In my view, evidence that people vote against their own interests is the massive industry that exists for the purpose of making that happen.
The respectful middle ground, if there is one, is that how people vote relative to their own interests is a worthy topic and debate, but that the debate might make a few people uncomfortable.
It's hard to believe that every position of a candidate you vote for is in your interests because that's basically never the case.
Suppose I support the elimination of most federal programs and taxation (let the states do it) but I think that a federal carbon tax which is paid out as a dividend to the citizens is a great idea, because it's a national/global issue and pricing externalities is the legitimate purview of government. Who shall I vote for? I have never seen a single candidate proposing to do both of those things.
In a sense the only way for me not to vote against my interests is to stay home. At the same time, there are two candidates on the ballot that are very much not the same as one another. So it's not so much a matter of "voting against your own interests" as choosing which of your interests outweigh the others.
But assuming that anybody who makes a different choice than you is a fool is very condescending.
It's fucking amazing.
Who two? Every next comment was written by a different person.
Partisan arguments tend to go poorly on nice civil web forums, and I'd expect to attract the attention of the moderators if I were to start one.
Because people love it when their representative brings home the pork but they hate it when the other guy does it.
It's not possible for people in one district to elect a representative who could individually eliminate all wasteful government programs, but it is possible for them to send in somebody who will at least bring them back a proportionate share of the loot from the heist. Is that not rational behavior absent some coordination mechanism to get all the other districts to stop electing kleptocrats at the same time?
Maybe better would be to vote for someone willing to do that while also pushing for structural change to remove those incentives, but that's assuming there is any candidate running with that position.
The founders who wrote the First Amendment clearly disagreed with that.
The “freedom from religion” reading of the first amendment is, besides being atextual, utterly non-sensical. It reads the Framers to have banned, sub silentio, practices with respect to public religion that were utterly routine at the time the amendment was adopted.
As to whose culture and whose religion: it’s not clear to me the specifics matter so much as the existence of strong, broadly-shared social norms. My Bangladeshi immigrant family doesn’t share a culture or religion with Pat Buchanan, but there was frankly not a lot of daylight between their views on how people should live in society.
And you’re right in one respect: a society that emphasizes social norms will leave some people out. The social norms can be evolved, of course. Bangladesh, for example, is making progress in evolving the social norms surrounding participation of women in the economy. (In terms of labor force participation rate, Bangladesh today is where the USA was in 1950. On the other hand, we’ve had not one but two women as heads of state.) But a society that emphasizes individual self determination will be more inclusive and more responsive to social change. But these are trade offs in the structure of a society and people can reasonably disagree about what serves the best interests of the vast majority of the people.
It definitely is nice when it is the case, but I don't think it's necessary for America's future to be successful. Certainly, for the first 150 years of its existence, the United States had very widely varying cultures and ways of life throughout. The Puritans in the north lived differently than the Scotch-Irish, who lived differently than Germans in the midwest, who lived differently than the pioneers in the west.
The difference between now and then though was that back then all those people were free to live as they felt like, and if they didn't like it, they could pick up and leave to form new communities, like for example the Mormons did when faced with hostility of people from their origins. Now, however, the mass media and powerful federal government is dictating the one and proper set of moral and social norms, and the correct way to live. People aren't free anymore to do what they want if the feds don't like it, even if their state doesn't have an issue with. Even the states expanded their reach into determining how people should live. This wouldn't have been a problem if, like you suggest, the enforced way of life was broadly shared, but it clearly isn't.
- Persuasion: I think that you are mistaken as to what is in your best interest, here's why my approach would benefit you more.
- Negotiation: Here's how we can work together to find a solution that meets both of our interests.
- Zero Sum: I recognize that this isn't in your best interest but I don't care because its in my interest.
Due to the power of Fox News and the Republican party's current willingness to ignore facts, I don't think persuasion is possible.
Similarly, the strategy that Fox News and the Republican party have taken of promoting polarization, demonizing the other side, using straw-man arguments, etc.[1] Makes it impossible to have the kind of nuanced debate and compromise that would be necessary for a negotiated solution.
Therefore, it seems like all that is left is a zero sum solution. If the other side won't listen or negotiate then the only option remaining is to implement our policies whether they like them or not.
I'm not saying that's an ideal situation, but it seems to me that its the reality that we find ourselves in.
[1] To be fair, I think that progressives do this to a worrying extent as well. However, I single out the Republican party due to the degree to which they have focused on this strategy and because the fact that many Republicans get all of their news from Fox makes the strategy almost unassailable.
Interestingly, right-wing parties understand this quite well. If they loose an election you never hear that they have to convince moderates. Instead they get even more radical.
