BBS/voter

BBS/voter

File Name:	voter.mag
Author:	Unknown
Date:	Unknown
Posting BBS:	Unknown
Key Words:	Politics

THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX
by Leon Felkins

"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
--Graffiti

How many times has someone told you that everyone would 
be happy, healthy and content *if only* people would forget 
their selfish desires and work for the common good?   By 
serving the common good, don't we also serve our own 
enlightened self interests because the common good guarantees 
the maximum benefit for every individual?  Wasn't the *me* 
generation a tragic mistake?  Isn't it time we returned to 
the ideal that each individual puts the community interests 
above his own selfish interest?  
     
Does working for the common good give a person greater 
benefits than working for one's own selfish behavior?  
     
If the answer is *yes*, then we should to be able to 
demonstrate that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on 
the common good.  If my single, personal sacrifice can alter 
the final result, then I can say that my sacrifice produces 
more in rewards than my personal costs.  But if my sacrifice 
makes no difference to the final result, why should I make 
it, especially if I receive the benefits of the sacrifice of 
others even if I make no personal sacrifice? 
 
The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common 
good never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of 
the sacrifice.  Let's look at some examples to demonstrate 
what we are talking about. 

Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important 
civil duty.  Moreover, it's a duty that requires little 
personal sacrifice in our society.  For most of us, it takes 
no more than a few minutes of time.  Polling places are easy 
to find, almost always near the place where we live, 
registration is simple, the process is painless and most of 
us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to elect.  
So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get 
to the polls?    

Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150 
miles away from home on a two day meeting.  (The meeting was 
scheduled after the final date for requesting an absentee 
ballot.)  Your have a choice: you could do your duty, drive 
home, vote and drive back. Or, you could just forget the 
whole thing. 
     
Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting 
about it--this time.  Your reasoning is sound.  The cost for 
you to vote is substantial while the return is, for all 
practical purposes, zero.  Why is that so?  Because your vote 
will not actually make a difference in the results of the 
election!  While you may have other reasons for voting or not 
voting, as far as the election process itself is altered, 
your vote is just not significant. 

You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote.  
As many as half the voters will not only decide voting is not 
worth the sacrifice of driving two hundred miles, they'll 
decide it's not worth the sacrifice of the risk of getting 
rained on, missing a favorite TV show, being late for dinner, 
or driving six blocks out of the way on the way home from 
work. 
     
Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and 
examine some of the counter arguments often made for why you 
should vote. 
 
*What if the election resulted in a tie?  Would not my* 
*vote count then?* 
 
Sure, if that ever happened.  But ties don't ever occur 
in large elections and if they did there would be a re-count. 
Your vote would still get obliterated! 
     
*But I like to vote.  I really don't care whether my* 
*vote does any good or not - I get an internal feeling of* 
*having done my duty. And, if the candidate I vote for wins,* 
*I can brag about how I help him get elected.* 
 
This is the real reason why most people do vote.  They 
have bought into a group of myths that make them think that 
their single vote really does count.  Because they believe 
those myths, voting makes them feel good.  If voting gives 
you a good feeling, by all means do it, if it doesn't cost 
you a lot of time or money.  But what if you don't like any 
of the candidates, you know they are all crooks and that not 
one of them will do what he or she is promising they will do?  
Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between 
Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp? 
 
*What about the possibility that my employer may reward* 
*me for voting and/or there are other rewards for being a* 
*registered voter?*  
 
If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote.  
That is rational.  But how often does that actually happen? 
 
The question is not why do so few people vote, but why 
does anyone bothers to vote at all.  Voting may be a fun and 
pleasurable experience but it doesn't make rational sense as 
a way of getting a payoff for the effort and sacrifice. 
     
*If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help* 
*get my candidate elected?*  
 
Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them.  If you 
can get 10,000 people to vote the way you want and your 
personal reward for doing that exceeds the cost of your doing 
it then, rationally, you should do it.  It doesn't pay to 
vote, but it does pay to donate a great deal of money to a 
political candidate which is then used to con less 
intelligent and less rational people into voting for the 
candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who 
voted from him but do everything he can to serve the desires 
of those who made big contributions to his campaign. 

