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Another great phrase

  • Jan. 31st, 2009 at 12:00 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Your vote has "homeopathic power".

So true, so true...

Elections are decided by the masses

  • Nov. 18th, 2008 at 11:49 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
(I am not making use of the new "troll" tag, b/c this is something I believe to be objectively true. Ignorance about politics is cheap, so people buy lots of it. This is rational. If anything, I would say that people pay more attention to their "civic duty" than would be rational, although still not very much)

From Distributed Republic:
Elections are decided by numbers, and the ignorant outnumber the knowledgeable, so the ignorant decide the outcome. This casts an odd light on the lengthy and detailed explanations by the hyper-informed as to why they voted the way they did. A single person only gets one vote, so it is hardly of earth-shattering importance how they voted, let alone why. Sure, a single voter's explanation may be of interest as a microcosm of what tens of millions of people were thinking. Were that only so! Alas, a writer informed enough to give a decent explanation of their vote does not represent the masses who actually decide an election.
Interviews with Obama voters, asking simple questions about the political landscape:



Lest this seem like an elitist attitude, I wish to add that if you interviewed these people about the details of their jobs, or recent major purchases (car, TV, house), I believe they would be far more knowledgeable. They know more about what matters to their lives than we do. Which is why we'd be better off letting them run their own lives, then telling them how much they can get paid, what medicines they can take, what recreational drugs they can take....
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
[info]steuard is serving nicely as a foil in the comments on my last voting post. He makes the clearly true argument:
My claim has always been that in the context of a democratic system, a group with shared interests whose common philosophy convinces them that voting is a waste of time will tend to have less influence on government than a different group with shared interests whose common philosophy convinces them that they should vote.
(I agree with this, of course). But then he blows it by attempting to naively extend this to a result about individuals:
My claim is not that one libertarian deciding "Hey, I'll vote this time" will magically make all the others decide the same thing: I find that as ridiculous as you do. Instead, my claim is that any "rational" game-theoretic model that leads the libertarians to the "don't bother voting" conclusion is obviously flawed in some way. I don't pretend to know enough game theory to identify the flaw precisely, but simply observing the result is enough to recognize that something has been overlooked.

So where's the flaw in my reasoning? It's hard for me to believe that a whole class of people choosing to disenfranchise themselves is "rational" when their outcome would be enormously better if they all voted (or, with the help of moderates against single-party dominance, if just most of them voted).
I hope Stu doesn't find this comment rude, I respect his intelligence and compassion a great deal, but this argument is shockingly ignorant.

Essentially, he is invoking some theorem which says that rational individual behavior must lead to rational group behavior. The "everything must be nice and work out" axiom :). Which, sadly, doesn't exist. If it were the case, the world would be a much nicer place! In fact, a deep part of my view of politics and human society is as an attempt to solve the hard problem of aligning individual incentives with societal incentives. There are hacks and ways of doing it, but it is far from an easy problem.

There are both theoretical models and real cases where people's individual actions give a crappy result, but if everyone was able to coordinate and enforce a bargain, they could get a much better result. One example is a dictatorship, which most citizens would like to overthrow, but they can't talk openly in large groups in order to confirm that everyone else would also like to, or to set a time. Any small group which attempts rebellion will be brutally put down. Yet the dictator could never defend himself against a mass uprising.

For a theoretical example, consider the classic Muddy Children Problem, where a coordinating input causes drastic results in a system.

The difficulty of coordination and enforcement of cooperation against free-riders, is a serious matter. There is lots of literature on it, and it is a non-trivial matter - especially in huge, anonymous groups. This is not a problem that can simply be assumed away.

Hell, you can describe the ENTIRE FIELD of mechanism design as attempting to solve the problem of how to set up rules such that individual actors, acting in their own self-interest, produce the outcome which the mechanism designer wants. Again, I assure you that there is no general theorem of mechanism design which says that a mechanism can always be designed so that individual rationality leads to the optimal group outcome! There are specific models and settings in which this can be true (like the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves auction mechanism), but it is not a general fact about all games!

