Ilya says yes, drawing on this very interesting article of his. Here is his explanation (inspired by Derek Parfit):
Assume that Uv = the expected utility of voting; Cv = the cost of voting; and D = the expected difference in welfare per person if the voter’s preferred candidate defeats her opponent. Let us further assume that this is a presidential election in a nation with 300 million people; that the voter’s ballot has only a 1 in 100 million chance of being decisive (Riker and Ordeshook 1968); and that the voter values the welfare of his fellow citizens an average of 1000 times less than his own. Thus, we get the following equation:
D*(300 million/1000)/(100 million) – Cv = Uv.
If we assume that Cv is $10 (a reasonable proxy for the cost of voting) and that D is $5000 (this can incorporate monetary equivalents of noneconomic benefits as well as actual income increases), then Uv equals $5, a small but real positive expected utility.
If you care about the well-being of others, even a little bit, you should vote, despite the cost of voting. The reason is that the cost of voting is very low, while the benefit is not as low as you might think. Although your chance of breaking a tie is very low, the benefit from breaking a tie is very high—it’s felt by 300 million people. This multiplier effect offsets, to some extent, the very small chance that your vote will make a difference.
However, breaking a tie is beneficial only if your vote is more likely correct than not—that is, you actually vote for the better candidate. Surely your vote is more likely to be correct than not? After all, you have some information, and that means you are doing better than flipping a coin. However, you need to reflect on your own ignorance with some humility. If, by hypothesis, your vote breaks a tie, then it means that (putting aside the vagaries of the electoral system) half the country prefers one candidate and the other half prefers the other. If all of these people have enough information that their votes are not random, the existence of a tie (aside from your vote) indicates that the two candidates are almost exactly equal in quality. The probability that your own puny knowledge (elsewhere in the same article Ilya discusses the problem of rational ignorance—people have weak incentives to inform themselves about the candidates and policy in general) will distinguish the infinitesimally better candidate is itself infinitesimal.
In other words, D, the expected difference in welfare per person if the voter’s preferred candidate defeats her opponent, is not realistically $5,000; more realistically it is in the range of $0.000000005. Using the equation above, your expected utility from voting is a shade higher than negative ten dollars. Ilya, stay home!
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Because of the electoral college, the likelihood of a vote changing the election depends on what state you vote in.
In Massachusetts, the P of my vote changing the electoral vote is 0.00000000000000000000000.
However, I do care about a lot of other issues (e.g. state income tax repeal), so I will go to vote ... even if I will abstain from voting for either of the major party presidential candidates.
I also wish people would vote for what they want, also for the same reason. I have thought at one time that if given a political wish, I would have everyone who is eligible vote for the candidate that best supports their views, even if just once. There is a fair chance the winner would not be my view, but it would shake things up enough that it is unlikely to go back to the current equilibrium.
(nb my political procedural wish would be to get rid of singel vote winner takes all elections, though work should be done to figure out the best alternative)
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Fed up with government? Don't feed it. Don't legitimize it with a ballot, and don't contribute to it financially. Join a monastery, take a vow of poverty, and do something spiritually rewarding.
Given the harmful biases people have when making political decisions (See The Myth of the Rational Voter), it would probably be better if people flipped a coin. Or just stayed at home.
Now imagine that a few million people happen to all prefer one candidate, but they all also use this line of reasoning. (Obviously people willing to use reasoning must be unevenly distributed among the candidates.)
They will each conclude that their vote isn't important because they could only make a difference if the candidates are tied, and therefore equal in quality. Yet the few million votes as a group could make a difference even if the candidates are not tied.
The key is that it's not always good to think "what would happen if I did something different and everyone else acted exactly the same". If you are acting logically, the fact that you did something different means that other people would also do something different, because their reasoning would lead to the same conclusion as yours.
This is http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Superrationality without the emphasis on cooperation.
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The public isn't engaged in making rational and reasoned decisions. It's being led around by polls that purport to predict the results, and by sound bites.
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As a thought exercise, imagine the scene from announcement of candidacy until counting of the ballots, if the interim was conducted without poll results being reported. IOW, force people to decide on just the sound bites, or whatever else they decide to dig up. No more ability "vote/not vote" based on a predicted poll result.
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Bugs you that they don't subscribe to "to each according to his needs," eh?
