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by renewiltord
1508 days ago
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1. Fair enough. No evidence. Just conventional wisdom that inflation is bad for votes. But no evidence. 2. What voters “favor” is rather irrelevant, isn’t it? When the total linear combination of their preferences is laid out, these things end up being low-coefficient terms. After all, what’s the evidence that they actually favour campaign finance reform? It’s one thing to say it. It’s another to act in a sense where it’s a priority. 3. Ah, my mistake, I have now forgotten this part. I am now absolved of the situation through my ignorance. Now that I think about it, I can’t recall the evidence for climate change being bad. Davon haben wir nichts gewusst. |
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This was my point in mentioning the prices of health care, education, and housing. You switched the argument from gas inflation to general inflation. High gas prices are annoying to anyone who buys gas, but there's no reason to think that gas prices in particular drive votes, or that voters would prioritize gas prices over global warming.
> what’s the evidence that they actually favour campaign finance reform? It’s one thing to say it. It’s another to act in a sense where it’s a priority.
If the only options are vanilla and sherbet, how do I express my preference for chocolate? Voters don't get to vote on policies, they only get to vote on individual politicians, on one day every 2 to 4 years. It's not much of choice, very hard to express your individual policy preferences that way. A politician is a collection of a number of different policy positions, although the connection between what the politician says and what the politician does is tenuous at best. In general, politicians of both parties are held in very low esteem by voters. Voters often plug their noses and reluctantly choose the lesser of evils, rarely getting exactly what they want.
I didn't say that campaign finance reform is a higher priority to voters than "bread and butter" issues. All I'm saying is that it's very widely favored among voters, and very widely disfavored among wealthy campaign donors, because of course the latter greatly benefit from the system of legalized bribery. The only reason not to pass campaign finance reform is if you benefit from this system of bribery.
What are the "revealed preferences" of people who don't vote? How can you tell whether (1) they don't care, (2) they feel powerless and disillusioned by politics, or (3) some other reason. That's actually not revealed in the mere (in)action.
> Now that I think about it, I can’t recall the evidence for climate change being bad.
Please don't pretend that consequences of climate change aren't a matter of great public controversy, with literally millions of people claiming it's not a problem or no big deal. Maybe you and I accept what most scientists say, but not everyone does. And it's taken decades of scientists trying to hammer their points home to have a significant effect on the non-scientific public. It's always difficult to try to peer into the future and evaluate possible consequences of current actions.