For those who don't know Steuard, he is brilliant and mathematically inclined (holder a recent PhD in string theory). Is it any surprise that we live in such a non-optimal society, with so little experimentation or creative thought put into realistic, superior alternate ways of living, when people in the top sliver of intelligence and education still have such fundamentally erroneous beliefs about the basic structure of the world, and how individual choices relate to group outcomes? The conspiracy theory is that since education is mainly financed by the state, it tends to skip over areas of science that challenge the current system. I am more inclined to merely think that the economic (or for me, game-players) way of thinking is just a rare thing, and to most people, mechanism design is very non-intuitive.

Whatever the reason, I just can't help sighing. It reminds me of the Mudd engineer who told me, quite seriously, that it was inefficient for power companies to store energy during the night by pumping water uphill, and recover it during the day. Because, after all, they were just transferring it from night to day, with some net losses. Wasn't it odd that they wasted power like that?

Now there's a great argument about voting

  • Nov. 8th, 2008 at 8:58 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
From Bob Murphy.

He points out that if we're going to use the whole "whatever logic I use, everyone else will use" argument, why restrict it to voting/not voting and choice of candidate?

After all, what I really want is for the state to go away, and every to start living in Ancapistan. So instead of going and voting (which is not what my logic says we should all do), why don't I just start doing that, on the hopes that everyone else will too? As he says (rearranged for clarity):

"If you're granting me the (false) ability to control every other citizen's behavior, then why should I do an alternative-universe experiment where we all write in Ron Paul? If we're engaging in fantasy land anyway, I'm going to do a really good fantasy, not just a pretty cool one where Ron Paul becomes president and vetoes everything for 4 years.
...
No, I think the best response would be for no one to vote at all, and also not obey the "president" (who wins with his own vote and that of his mom) when he orders police officers and soldiers to start arresting people for tax evasion or draft dodging or whatever."


So the whole "act in a universalized way" argument is totally bogus for those of us whose universal principle is not "we should all vote", but "we should all be anarchists."

Tags:

Politics vs. Civil Society

  • Nov. 4th, 2008 at 6:30 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Here is my erudite co-blogger at DR, Jonathan Wilde, on Breaking Free of the Vicious Circle.

Democracy is insitutionalized coercion.

We fought for this right, so use it!

  • Nov. 4th, 2008 at 6:28 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Scott Scheule:
In Belgium, voting is mandatory. That is to say, in Belgium, you do not have the right not to vote. But over here, in the good old United States of America, every man, woman, and child has the freedom not to vote. What a country! So step up, enjoy your non-Flemishness, and exercise your right--your right not to vote. As I'm doing.
Not that I think this is an argument. But it makes about as much sense as the argument that you have to exercise the right to vote to make it worthwhile.

If you have to do something, it isn't a right.

Tags:

I'm wrong about the statistics

  • Nov. 4th, 2008 at 12:58 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
The chance of swinging an election is zero (to many places) if p != 0.5. But there is a meaningful chance of swinging it if p = 0.5 (or very close). So the overall probability is dominated by the portion of the distribution which falls within that "very close to 0.5" range. As long as the margin of error includes that range with decent probability, the final probability then has significant probability.

For example, if we let p vary with uniform probability from 47% +/- 5%, we get a chance of 7.7e-7 of affecting the outcome (almost 1 in a million). Not bad! If we assume the poll error is normally distributed, that lowers the chances, but not terribly - with a standard deviation of a couple percent, the error doesn't fall off that fast.

For a one in a million chance at swinging Prop 8, I might just vote for free!
> x = 0.47 + -5000:5000 / 100000.0
> sum(dbinom(6500000, 13000000, x)) / length(x)
[1] 7.691538e-07
Unless someone has a model which says the chance is much lower than that?

Tags:

On the mathematics of voting

  • Nov. 4th, 2008 at 11:33 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
There is a common error made in calculations of the chance of a single vote swinging an election. An election is, of course, a Bernoulli trial. All analyses I've seen which give a significant chance of effect erroneously assume a Bernoulli trial with p = 1/2. In that case, the chance of swinging is meaningfully high even with millions of voters. But the problem is that the real probability is rarely 1/2, which means that the law of large numbers makes the probability of a tie when there are many coins very, very, very low.