The other issue is that many of the issues that progressives are concerned about (e.g. climate change, inequality, gun control) require action by society as a whole. Ideally we would negotiate and find policies that address the priorities of both progressives and conservatives. However, that doesn't currently seem to be possible.
Please read the federalist papers.
I do not want the equivalent of a yellow vests movement happening here.
Gerrymandering is a huge issue, and it makes it so that moderates don’t have to exist because of safe districts.
The fundamental disagreement about priorities between the parties somehow turned into disagreement about facts in the past decade.
I believe that something like proportionate representation is a better solution. It would still allow minority populations (e.g. rural areas) to band together and get representatives elected that reflect their priorities. However, since the system is no longer winner takes all it promotes finding solutions via negotiation.
Demonizing the other size is impressively the other way. It's happening whenever you see people flinging words like racist, sexist, fascist, and nazi.
Moreover, there is a difference in calling spade a spade, and hate speech.
In terms of demonization, I think its fair to use words like racist, sexist, and fascist when they are accurate descriptions. Before the Trump administration I was opposed to using those terms because I didn't feel that it was clear that they were accurate. However, I do think they are accurate now.
In my opinion, Nazi is only a reasonable term when the person is actually advocating for Nazism which, other than actual Neo-Nazis, is very rare. The only example I can think of where it might be valid was when Trump said that there were good people on both sides of a Neo-Nazi rally.
Is it condescending if it's true, though?
And the right views poor people who vote for Democrats as lazy grifters just looking for a handout, naive fools in the pocket of globalist elites, or else not "real Americans" like themselves.
It isn't only the left or Democrats which have a problem in this regard. The right/Republican end of the spectrum is fueled by its naked contempt for everyone outside their camp.
It's nice that we have a choice.
Unfortunately, my state went for Kang.
If you ask people if Labour was good for the economy and would be good for the economy, you’ll largely get a negative response.
Unfortunately it’s easy for people’s opinions to be shaped with zero basis in fact and when this happens it’s easy for them to vote against their own interest.
This has little to do with a condescending left and much more to do with how well the Conservstives play and are supported by the media.
The bits about nationalising everything were certainly very different so I don’t think this claim holds up to scrutiny.
I also find it interesting that you stop at 2007. What happened in 2008 that might call into doubt Labour’s management of the economy?
The blowup of Lehman Brothers (US investment bank), ABN Ambro (Dutch bank recently acquired by RBS), Northern Rock (overextended British building society), Kaupthing (Iceland), and Anglo-Irish (despite the name, entirely Irish)? Yes, I'm sure that's all the fault of the Labour government.
Labour would like their voters to forget it was them who bailed out the banks too.
Because they want change.
Condescension has nothing to do with it. It's empirically observable that a proportion of the electorate doesn't vote in its own best interests.
It's also empirically observable there's an entire industry of media outlets, think-tanks, journalists, bloggers, TV presenters, radio commenters, online commenters, and other influencers which is paid huge sums every year to make sure this doesn't change.
I'm not sure that's true (that it's empirically observable without bias). The trouble comes from an assumption that by giving up X (that you value only a little) to achieve Y (that you value a lot), that those other people would be better off, when they simply value X a lot more than you do (or Y a lot less). When they consistently vote to prioritize X over Y, you empirically observe some outcomes, apply your own weights to each factor, and conclude they're acting against their own best interests and cite your evidence as empirical proof, ignoring the judgment you applied when determining the weights.
I don't think people exhibiting this bias (unconscious or conscious) are intending to be condescending, but it comes across that way quite often.
Some people prefer to live in a society where the government has minimal power/influence over citizens' daily life (X) while other people prefer to live in a society where government power and influence is strong and consistently exercised to protect the most vulnerable (Y). They're different choices.
And unfortunately a major problem with proportional representation is there's no one single best way to achieve PR - any campaign to achieve PR would be stymied by splitting the pro-PR faction between STV and IRV, for example.
Labour's official position is to negotiate a deal and then hold a final referendum. [1]
So there were three positions in the election (leave, remain, vote again) and leave won the largest share of the popular vote.
The majority of the country doesn’t want the Tories to negotiate the withdrawal. But that’s what is going to happen.
PR would probably lead to even more parties with each having fewer votes and none ever having a majority.
My observation of the BBC's coverage was that while they at least didn't put a positive spin on the Tories, it felt like they were doubling-down on anti-Labour and anti-LibDem negativity. I still don't believe the BBC is in any way biased towards any particular political party, but I feel there's a feedback-loop somewhere in the media system. Once the meme "Corbyn is unelectable" becomes a meme and people don't stop to question it - or it becomes self-referential ("Corbyn is unelectable because the people believe he's unelectable") then we have a problem.
(Disclaimer: I would not actually vote for Corbyn myself - just saying).