That is why it's so easy to buy elections.  The thinking 
voter gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought 
voter gets whatever pay-off he/she is offered.  
 
But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome, 
what about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a 
civic duty?  
     
Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in 
which we could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much 
greater impact on the public good than the simple act of 
voting.  Suppose you live in a California city that happens 
to be running out of water.  The mayor declares - among other 
things - that the residents are to take baths only two days a 
week.  Although this is not your day to bathe, you have just 
finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you are 
feeling really grungy.  The desire to take a bath weighs 
heavy on your mind. 
     
You consider the options.  They can best be stated by 
the following "payoff matrix". 
     
    | Direct      |Member of Community | 
    | Impact      |  Impact   | 
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  Take Bath   | Great| - negligible| 
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  Don't Take Bath      | Awful| + negligible| 
  ----------------------------------------------------------
  (The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly  
  positive)

When I take any action that uses community resources, it 
impacts me in two ways.  I am impacted directly by my action 
and I am impacted as a member of the community.  
     
With regard to the bath water example, the pay off 
matrix would provide enough evidence to a rational person to 
conclude that the net pay off is heavily in favor of taking a 
bath.  The loss that he/she would get from cheating as a 
member of the community is insignificantly small.      

Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation 
sometime referred to as "The Voter's Paradox".  Basically 
that paradox states that the return to an individual from a 
group contribution that is beneficial to the group will be 
less than the direct cost to the individual.  The paradox 
results from the fact that while the individual may have a 
positive personal gain in not voting, if everyone declines to 
vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a disaster on 
our hands. 

The two scenarios actually present two classes of the 
problem. 
     
With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that 
there is no return *at all* to balance the voter's cost of 
voting.  The reason why this is so is because elections are a 
binary (to use a term from the computer world) event.  Your 
candidate is either elected or not.  We do not put 55% of 
candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B.  It is all or 
nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact 
on the final result.  The very improbable case of a tie vote 
is statistically insignificant.  
     
The second example of a water shortage is not binary in 
that every little bit of water in the reservoir does help, 
even if the actual difference one bath may make is down in 
the noise ( to borrow another term from electronics).  But 
one always gets a significant reward for cheating, i.e. 
instant cleanliness.  Yet, if half the population does as I 
do, the impact is disastrous. 
     
*What if everyone did that?* 
   
Experience tells us that everyone won't.  We can be 
pretty sure that a significant segment of any human 
population will believe the myths and do their duty.  Like 
the sheep they are, they will vote, conserve water, and offer 
every sacrifice for the common good that the preacher, 
teacher, or politician tells them to make.   
 
But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what 
they are told to do.  We're addressing this to those who 
think and act rationally in their own self interests.  The 
rational individual is first concerned with the results of 
his/her actions as it impacts on his/her own happiness and 
well being.  Such a person may decide to make a sacrifice in 
the common good, but will do so only if he or she is certain 
that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good result 
that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the 
value of the personal sacrifice.  

What we are arguing is that such a situation almost 
never occurs.  Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never 
produces an impact on the common good that would justify the 
personal cost.  

The final paradox is that if everybody did as I 
contemplate doing, then it would me even less sense for me 
not to cheat.  The more people who cheat, the less rational 
it becomes to be one of those sacrificing personal good for 
the common good.  The more rational, self directed, selfish 
people there are in a community, the less likely that appeals 
that everyone should work for the common good will produce 
results.   
     
This dilemma is sometimes called *The Tragedy of the 
Commons* which refers to the early New England practice of 
establishing a grazing commons used by everyone in the 
village.  The commons pasture was a limited resource which 
all members of the village could use for grazing their milk 
cows and horses.  The assumption was that the good citizens 
of the community will each limit their use of the commons to 
a fair share that would insure that the grass was not 
overgrazed.  It never happened that way.  In every case the 
commons was overgrazed into a dust patch.  The reason was 
simple.  Too many people recognized that as the grass was a 
limited resource, they had to get the maximum amount into 
their cows before some one else did.  The expectation was 
always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair 
share, the next fellow would. 
    
