Honk if You're Lonely
Belatedly, I want to point out that soulchanger made roughly the election post I'd have made if I hadn't been hiding under a rock waiting for the collective madness to blow over. I endorse nearly the whole thing, but I'm lifting the really choice bit because it deserves to be read:
I'm not asking you all to change your minds. I'm not demanding you all become cynical radial anarcho-libertarians or whatever the hell I am these days. I'm not telling you all not to vote. All I'm asking is that you stop and consider that voting is not an end in itself and it is certainly not the end of political participation. That there might even be better ways to participate in democracy than making a simple binary choice between two people neither of whom really represent one's interests.
And maybe we should consider that the institution of voting in presidential elections distracts from the important issues and releases voters of their responsibility to be participants in democracy without actually having them exercise any actual responsibility. . . .
So before I have to hear one more time about how voting is the voice that we have I just want to point out that it is a very unspecific voice - more like honking a car horn than having a conversation - and that if that is the extent of our voice as American citizens then we are in deep shit.
The analogy is very apt: voting is a one-way signaling act that imparts so little information that it's impossible for anyone to correctly guess what you really want based on it, even assuming they genuinely care. And insofar as politics is about this kind of horn-honking, it's a source of social noise pollution.
I have a spiel I sometimes give about why voting is about as rational as playing the lottery, but I mainly give it to disconcert people who like voting: not one of them to date has called me on the fact that giving this spiel is itself an expensive act of social signaling. Its deeper motivation is simply that I hate voting because it's a lousy way to make decisions and has massive collective costs that very few people seem to fully appreciate -- crowding out genuine conversation being just one.
Now that the silly season is over, I'll have more to say soon about the kind of conversation I'd like to see about government.
I'm not asking you all to change your minds. I'm not demanding you all become cynical radial anarcho-libertarians or whatever the hell I am these days. I'm not telling you all not to vote. All I'm asking is that you stop and consider that voting is not an end in itself and it is certainly not the end of political participation. That there might even be better ways to participate in democracy than making a simple binary choice between two people neither of whom really represent one's interests.
And maybe we should consider that the institution of voting in presidential elections distracts from the important issues and releases voters of their responsibility to be participants in democracy without actually having them exercise any actual responsibility. . . .
So before I have to hear one more time about how voting is the voice that we have I just want to point out that it is a very unspecific voice - more like honking a car horn than having a conversation - and that if that is the extent of our voice as American citizens then we are in deep shit.
The analogy is very apt: voting is a one-way signaling act that imparts so little information that it's impossible for anyone to correctly guess what you really want based on it, even assuming they genuinely care. And insofar as politics is about this kind of horn-honking, it's a source of social noise pollution.
I have a spiel I sometimes give about why voting is about as rational as playing the lottery, but I mainly give it to disconcert people who like voting: not one of them to date has called me on the fact that giving this spiel is itself an expensive act of social signaling. Its deeper motivation is simply that I hate voting because it's a lousy way to make decisions and has massive collective costs that very few people seem to fully appreciate -- crowding out genuine conversation being just one.
Now that the silly season is over, I'll have more to say soon about the kind of conversation I'd like to see about government.