Using R, I get, for the 13,000,000 voters in CA, if p = 0.5, a swing probability of 0.00022 (0.022%). At that probability, voting seems pretty reasonable. But the last poll I saw had Yes on 5 by three points. R is unable to calculate the tininess of that probability. The farthest I am able to drift from 0.50 and still have R be able to calculate it is 50.6%. For a proposition which is 50.6% to 49.4%, in CA, the chance of casting a swing vote is 1 * 10^-286.

For perspective, the number of atoms in the Universe is perhaps 1 * 10^79. So the chance of my swinging a 50.6% election in CA is less than my correctly picking a single atom in the entire universe...three times in a row. You can see what I mean when I say that for a prop, like 8, with a several percentage point difference, the chance of my swinging it is zero to many, many decimal places.

Also note even if we have a poll that shows exactly 50/50, that does not mean the logic above doesn't apply. Instead, we have a distribution of probabilities centered around 50, most of which have extremely low probability. The weighted average probability for that distribution will be close to zero - it would be erroneous to just take the probability of the average.

> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.5)
[1] 0.0002212934
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.53)
[1] 0
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.51)
[1] 0
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.501)
[1] 1.130549e-15
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.502)
[1] 1.506541e-49
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.503)
[1] 5.226733e-106
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.504)
[1] 4.706330e-185
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.505)
[1] 1.095064e-286
> dbinom(6500000, 13000000, 0.506)


UPDATE: [info]pmb pointed me at a study where Gelman gets very different numbers in the Appendix to this PDF. He gets a probability of swing that is inversely proportional to the number of voters, which does not at all match the Bernoulli trial model. My statistics could, of course, be wrong - any theories about the difference?

Tags:

Sigh

  • Nov. 4th, 2008 at 11:23 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Some intelligent people, like [info]steuard and [info]donaithnen, made the argument that I should vote because I represent a class of people all thinking like myself, who will reach whatever conclusion I do. My reply:
I'm your game theory professor:

"Ha ha ha! Oh wait, you were serious. Please leave the classroom, and go back to a remedial logic class."

If my payoff is higher from defecting, regardless of what everyone else does, then the logical choice is to defect. Your reasoning is spurious. I cannot force myself to reach an erroneous conclusion because of the hope that everyone else will too. Even if I had such powers of rationalization, it then becomes rational, after going through the logic and making the decision, to defect.

Your argument is, at its core, based on the idea that we can pick a strategy based on what we wish would be true, and what we wish everyone else would do. Rather than what is true, and what everyone else will do. This sort of outcome-motivated logic is not only fallacious, but, in my opinion, is inherently anti-rational and anti-science. From my perspective, you are making an argument akin to Creationism.

WTF is up with arguments that would get laughed out of game theory class being considered "logical" when discussing civics?
And people wonder why I dislike democracy, when it makes smart people give these sorts of logically spurious arguments based on contorted reasoning because of what they wish were true. It's like Intelligent Design for liberals.

I'm not saying there aren't good arguments for voting - I can think of several. But this "you are choosing for your group" is not one of them! And it blows my mind that someone could pass game theory, and still make these glaringly illogical arguments, just like it blows my mind that someone could pass biology and chemistry and physics and still believe in a Christian God. What amazingly compartmentalized minds we have. I'm sure I have some equally ridiculous beliefs that make perfect sense to me.

Vote for sale

  • Nov. 3rd, 2008 at 10:05 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
I am not planning to vote. But for $50, I will vote however you want tomorrow.

Any takers? You can have double the symbolic feeling of participation! And I can enjoy the satisfied glow of an honest mercenary.

Tags:

Democracy clarifications

  • Oct. 24th, 2008 at 3:06 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Based on the comments to the last post, I wanted to clarify my stance a bit. My position is rooted in my dissatisfaction with the performance of democracy as a system for organizing society. There are a couple points of view that I think many find intuitive that I am arguing against:

* Democracy is Just in a deep moral way that other systems aren't. To give each person a vote is to make them a full participant in the system, and thus make that system moral, no matter what results come out of it. (I certainly think that giving people votes is better than monarchy, but I find this argument rather mystical, and anti-pragmatic. Consequences matter, and if voting gives bad results, I think most people would prefer better results). This mystical viewpoint comes up when people say things like "You didn't vote, so you don't get to complain", or when they are happy about increased voter turnout, despite the fact that it goes hand in hand with increased voter ignorance (marginal voters are the least educated about the issues, of course).
* Democracy is the best we can do. There is nothing better. Often this flows from "I can't think of any better alternative". This assumption can subtly manifest itself as hopelessness, or as devaluing the problem because one doesn't believe a solution exists.