How do you explain away people who didn't vote for Corbyn because... they would prefer a non-anti-semitic leader? I have a hunch. You might say, "Well these people were duped. He isn't IN FACT an anti-semite." But, now the goal posts have changed and the discussion moves to whether certain claims are true, not whatever is in someone's best interest.
The thought that people you disagree with are simply fools because they don't know what is in their best self-interest, is not only arrogant, it's patently just not how the world works. Like always, it all comes down to whether your position or their position actually maps to reality. And if you think that you can't be wrong, or that it isn't likely that you get at least some things wrong, then your position is already hosed (not to mention lacks epistemological humility).
That motivation can be especially strong when the party that you thought represented your economic interests turned out not to do that as much as you'd have liked.
What I mean is that any attempt to change policy/society/laws/government innately involves deciding that something would be good for society as a whole and then attempting to get laws put in place that force it to happen.
Therefore, your post doesn't seem to be actionable since it basically boils down to "don't do anything".
Also I think maybe I didn't explain what I was trying to say clearly. My point is that all political positions, not just socialism, amount to trying to force the laws to reflect how you feel society should operate.
There's a reason our highest form of punishment is to isolate. It's not our functional unit of existing. To truly isolate us from others is to punish us perhaps worse than death. So what makes people think the individual should be our highest functional unit of decision-making after millions of years evolving otherwise?
This is something I wonder if western thought deserves to lose its crown over, if it can't course correct.
Disclosure: civic technologist, community organizer, biochemist
And if some people want to split off and do something different, diversity is a good thing too.
I've studied in democratic reform, and work in civic tech space. There's a book called _Democracy for Realists_ which I highly recommend. It's a wonderful book, but it eviscerates most of what we understand colloquially about democracy. (Or at least did for me)
You are walking around a piece of democracy that is entrenched in "folk democratic theory" -- things people talk about as being the basis of effective democracy. But in democratic theory, folk democracy appears to have much evidence against it, and very few serious academics advocate for it as an explanatory theory. It's telling is part of the glue perhaps, because systems must appear simple and understandable to its participants, or else it can be destabilized too easily :) the works for electoral systems too -- people need to feel like they understand it in order to trust it's outcomes, nevermind if first-past-the-post is truly best.
The individual is very flawed, and democracy might work despite it's individual nature, not because of it. Political parties and identity groups outside the original structure of democracy perhaps stabilize a system that puts decision-making power into a very ineffective unit. (The individual)
Anyhow, it's been awhile since I worked deeply on this stuff (and not as an academic myself), and I might be misspeaking some parts that an academic could correct me on, but I'm sure the general thrust of the above is true :)
If I say, "I support" and you say, "I support not X, and if you weren't so blind you'd think that too," that's being condescending because you are assuming that someone (a) has fundamentally the same values than you but is (b) too stupid to see it.
The reality is that people can value something different than you (less government intervention, less restrictions on speech, lower taxes) for fundamental reasons different than yours, not because they basically agree with you and are too stupid to understand. This is different than merely arguing truth claims, because fundamentally political choice is a choice. There is no One True Way(TM) to govern and people prefer different things.
You're right, but in the election run-up people living on minimum wage, who complained we needed a change because of the rich getting too rich, also were convinced that Labour's tax increases were a devastating blow to them personally; tax increases that a family of two well-paid professionals would be unlikely to even be affected by.
The reason they hate those taxes is not because they're bad for them, they would undoubtedly be benefited. Nor is it because they actually have a financial basis for a belief in lower taxes for the extraordinarily well off. It's a matter of advertising -- the private press splash an advert "Marxist Money Madness" or whatever and tell the people they're going to be hit by massive tax increases costing taxpayers 1000s.
Of course it's a carefully tailored half-truth. It does cost taxpayers _who_are_affected_ thousands but people on gross wages below £80k aren't. The message the minimum wage, or benefits only, households get is "if Labour get in we will have to pay thousands more tax" (which to them is a lot, despite the tax rises not actually applying to them). They also don't appear to realise taxes pay for running the country; things they benefit from (health, education, roads, trade relations, ...) or if they do that reducing taxes won't just make these things cheaper but mean they have to pay individually (and pay a profit to capitalists as part of that deal). If they do realise these things there's no rational reason for then to support them; really there isn't, not for the vast majority of the populous.
Many people can't do basic percentages, they genuinely just trust the headlines.
The BBC have failed in refusing to call out lies because that would be "targeted" at one particular party (apparently 80% of their Facebook posts were factually flawed) because they are the ones telling the lies.
And why? Well look at the headlines post-election many Tories made many hundreds of £millions. Everyone else is working on inputs to value creation and they're playing the system and walking away with all the value.