The *Tragedy of the Commons* poses an extremely serious 
dilemma to those who would try to design a society based on 
the assumption that individuals will contribute to the 
group's well being rather than looking out for their own 
selfish interests.  If we recognize that individuals are 
driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a rational 
basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we 
are in serious trouble. 
     
Faced with the reality of the tragedy of the commons, 
society usually opts for one of two different methods for 
insuring the common good as well as the preservation of 
community resources.  These two methods are not 
complimentary, but contradictory. 
     
One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the 
free market.  In the free market approach, every common 
resource, whether managed by private owners or by a community 
government, is sold to the public at a price high enough to 
insure that the resource is not depleted.  If there is a 
water shortage, then the price of water is jacked up until 
people have no choice but to limit the amount of water they 
use for bathing.  This not only has the advantage of insuring 
that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital 
that can be used to increase the supply of water through the 
creation of new sources.  
     
But the modern advocate of *socially responsible* 
government objects to the market place approach because it 
results in an *unfair* situation in which the rich wash their 
cars while the poor can't take a bath at all.  Such advocates 
of the common good claim that the only way to fairly 
distribute a common necessity is by regulation.  That means 
that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the 
only fair way to gather capital to finance new public 
projects is by taxation.  You not only have to collect enough 
tax to pay for the water system, but you must also collect 
enough to hire the water cops, pay the judges, and to build 
the jails where you will put both water and tax cheats. 
     
But does such government action really solve the voter's 
paradox or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple 
create a new commons, a public treasury, that then becomes 
the target of plunder for selfish people who will always put 
their own selfish interest above the common good?  
 
If we look at recent political history, it is obvious 
that the tragedy of the commons could also be called the 
tragedy of the public treasury.  No matter how much we 
collect for the public treasury, it will never be enough to 
meet the demands of those who claim a right to use the money 
from the treasury.  
 
It is not remarkable that each individual describes the 
public good as those things that are in his own best 
interest.  The elderly want more social security and medical 
benefits, the trucker better roads, the farmer crop 
subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and the politician 
every single benefit that will result in more votes for him 
at election time.  The inevitable result is that the 
government never spends the revenue in the public good, but 
only for the benefit of those clever enough to manipulate the 
system to their own benefit.   
     
We can see the result in America today.  The entire 
political process has degenerated into a mad scramble over 
what should be financed with public funds as our politicians 
spend us into national bankruptcy.  
 
This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways 
every day. A few more examples are provided for your 
amusement and to further illustrate the general nature of the 
problem: 
 
   -- The congressman votes for more spending and higher 
   taxes because his direct reward is greater than the small 
   loss to himself of having to pay higher taxes.  Further, 
   the electorate of each district continues to encourage the 
   congressman to spend for the benefit of their area, while 
   complaining about the ever increasing national debt!  
  
  -- Even though free trade would benefit all nations and 
   most consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill 
   owner, will personally benefit more if I can elect 
   politicians who will set high tariffs and limit 
   competitive imports.  
  
  -- The ecology of the earth will not be measurably 
   affected by my actions. The destruction of the mahogany 
   forests does not really depend on whether I buy this 
   mahogany table or not.  In any case, not much is likely to 
   happen in my lifetime.  
  
  -- If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is 
   about to gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the 
   company makes chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two 
   things happen: I lose a chance to make $5 for every share 
   I could afford to purchase and the chemical company will 
   feel absolutely no additional pressure to abandon the 
   production of these chemicals.  In fact there will be no 
   impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I 
   decide to do.  
  
  -- Currently the government is encouraging all of us 
   to buy all we can in order to stimulate the economy.  It 
   makes much more sense for me to cut my spending and pay 
   off my credit bills. If everyone does that, the recession 
   becomes a depression.

  --  Young people who want to use their credit cards 
   demand that the government lower interest rates even 
   though that cuts the income of the elderly who are living 
   on the interest off their savings. 
  