I am not saying I don't admire our founding fathers. As [info]jamey1138 wrote in response to [info]hubt's "I don't see any better alternatives", "Well, before Jefferson, neither had anyone else of his age. I think and hope that that's Patri's point-- our founders did a bang-up job. Now it's maybe time to try to out-do them."

Exactly! Let's keep in mind the historical context: there was a time when a broad democracy (male landowners was, for the time, a relatively broad swath of society) was a crazy, innovative idea. The founders of the USA looked beyond the political systems of their time, and came up with something new and better. That had an enormous positive effect on the world, and I think it's great.

But people, that was over two hundred years ago! Call me a techno-optimist, but I think even in a slow-moving area like political organization, over that long a time period, there are some new ideas worth trying[1]. Like, maybe we can take another quantum leap to better government. It's been done before, after all.

That's all I want people to buy into. I mean, I have my own ideas about specific solutions[2], including some I'm personally invested in[3], which is why I have an emotional attachment to dissing democracy, and to people's openness to alternatives. But it's fine with me if you don't buy my solutions. I just want you to buy the general idea that social organization is a technology, it's a very important technology, and our current version is ancient and works poorly in many deep, consistent ways. It has been brilliantly characterized as the least awful form of political organization. That suggests that it can probably be improved, and that doing so would be an enormous win for the world.

If you are into philosophy and math (rare in the world, but common among my readers, I think :) ), a very interesting treatise on the general topic of improving social organization is Ken Binmore's virtually unknown "Game Theory and the Social Contract" (read both volumes). It's long, and math-ey, and philosophy-ey, and not at all libertarian (the author identifies as a Whig, and seems fairly left-wing to me), but I love it's perspective on this whole area of designing better social systems, which I think is crucially important and much neglected.

[1] Well, I guess you could classify Communism as such a trial, and it was a disaster. Let's start with smaller groups this time. Much smaller.

[2] Anarcho-capitalism is the one I favor with the most thought behind it. It's a weird, non-intuitive, subtle system, which some very smart people think would be a big improvement, so I highly recommend that you not dismiss it unless you have taken the time to really understand why it is different. As a start, I recommend reading Machinery of Freedom for the theory, or at least Anarchy and Efficient Law, and The Enterprise of Law for historical context. Here is a set of links to further historical reading.

[3] See my reply to [info]krizazy for how seasteading fits in.

The over-nailed coffin

  • Oct. 23rd, 2008 at 6:38 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
From slashdot via [info]evwhore comes yet another result about how democracy is not actually a system for picking good candidates and encouraging them to do a good job, but rather, a grossly scaled-up version of a primitive popularity contest:
"Stanford researchers have found that voters are subconsciously swayed by candidates who share their facial features. In three experiments, researchers at the Virtual Human Interaction Lab worked with cheap, easy-to-use computer software to morph pictures of about 600 test subjects with photos of politicians. And they kept coming up with the same results: For the would-be voters who weren't very familiar with the candidates or in perfect lockstep with their positions or political parties, the facial similarity was enough to clinch their votes."
There are so many nails in the coffin of democracy...why do people idolize it so? I mean, I love that it is so much less sucky than monarchies with divine rule, dictatorships, and the other crappy systems that have been tried. It's the state of the art right now, no question.

But there is so much wrong with democracy that the idea so many seem to have that it is the holy grail of governmental organization would be incredibly depressing - if I thought there was the slightest chance it was true. Fortunately, I am able to entertain the crazy, heretical notion that maybe, just maybe, this one centuries-old form of social organization is not the pinnacle of political technology, however emotionally appealing its "one person, one vote" core.