In short, yes, there are genuine differences in political opinion. But there is also a massive deficit of understanding too.
Specifically, if you promised that every year you'd take 5% of the money of everyone richer than me, that I'd get a healthy slice of it, the rest would be spent on programs I approve of, and that there is no possible future in which that new tax would apply to me, I'd still vote against it. I don't think it's because I'm too stupid or ill-informed to understand that it would be "good for me".
Rather than starting from "we should exercise our power to tax the rich as a reaction to their success and to promote fairness", I start from "What services must the government provide the people?" then "How much will it cost to provide those services?" then once that is determined, figure out how to raise the needed revenue.
Tax revenue should not be raised to punish or correct for market distortions, but rather because it's needed to pay for an essential government service.
I believe, with very few exceptions, that the creation of wealth, even the concentration of great wealth in a few hands, represents evidence of a market success not a market failure. Those wealth creators mostly got there by providing something that many other people wanted and wanted so much that they parted with their own hard-earned money in exchange for the goods and services the wealth creators had on offer.
Similarly, when considering the role of government (such as when weighing a new program), I think it's better for society overall if the decision is made on a basis of "this newly proposed program is so beneficial/essential that everyone would be willing to pay some part of the cost of it" rather than "I'm willing to support this program that benefits me because I know that only other people are going to be paying for it."
So, yes, I'd be opposed to a tax presented with strong supporting evidence that that tax was motivated by raising incremental revenue under the justification/cover of "improving fairness".
(As an aside, it is entirely fair to question your future tax rates under a politician promising to deliver massive social programs, even if they don't claim they'll raise taxes for the non-rich. Money has to come from somewhere and there's no guarantee that taxing "the rich" is going to be enough.
Also, saying "They also don't appear to realise taxes pay for running the country" is a strikingly dim-view to have of people.)
As another person said, the real interests are not always monetary. Someone may be willing to pay more in healthcare if the government is less involved in their life, even if they are poorer than most people. This is just one example.
Why do you assume we don't value those things? Isn't that _you_ being condescending now?
An assumption isn't necessarily condescending. I assumed I was talking to someone on the left side of politics and was giving examples for the sake of an argument. If those examples do not in fact work then I can just as well pick other ones.
> Why do you use the word "we"? I wasn't directing my comment to you.
Indeed this is a communication mystery.
> Why do you assume we don't value those things? Isn't that _you_ being condescending now?
If you assume people do share the values, or if you assume they do not, you are still assuming to know their values. Better to just ask the person and start the conversation from there rather than shut down debate with something along the lines of "You'd agree with me if you weren't misled by X".
While I cannot, at all, claim to know what's in someone's interests, let alone their best interests - it is possible to reasonably determine when someone is voting _against_ their interests - especially when there is evidence of emotional manipulation or misrepresentation of the facts. (Though I assume we won't enter into a "debate" over specific facts here on HN).
The best example are the rural, conservative, voters in states that didn't expand Medicaid, who voted for representatives who campaigned against the ACA - and who who various reasons (unemployment, hard luck, etc) are now left without any feasible options for healthcare coverage: it's demonstrable that they did not vote in their rational best interests, even the most staunch Libertarian can agree with that statement (though the Libertarian might argue it was still their free choice to make and that should be respected - which I can agree with because at least they're being honest about it).
Actually, it's not. You're reducing the whole spectrum of things that they may care about to the single axis of healthcare costs, and not performing any analysis of the opposition position.
It may be that the representative these people voted for aligns significantly better to their values than any other choice that was available.
I do NOT think people understand what their parties are telling them because both sides lie dramatically.
Democrats do not present realistic plans with costs on their social programs, and Republican media and politicians typically say the exact opposite of what the real plan is. I used to love their smaller government push until they touted cutting public services to save 40 million as a huge victory for the budget while giving Lockheed et. al. A billion dollar contracts... So smaller government, sure, but NOT balancing a budget as it was claiming to try for.
So if you subscribe to partizan political sources, both parties only feed you information that support their party line, and the facts are elsewhere, if they are even available. Presidents keep breaking all promises they make on the trail.
But they're happy with other people deciding what's good for them; people who've decided that what's good for them is to be poorer and sicker?
If they could be tricked into becoming richer and healthier, without realising they're doing it by voting for commie socialism or whatever scare label is in vogue, is that wrong? Is there some morality there, like life is an art project.
Seriously; is that wrong? Is it more wrong to tell people what will make them richer and healthier, or to let them be poorer and sicker?
I’ve seen this on HN several times, and it always cracks me up. The condescension isn't dripping. It’s running in torrents.
You think the reason they won’t vote the way you want is because they don’t know what’s good for themselves. You might want to consider an alternate: they don’t want someone like you deciding what’s good for them and forcing it down their throats.