A note on the vote

If you live in the US, should you vote?

Let’s suppose you think that the effects of the US president are relatively marginal, let us grant that assumption. Let’s also assume that you care about other people.

If the difference between the two presidential candidates is marginal let’s say it amounts to, on average, each non-American receiving 100 dollars (without inflationary effects) and each American receiving 1000 dollars (without inflationary effects). Of course, in reality, the effects are much lumpier than that. Those who live and die. The probability of nuclear war raised or lowered. Overall, these numbers seem like a lowish guess about the possible changes of two very different people spending four years in the most powerful office in the world. How much difference does this amount to?

(350,000,000*1000)+(7,800,000,000*100)=1,130,000,000,000

1.13 trillion dollars.

Keeping in mind A) this is the most powerful person in the world and B) ongoing effects mean that the president will not just affect the period this seems like a reasonable estimate if a bit on the lowish side.

Now I reproduce this figure from Gelman (yes that Gelman), Silver (yes that Silver), and Edlin (sorry Edlin) (2010) in the Journal of Economic Inquiry:

There is no need to vote if you live in DC, but that awful contingency aside, you should probably vote.

Even if you live in Oklahoma, eyeballing the logarithmic graph, your vote has about a 1 in 20 billion chance of flipping the results.

1 in 20 billion * 1.13 trillion or about 56.5 dollars worth of difference made by voting. In most places, it’s going to be at least 200 dollars worth of difference to the world and in the median state, your voting is equivalent to something on the order of 5000 dollars.

But what if you don’t know which side is the correct one to vote for

The question of what means are best for achieving ends is a complex one. However, in general, if you want X, you should give power to people who also want X and not the opposite of X.

These candidates will straight out tell you that, on questions of terminal values, they differ in many ways. Trump, for example, proudly announces that he will weigh non-Americans less in decisions. Even if these differences are exaggerated, you should pick the candidate closest to your terminal values.

But what if you’ve noticed both candidates are evil, and have qualms voting for them?

The way to see the case for lesser evilism, I think, is to take it to its extreme.

Say we live in hell. The Republic of Hell. Hell is not a very democratic Republic, but it is, marginally, a democratic Republic.

The two candidates for election are:

Satan who is also called The Adversary, The Prince of Darkness, The Father of Lies, The Tempter, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Iblis, Mara, The Deceiver, The Evil One, Old Scratch, Old Nick, The Lord of the Flies, Morning Star, The Serpent, The Accuser, Belial, Diabolus, Archfiend, The Great Dragon, Ruler of Demons, Dark Lord, The Wicked One, The Enemy, Apollyon, Abaddon and Prince of This World.

And Gargatz the cruel.

Gargatz wants to consolidate power and focus on reaching internal cruelty quotas.

Satan wants to continue his war on heaven and try to seize control of earth. He plans on launching many invasions of the realms.

Now crucially, there’s no wellspring of support for some kind of third candidate in hell. Satan and Gargatz are at about the same level of support and exhaust almost entirely the range of political opinion. Moreover, this isn’t just due to superficial ignorance on the part of the average infernal voter. You couldn’t convince most of them to support any substantially less evil candidate even if you spent an hour with them and explained to them the facts.

Let’s suppose that Gargatz will, in expectation, accomplish less evil than Satan and your vote has a 1 in a billion chance of swinging the result. It seems to me that, at its face, there is no shame in voting for Gargatz. How much less is the shame in voting for your preferred candidate on earth?

But suppose you still think there is shame in voting for Gargatz. Would there be shame in pulling a lever that increased the chances of Gargatz winning in some other way? Say, causing Satan to slip and fall during a debate making him look weak? Pulling this lever, after all, prevents a great deal of suffering and murder in expectation.

If you would be willing to pull the lever, why wouldn’t you be willing to vote? One argument is that voting implies endorsement of the idea that a candidate is good but I don’t see why one would think that. Plenty of people vote for candidates without thinking they are good. There is no law that says “voting for a candidate means you think that candidate is good” and even if there were, people would likely ignore it.

Finally, I will say, that I would be much more sympathetic to rejecting lesser evilism if it weren’t so clear that the public supports most of the evils done in their name. If the public was full of people who wanted better, there would be potential short-term alternatives, but there aren’t. Different polls will tell you different things about the American public’s position on Gaza, but if America stopped supporting Israel, I can guarantee you the public would turn on that as quickly as they turned on the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Not to sound third-worldist, but America is the heart of the empire- it’s not surprising it’s like this. The people, good-natured as they are strongly support many kinds of evil. If you hold a vote in hell you might as well use it. Even small differences in likely choices matter when the world is so big.

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