Tags:

voting addendum

  • Sep. 29th, 2008 at 10:05 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
I haven't read the comments on my voting rant yet (I may not have gotten better at not ranting, but I have gotten a lot better at not getting caught up in arguments on comments on my rants, yay!). But I did want to add a caveat which Shannon pointed out to me, and I had in the back of my mind while ranting.

That is the benefits of people feeling empowered even if it is fake. It's easy enough for me, as someone who doesn't feel empowered/participatory/heard even if he votes, to dismiss the benefits of that. And I do think, as I said, that this false feeling of empowerment acts to dissipate energy of dissatisfaction and disempowerment which otherwise would go into finding / implementing better alternatives. Which is a long-term cost of voting.

But we have to weigh that against the enormous short-term benefit of this positive feeling, and the greater acceptance of the burden and impositions of government. As someone who feels those burdens more keenly than most, it's easy for me to shrug off this benefit, but I think it's wrong to do so. It is a real benefit.

It's sort of like how people would rather drive than fly, b/c driving they feel in control, so it feels safer, even though flying is statistically much safer. We can lament that people are irrational like that, but we also have to admit that the safety difference is somewhat reduced by the stress difference. Irrational or not, people are less stressed driving, and that has to count as a point in favor of driving.

In the case of driving vs. flying, since people have a real, immediate choice to be made, I think the irrationality still does much more harm than good. The reduced stress is unlikely to make up for the increased chance of death (the ultimate stressor!). But w/ government, since people have no immediate choice or alternative, something that makes them feel better but closes them off to alternatives is much more likely to be a win.

Tags:

voting rant p.s.

  • Sep. 28th, 2008 at 11:50 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
I find it amusing that I searched LJ for my past voting rants, and found this post about maybe voting Democrat from 2003, which includes the line:
[1] Doh! Here I was trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about and I've blown it already...sigh...I'm not surprised :).
It's 5 years later, and I'm still "trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about" and constantly blowing it :).

Guess it's a deep-seated issue, and maybe I should just accept it instead of wasting energy trying to fight it...

I do consider it an issue, b/c it makes me less effective at reaching my goals. Actually, in a very similar way to the criticism of voting and voting support that I just made. Ranting on LJ lets me blow off steam, yet in a way which is unlikely to have much permanent impact on the world. If I could instead direct that energy into producing more compact, polished, high-quality work for larger audiences - like a book - I think it would have much more impact. But polished, high-quality work is, well, work, whereas rants are fun.

Oh well. At least I know that I rant for fun. Part of what makes me sad about voting is that people think it actually makes a difference, that they are actually doing meaningful political self-determination, and so they check off the little box in their head that says "I want to have influence on my government", and then go about their merry way.

Voting rant - 2008

  • Sep. 28th, 2008 at 11:38 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
Ok, it's getting awfully close to November, and it's been a few years since the last time, so I feel a grumpy anarchist / public choice econ anti-voting rant swelling within me. The proximate cause is [info]reinaness's post with some pro-voting slogans on e-cards, but really I'm reacting to this whole election season.

Ah voting...that opiate for the masses to make them feel as if they have had a voice, while the politicians of both parties continue to exploit the country for their own gain, and to help their special interest friends.

The middle one ("I strongly encourage you to vote, even if it's for the wrong candidate") is the clearest illustration that voting is being viewed as a magic talisman of participation which puts a stamp of legitimacy on the process, as opposed to a procedure where people actually have meaningful power. If it doesn't even matter who you vote for, only that you participate, then clearly it is a system designed to make everyone feel happy by giving them little gold stars, as opposed to one where their decisions actually matter.

Here's Bryan Caplan on the social costs of getting out the vote. The average voter is better educated and more knowledgeable about the issues than the average non-voter. Therefore "getting out the vote" is a procedure which *decreases* the average quality of votes cast, by encouraging people who know less about the issues to vote too.

This makes perfect sense if the goal is to encourage a feeling of participation, but it does not make sense if the goal is to accurately select good candidates w/ good positions. For the latter goal, getting out the vote is clearly counterproductive. (At least, getting it out in a general way - encouraging people who side with you to vote is productive assuming you feel sure that your side is better). Hence people who are in favor of getting out the vote are either trying to help their side win, or they favor a feeling of participation over accurate selection of candidates. In neither case is their goal an admirable expression of universal empowerment.

