Vote?
Neo-classical economists famously claim that voting is irrational. The argument goes: What is the probability that the election will be won by one seat (BC has 85 seats), that one seat is won by a single vote (the average seat has 50,000 eligible voters) and you happen to be that voter? The benefit to the deciding voter multiplied by the probability of being that voter is lower than the cost of voting.
But the only reason that an election would come down to one vote is that everyone else voted in perfect balance. In a perfectly efficient world, voters who opposed each other would pair off to stay home so the only person that needed to vote was a representative deciding voter (this is done in legislative assemblies). The pairing could be done using technology but somehow the no-voting contract would either have to be enforceable or there’d have to be enough trust to solve this Prisoner’s Dilemma. Since we don’t have either, we go mark a ballot and they are paired in counting.
The other problem is that neo-classical economists like to pretend that everyone makes all their choices based on economics. But if voting is a moral decision, then there could be all sorts of other justifications. One is Kant’s categorical imperative, which says you should act the same way you want everyone else to act. So you should vote because you prefer a world where everyone votes to a world where no one votes.
There’s some joke that involves an economist worried that his colleagues will see him at the voting place.
I don’t think that the neo-classical argument involves the probability that “you happen to be [the deciding] voter”. If a seat was decided by only one vote, then everyone who voted for the winner is the deciding voter. For example, imagine it is the distant future (2019) and we all go out and vote in the election to choose Canada’s one MWP to represent us in Beijing. Jared and I both vote for the Pensioner’s Party candidate. The Pensioner’s Party guy wins the election, beating the candidate from the Marijuana Party by exactly one vote. In this case, the neo-classical economical argument would tell both Jared and me that this was an instance where it was worthwhile for us to have voted, without any determination of which one of us was the deciding vote.
But I think that neo-classical economics can explain why people can rationally vote. Most economists do claim that people make these sorts of decisions based on economics, but instead of trying to claim that people ignore moral or emotional justifications, the economists just cheat and say that those justifications are part of economics, too.
So if I get some satisfaction out of voting, because I like feeling involved, or because I get an entertaining thrill out of the small chance that my vote will decide the election, or because I want to be seen by my neighbours and family as a responsible citizen, then those are benefits to voting in addition to the small expected value of my vote actually deciding the election; all those benefits can easily outweigh the cost of voting.
I think that economics looks at rationality-vs-irrationality in terms of the choices you make to give and get the things you value. I don’t think it judges what you value, it just takes that as a given. For example, economics doesn’t say that I am irrational (or rational) because I value chocolate cake, even though the cake is bad for me and probably statistically shortens my life. However, economics would judge as irrational my choice to pay $4 for a piece of chocolate cake when I could get an equivalent piece for $3, everything else being equal.
Don
12 May 09 at 11:53 am
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2 Sep 09 at 1:09 pm
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MentalPolyphonics » Homework: Why Not Vote?
31 Mar 10 at 9:54 am