There is 0.00000000000% chance I would take a moment to consider my political knowledge to be "puny", so that equation must fail, even though one accepts adaequatio intellectûs nostri cum re
(1) If everyone is badly informed or votes for reasons unrelated to the truth, then Ilya, who's better informed than most, can still rely on his own views.
(2) If one's own views are moral/ideological, like a view that only libertarianism is just, then everyone else's views -- even if they're all Ph.D.s -- are likewise irrelevant. Unless they're really trying to answer the same question, for instance if I disagreed with lots of Ph.D. libertarians, in which case humility would again be in order.
This is a laughable approximation. First, it takes at least an hour of the average voter's time to vote and most people value their time at more than $10 an hour (if not, you can mow my lawn for $10/hour whenever you want).
Second, transportation costs need to be factored in as well, which by itself is likely $5-10 on average.
Anderson, J., concurs in the judgment.
Meanwhile as population goes up, odds of swinging the election still go down.
I think you are overlooking something: voters' desire to reap the benefits of turnout. Politicians know which neighborhoods people always turn out to vote in, and the neighborhoods they don't. It may not matter for a president or governor. But if your city council or state rep hears from you one day, and they know that you are from a high-turnout part of town, your needs may get more attention. The presidential election is not close in my state, for example, but even if there were not other races on the ballot I care about, I would still go vote because it does a little bit to keep turnout high in my neighborhood. This, it seems to me, is a very rational choice.
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How do figure the cost when the activity is leisure? What about when done at leisure, or in lieu of alternative leisure?
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How do you figure the cost of becoming informed? Of forming an opinion? Is that to be "wasted" if undertaken, or not undertaken at all?
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And as for direct cost, vote absentee. A few stamps. Probably in the 2 buck area. A substantial number of people have access to free transportation by either of the major parties, who field GOTV operatives.
Whoever did this calculation did not think very deeply. As an example of the power of a large win think Reagan in 1980, who was able to overcome a Democratic Congress because of the size of his vote. As to the advantage of bringing allies along with you think FDR. For the problems of a narrow win which leaves your opponents standing think Truman in 1948.
http://www.slate.com/id/2107240/
Now the calculation gives us a positive utility of $50.
I think TerrencePhilip is on to something, though. The benefits of voting in local races are much higher (perhaps distributed over fewer people, but they are people you care about more). And once you are in the voting booth, the marginal cost of voting in national races is $0.
Goodbye, self-government.
The categorical imperative is a seriously deficient principle of ethics, and utterly useless as a practical guide to behavior.
If everyone acted acted according to its precept when choosing a line of work, we would have no division of labor. Everyone would *have* to be a farmer (or a hunter-gatherer). The choice of any other profession would result in famine.
This is contingent on his assumption that he values others welfare at 1/1000th of his own on a per capita basis. That's all well and good for a single person (give the bum on the street $1) but for 300 million other people, it's not realistic.
The amount of weight you put on other's welfare is a lump-sum, not a per-capita value.
$1.5 billion would be a steal!
Let's say $50 is a better approximation of the opportunity costs of informed voting.
I live in a district where a recent council election was decided by 5 votes, and the next state rep over won by 8 votes. I have 8 friends, I think. In my state there's usually one or two races decided by a flip of the coin after a tie.
My precinct leader knows whether or not I vote. That might be relevant to whether my trash gets picked up on time.
Voting is a vestigal social norm. Not voting was deviant, and there's still a bit of that attitude floating around.
Voting is entertaining. I get more entertainment from the election than from the world series. Might as well get a good seat.
My social networks include people that I work on campaigns with. I've gotten a job once based on a campaign contact; I've gotten jobs for people who've helped me campaign, and one time I didn't get a job I'd been offered because they found out who I campaign for.
Voting is a nice way to meet some of the little old ladies who live in my neighborhood.
In my case I have a bit of extra incentive - I have a hobby of litigating election issues,and I should get back to work...
Only half of all eligible voters actually vote, yet the outcomes have been very good representations of the population. You could probably get very accurate views with 10% voting, even with the self-selection problem.
So, the question is, would you pay $20 instead of voting? If the answer is yes, you don't vote.