I definitely think that democracy is way better than hereditary monarchy or dictatorship or any of those systems where the leaders don't even need to pretend to be acting in the people's interests, where there are no checks or balances on power. But I am being sadly sincere when I describe it as a system which is much better at giving the feeling of participation than actual participation. To me, this is one of the terrible things about democracy (and part of why it is so successful) - because voting lets people feel like they can influence things. Even if they don't vote, they feel like they could have voted.

But any one vote never matters, and the problems with the system are generally (the past 8 years is a rare exception) problems caused *by the systemic incentives of democracy*, not problems caused by which of the "two" "different" parties wins any one election. And to the degree to which the problems (like screwing over dispersed interests to benefit concentrated ones, which the bailout is a perfect example of) are systemic consequences of democracy, voting does not matter, because voting happens within democracy[1]. And to the degree to which voting doesn't matter, it is really awful that people get a fake feeling of empowerment which gives the system a fake feeling of responsiveness to individuals, because it blinds them to the real source of the problem, and it's awfully hard to fix things that you are blind to.

I think it's wonderful that people want to have a voice, and want others to have a voice. But I believe that a vote is less a true voice than a fake one which redirects the urge of self-determination into harmless channels. Makes people forget that the US Congress re-election rate averages over 90%. Gives them the crazy delusion that the chance to be one of a hundred million people picking between one of two candidates justifies all the crime, theft, and chicanery - even that which both of those candidates agree on and thus the voters don't even have the illusion of choice about. No matter who you vote for, a politician gets elected.

One reason given for supporting democracy is "But there's no credible alternative". Maybe part of the reason there is no credible alternative is because democracy has this beautifully Machiavellian mechanism for taking those who might otherwise create alternatives, and redirecting their energy into being expended uselessly within the system, instead of building up to explode into more effective action. And I want, I seek, I yearn for a better system, and so I hate how democracy cleverly tricks potential revolutionaries and co-opts them by pretending to give them a voice.

It may seem callous to yearn for bitterness, apathy, and disempowerment, but since I truly believe that we as voters are disempowered, that is what I yearn for. Because it more accurately reflects reality - and because it is more fertile ground for revolution.

(note that I am not mentioning my particularly alternative system here, because I have felt this way about voting for my whole life, even before I had an alternative system, and I do not think an alternative is necessary for this criticism, given the idea that voting coopts revolutionary energy and reduces the creation of alternatives).

[1] I suppose if you are voting on a ballot initiative which substantially changes the mechanism of democracy so as to change the incentives, that is an exception.

libertarian voting democrat

  • Nov. 29th, 2003 at 5:33 PM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave
If I vote next year, I think I might vote Democrat. Being a libertarian (socially liberal, fiscally conservative), I tend to see R's and D's as effectively the same. One is more towards me on the social axis, one on the fiscal axis. But this years budget (unsually bloated even for the monster that is the US FedGov) has made it clear that Bush is not a fiscal conservative. Thus the Democrats are closer to me on both axes.

Of course, voting makes no difference at all in the world[1], so there's a good chance I won't even bother. This is more an indication that my theoretical mental feelings towards the parties have changed.

[1] Doh! Here I was trying to cut back on writing things people would disagree with and be emotional about and I've blown it already...sigh...I'm not surprised :).

Shouldn't we vote?

  • Sep. 30th, 2002 at 3:14 AM
2009, googles, burning man, need-a-shave

I recently received an email asking " If those of us who believe in small government don't vote for it, will we ever achieve it?".

If we do vote for it, how will we ever achieve it? Does voting do anything significant to help us achieve it? Or is it a way to distract ourselves by pretending that we make a difference while we continue paying high taxes to a bloated government that we abhor? As a believer in one of the two major parties, perhaps the voting system works for you. Since I'm a libertarian, I see little chance of it resulting in a government anything like what I desire. I can give you lots of reasons for this.

