[ashdksnndck]

People have different beliefs about whether they will personally benefit from supporting some political cause. Therefore telling people that they shouldn’t support causes that are against their interests is a waste of time. It’s like telling someone “listen to good music”, or “do whatever you think best.”

I think many people targeted by the statement “stop supporting politics against your self interest” either sanctimonious or a meaningless platitude, depending on how they interpret it.

Also, arguably[1] voting based on your self interest is immoral and irrational. So it’s perhaps neither an effective argument, nor a sound one.

1. https://open.substack.com/pub/benthams/p/voting-self-interes...

[mapontosevenths]

> People have different beliefs about whether they will personally benefit from supporting some political cause.

The key word there is "belief". They are often wrong.

Your linked blog post is backwards and inconsistent with itself. You have two primary arguments: Irrational and Immoral. You argue that voting is irrational because its unlikely to have any impact, and that voting for your own interest is immoral.

A) The statements are mutually exclusive. An act that has no impact on others can not be immoral.

B) It assumes that what is best for the individual is worse for the group. Life is not a zero sum game. That's the Conservative's delusion. Economic and political transactions do not always have a "loser" and a "winner". In fact, it's relatively rare that they do if you think more than zero steps into the future.

C) The only version of this that actually works is the opposite.

C1) It is irrational not to use whatever influence you have to effect you environment for the better, even if the expected value is low because the opportunity cost of inaction may be disasterous. It's similar to your odds of dying by meteor strike. The probablity is higher than you expect because the death toll would be enormous if it did happen. Outlying events with large impacts skew the numbers.

C2) It is immoral to vote against your own interests, because what is best for the group is also what is best for members of the group. Any other belief is just an incorrect belief based on imperfect knowledge. Again, your argument makes sense at step zero, but not at step 'n'. If what you're voting for seems bad for some members of the group, but good for you, it just means you have imperfect knowledge of what's actually good for you in the long term.

[ashdksnndck]

> It assumes that what is best for the individual is worse for the group. Life is not a zero sum game. That's the Conservative's delusion. Economic and political transactions do not always have a "loser" and a "winner". In fact, it's relatively rare that they do if you think more than zero steps into the future.

If there’s no difference between self-interest and what’s best for everyone then the whole discussion is meaningless - why even bring up self-interest in that case.

In fact there are many cases where the interest of some individuals conflict with the greater good - eg. Jones Act, sugar quotas, upzoning popular urban neighborhoods, military base closures, coal plant closing, countless others. And anyway framing this as an issue that only affects liberals or conservatives is incorrect, all of those examples cut across partisan lines.

> argue that voting is irrational because its unlikely to have any impact

The post (I’m not the author) actually argues that voting can be rational if you care about the impact on others. The low probability of being the deciding vote is multiplied by the huge impact on the nation as a whole by the better candidate winning. If you only care about yourself, the low probability of vote matters multiplied by the impact on yourself yields an effect that’s too small to care about in expectation.

> If what you're voting for seems bad for some members of the group, but good for you, it just means you have imperfect knowledge of what's actually good for you in the long term.

An 58 year old worker at a military base may be genuinely correct that closing the base is bad for him personally in the short and long term, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad for the public overall.