  -- Should I contribute to Public Television?  Not only 
   will my $25 contribution not impact whether the station 
   stays on the air or not, but my use of their service costs 
   them nothing more than what they already spend.  
   Rationally, I use but don't pay.  
  
  --Consider the situation of a bank near possible 
   failure. Suppose that you know that the bank's situation 
   is precarious and that if several people suddenly withdraw 
   their deposits, it will have to close.  You have $5000 in 
   deposit.  What should you do?  The bank will not close 
   because of your individual action so your withdrawal will 
   not hurt other people.  But if there is a "run" on the 
   bank, you lose $5000.  

If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude 
that a rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily 
contribute to community welfare even though he/she would 
share in that welfare.  We could even suggest that the 
only people who do voluntarily sacrifice personal rewards 
for the public good are nothing but patsies.  The person who 
refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double 
reward.  He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or 
effort saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever 
public good the patsies created.  
     
*But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?* 
 
There are very convincing arguments that living human 
beings are rarely altruistic.  It is easier to believe that 
positive civic actions by individuals result from stupidity, 
intimidation, bribes, or the success of propaganda campaigns 
rather than true altruism! 
     
But can't we educate our children through the school 
system about the importance of working toward the common 
good?  
 
We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning 
of this century.  Education hasn't converted children into 
altruistic adults in this country and it certainly didn't 
work in the Soviet Union where the school system tried 
desperately to create the new socialist man who would always 
work for the common good.  Indeed, it seems that just the 
opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more 
he/she is likely to take rational actions and less likely to 
be easily convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common 
good. 
     
What is the solution to this dilemma?  Do those of us 
wise enough to recognize the mythologies and the bull shit 
that priest and politicians hand out decide that we have no 
choice but to go along with the program of inducing guilt, 
intimidating the ignorant, propagandizing the uneducated, and 
bribing the electorate as it has been practiced by the 
churches, governments, and teachers for thousands of years?  

Or, do we shout out the truth?  Do we admit to 
ourselves, and tell anyone who wants to listen that 
sacrificing for the common good makes no rational sense, that 
the only way to achieve the common good is to make every 
thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free market place 
determining what the price of every commodity and benefit 
will be?  Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take 
every legal advantage of the common good and the common 
treasure for as long as others are willing to believe in the 
myths that teach it is better to serve the common good rather 
than look out for one's own selfish interests? 
 
Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there 
even is such a thing as the common good?  Or is that idea as 
mythical as the morality that claims humans must put aside 
their own interest in order to serve the interest of the 
community?  
 
In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of 
competing needs in which the needs and wants of no two 
individuals ever match.  No matter how much you may want tax 
supported public schools, I'll remain convinced that public 
schools are a failed social experiment that should be junked.  
Some argue that the war on drugs does more damage to society 
than drug addiction could ever do.  Do agricultural subsidies 
really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay 
higher prices at the food counter?  

There is not a single major political issue in modern 
America in which there is anything approaching a consensus 
agreement about what action must be taken in the common good. 
  
*Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the* 
*common good, be such a bad place to live?*  
 
Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or 
the farmer out of business.  We all must count on other 
people, but the best way to make sure that someone does what 
we want them to do is to return the favor by performing for 
them what they perceive to be an equal favor.  That's what 
the free market is all about.  

If you really think about it, we already live in a 
society in which every individual is really looking out for 
their own self interest.  It's just that we've allowed too 
many people to glibly lie that they were supporting the 
common good when all they are really interested in is their 
own selfish rewards.  They lie about their love for the 
common good because they want to take advantage of our 
gullibility to get what they want out of the system.  That 
includes every person who now holds political office and 
every person who is trying to get elected.  Throwing the 
current bunch out and replacing them is not going to solve 
the problem.  

But what about the voter's paradox?  How do we solve 
that problem? 
 
Why bother?  If we give up the idea that people should 
sacrifice for the common good, we take away most of the 
justification for the politician.  In a free society, voting 
shouldn't count for much.  If people take full responsibility 
for their own lives, that leaves nothing for politicians to 
do.  It's only when we allow the politician to make us slaves 
of the common good that we have to worry about whom we elect.    
     
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