For example, compared to my beliefs, the Republicans are a huge-government party, not a small-government party. Republicans and Democrats are arguing about whether to raise or lower taxes *by* a few percent, when I want them lowered *to* a few percent. The R's may be more "small-government" focused than the D's, but they still believe in gargantuan amounts of federal spending. For example, defense (current and past) spending amounts to (depending who you believe) between 20% and 45% of the budget [ http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm ]. Historically this is a sector the Republicans are protective of, even more so than usual in the current climate of war-mongering jingoism [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020124-1.html ] [http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2002/b02042002_bt046-02.html].

Another important factor is the theory which states that in a two party-system, the parties will tend to converge towards the center, and thus have far more similarities than differences. This is because by moving towards the center they can pick up centrist voters without losing any of the folks on their extreme. They get farther from their extremists, but those extremists still vote for them because they remain closer than the other party. You can visualize this with a beach and two hot-dog vendors, and the rule that people on the beach will always buy from the nearest vendor. The equilibrium positioning occurs when both vendors are next to each other, with equal numbers of customers on each side. Also of interest is that customer repositionings that do not cross the center line do not affect optimum vendor positioning. 50% of vendor A's customers can move to the extreme end of the beach, and vendor A is still correct to be in the middle. This suggests that influencing the opinions of huge numbers of voters may still have little or no effect. In the hot-dog model, such situations provide great incentive for the entry of a third vendor. Unfortunately the majority rule of democracy makes this inapplicable, as a third party which splits the votes of an existing party simply guarantees that neither can win.

The fact that, as a libertarian, I am economically conservative and socially liberal means that the distinction between the major parties is orthogonal to my views. I gain some freedoms and lose others if I move the country towards either party by voting. Thus voting is even more pointless than usual. Sure, some candidates will be better than others, and I would gain if they won - by finding out which is not worthwhile because of rational ignorance [http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/01/rational-ignorance.html ] [http://ingrimayne.saintjoe.edu/econ/LogicOfChoice/RatIgnorance.html].

I think libertarians (and idealogues of all stripes) often have the attitude that if only they can argue their views persuasively enough, the world will change its mind. I think this is pretty unrealistic. Libertarian (and truly small-government) views are an extreme minority, even in the US. Even if those views were popular, they would have to fight against entrenched power structures and the fact that government organizations are concentrated interests while voters are dispersed [ http://internationalecon.com/v1.0/ch105/105c070.html ]. The combination is brutal: the voters don't agree with me, and even if they did, it is nontrivial for their views to be implemented. What chance do I have?

Since my vote is but one of many, analysis of other people's expected voting yields me far more information about the state of future regimes than the knowledge of my future votes. That analysis tells me that small-government will not happen. Free-market proponents talk a lot about "voting with your wallet" and the importance of market feedback, and then fail to apply those ideas to governments. Isn't the obvious market feedback for small-government advocates expatriation to low-tax competitor countries? [ http://votewithyourfeet.com/philosophy.html]

Another issue is moral culpability. Regardless of how I vote, I believe that if my tax money is spent on uses which I consider immoral, then I bear some responsibility. Thus if I remain an american taxpayer, I am violating my moral code, and the existence of "voting" and "democracy" makes no difference. If you donate to a terrorist organization, does it make you any less responsible for the people they kill if they let you vote between two different terrorists as leaders? If both potential leaders are going to take your money and make bombs and kill civilians with those bombs, just how does voting between them make your donations less immoral?

Its easy to focus on relative differences, say between Republicans and Democrats, and be happy that one is a little better while ignoring the fact that they are both terrible. If you pay taxes in the US, you choose to finance a bloated government. You actively support through your labors (as I currently do) a vast spectrum of organizations acting in opposition to your beliefs. How does making an occasional irrelevant vote make up for that?

And finally, the issue I have not yet addressed, which is whether small governments are possible without voting. I claim the answer is a trivial yes, because there exist countries with small governments and few taxes to which you could expatriate. Surely moving to a small-government country is an easier route towards living under a small government than trying to change the course of a trillion dollar a year juggernaut. If all small-government proponents did this, none of them would have to live under and support a large government. Sure, there would be large governments left in the world, but they'd be supported by people who believed in them - and who are we to inflict our views on them?

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