This explains lots of voters behavior. For example, someone who is 65+ is likely to vote for someone who will increase medicare benefits, since that translates to a benefit of hundreds of dollars a year. Someone who is 18 years old might not feel any incentive to vote because there is no draft and they aren't receiving any direct benefit from the government that they can quantify for themselves. However, there will be more young people voting in this election because they are unable to get health insurance through their employers...and the possibility of getting that benefit is greater than ever...which translates into a greater likelihood of voting.
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Freedom of choice, Aussie style.
This is a really excellent question. I would be interested in Sasha's answer as well.
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See James Burnham's "Suicide of the West" for one man's take on that question.
However, you shouldn't assume your vote matters by itself. It is far more important to talk to the politicians who represent you frequently. Otherwise all they hear is from lobbyists.....
I may value the welfare of a single random citizen 1000 times less then my own, by I do not value the welfare of 300,000,000 citizens at 1/1000 of my own on average. That would imply that the value of welfare of others scales linearly with the number of citizens. It also implies that I value the welfare of all citizens at 300,000 times my own. Both are ridiculous assumptions.
How do you know your first claim is accurate and how certain can you be of the second claim?
I believe there is a significant percentage (5-10% of all voters) of non-voters who do not vote just based on the lack of viable choices. If they had reason to vote, I believe together they could make a difference.
Unfortunately, I don't think we will have the chance to see whose intuition is more correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Opposite
George: Excuse me, I couldn't help but notice that you were looking in my direction.
Victoria: Oh, yes I was, you just ordered the same exact lunch as me.
George: My name is George. I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.
Victoria (with a huge smile): I'm Victoria, hi!
Is it a fair assumption that Tomm never served in the military?
There is a wide range of values greater than 1 and less than 300,000.
I am not suggesting this as a strict analogy, suggesting only a supermajority voting will keep us all from dying. However, it is the same sort of argument against: how can my one act affect others?
Rationality, especially when it has to be "economic" rationality, is way over-rated. By the way, I think its fairly safe to say that following this blog, at least for the vast majority of the followers, is fundamentally irrational.
OTOH, you greatly overestimate the cost of voting. I don't gather information about the candidates because I'm going to vote, I gather information because I'm interested in politics. I don't have to take time off from work to vote, so that's not a cost. The cost to travel to my polling space is about $0.10, using IRS travel costs (of course, I could walk, and get some exercise while I'm at it).
GIGO.
You do understand that gathering information because you are interested in something is irrational don't you? Surely you could be doing something else with your time to make more money. Since you've already admitted you behave irrationally, then why does it matter to you whether voting is rational or irrational.
It's very difficult to determine the utility of leisure, but I don't think it matters since hardly anyone would characterize the hassle of voting as leisurely.
Again, very hard to determine and again I doubt it matters since the average amount of voter initiated information gather is pretty low.
A little more than half (28) of the states allow no excuse absentee voting, but since few people take advantage of it there will be little effect on the average cost. Far fewer people than that will use any form of free transportation, so again it changes the average cost of voting very little.
Not a reasonable comparison, many people will give up their life to save one other life, and at the same time wouldn't give up $100 they earned so that 1,000 other people could have $100 they didn't earn.
Rodger Lodger,
My "town" consists of more than 78 voters, but city council and state rep districts, along with some other local and sub-local districts, are small compared to statewide elections- even if quite large compared to "78." But politicians know by area of town, block by block, where turnout is very high. A state rep might not know you but if your letter to him comes from an address in a neighborhood where there's a high level of civic involvement he's likely to pay close attention. So I don't need to think my one vote will turn the election for a city councilmember or state rep to know that votes from my precinct matter.
Sure, as you suggest, my one vote does very little to boost "turnout." I could comfortably free-ride on the turnout of my neighbors if I wished. On the other hand voting is practically costless, and I draw some amount of utility from knowing I'm contributing to turnout, as well as from voting for specific candidates and issues. Eric's post did not seem to count these as a benefit to voters, instead focusing only on whether the individual voter could make a difference in an individual election.
Since you want to assert the utility of voting, I would like you to explain what is the measure of utility you are using. If you can't define that, the rest of the argument is really rather pointless.
Absolutely wrong. You cannot impute utility based on the disincentive. Utility is not expressed in monetary terms.
What you are talking about is the cost of conformity.
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