I Will Vote No More - Perhaps Forever

We Nader voters got dissed for "causing Gore to lose," which is bullshit. He lost because he is a poor campaigner, the press and lots of voters gave bush a pass on being knowledgeable, after 8 Democrat years change was wanted for its own sake, the Supreme Court helped out a bit too.

Fair enough. I understand why this makes you feel bitter about the people who chastized you. I don't understand why it makes you feel bitter about the democratic process, and about using it to support third-party candidates. America has always been a party-duopoly, but duopolists have been known to come and go. (Ask the Whigs and the Federalists.) If you think America needs a genuine Left, and that the party representing it should push aside the Democrats, go for it! What do you care if Democrats tell you they don't like it?

PS: Not to depress you even further, but as joefromchicago pointed out, you are a Texan. The consequences of your voting for Nader are pretty much the same as the consequences of your voting for Gore or Kerry would have been.

I understand that, about my being liberal in Texas, but it did not affect my decision. And it's not just liberal causes guiding me, although that weighs heavily. I have other concerns that have caused me to be branded a conspiracy nut and so have only given half of my position. For instance, when I demand a right to treat my own body with other than traditional methods, I am immediately given tags on a2k of "bridge for sale" and the like. But, the government is busy putting some very good people out of circulation. Nobody cares about my freedom in this regard. Liberal and conservative alike want to keep some very effective products out of my hands. Now I have lost a lot of potentially sympathetic readers, but if I am to lay out a case, it has to cover everything.

Levitt is being an ass in this article. It is one thing to say, correctly, that voting is a pure public good, and that all its benefits go to society as a whole rather than to the individual voter. But it's quite another to say that the act of voting therefore violates some kind of ethical norm. Yet that's what Levitt suggests with his anecdote about economists being embarrassed when caught voting.

Here is a valid reason why voting should embarrass Levitt: Economists traditionally model individual behavior as motivated by rational egoism. The act of voting, where rational people act in the general interest, proves there are limits to this model. The proper response for economists, then, should be to find better models for individual behavior, models that include a conscience. Instead, Levitt tries to find everything else: Stupidity, ulterior motives, you name it. He seems to go out of his way to avoid admitting that humans want to promote each others' welfare. This denial of empirical reality, this refusal to update a refuted theory, should embarrass Levitt as an economist. His decision to vote is fine.

It's certainly true that no political party will ever fit your own preferences perfectly. And if you want a perfect fit before you vote, you're not going to vote, at least not for that reason. But there are other reasons: Going back to my first response, your vote doesn't only serve to get your favorites in. It also serves to keep your nightmares out. Think of your worst political nightmare---Sarah Palin holding the briefcase with the nuclear-missile launching codes, or whatever it is. Doesn't your chance to help prevent that nightmare motivate you to vote anyway?

You just turned my hair white with your Sarah Palin analogy!!! Oh, wait, my hair was already white from the Bush years.

Well, perhaps a quick death, at the hands of Bush/Palin might be preferable to dragging it out under the other guys.

Is there another one threatening to infest the WH?

I think you're right Edgar and the whole Republican vs Democrat scenario is theater to convince the commoners that they have a choice. We don't. The ruling class will do what it wants no matter how we vote.

Some intriguing contradictions there. Our Drug safety regulations were an important innovation of self-styled Progressive Democrats early in the last century. They prohibited the sale of medicines found to be positively harmful, and limited the claims of effectiveness of others to what could be scientifically demonstrated. However beyond that they do indeed permit a large range of alternative substances and therapies, limiting only what their makers and sellers can claim about effectiveness to the results of scientifically verifiable studies. One can argue about the processes and actions of the FDA bureaucracy administering the process, but I think most of us agree it is at least well-conceived and usually beneficial, if not always well-executed. Many so called alternative therapies do produce results for some - whether these are merely a result of the "placebo effect" or other factors probably doesn't mattter much to those who find benefit in them. I can imagine that there may be many substances that are beneficial in the treatment of some conditions for many people, but may have failed the FDA's standards in safety & benefit analysis. That is an interesting question relating to the powers we permit our government to exercise and the manner in which it balances individual freedom and stewardship of the public good and safety. Many contemporary political debates & struggles center on these questions, with Democrats and progressives generally favoring more government oversight and reach over our lives and Republicans & libertarians generally favoring less. Perhaps you are a closet libertarian.

Ralph Nader, whom you indicated you once voted for in a Presidential election, achieved his national prominence in a campaign for greater government regulation of safety standards for automobiles - a process not too distant from the regulation of medicines and medical therapies that you appear to oppose. He has generally positioned himself on the far left and decidedly progressive segment of the American political spectrum, and very likely strongly favors the regulation of alternative therapies that you so dislike.

Your problem might just be that you have voted for the wrong people.

Gosh, I'm sick of the "we don't have a say in this country" whine.

You have as much of a say as you care to voice.

If you are waiting for your town, county, state or country to knock at your door and ask you to cast the deciding vote in any election, you are delusional.

You get one vote, and it's worth no more than that, but it is worth something. Don't cast it, and it is worth nothing.

You cast your vote based upon your principles and you wait and see what happens.

You don't necessarily vote for or against anyone.

I know this tough for you to believe Thomas, but Obama winning in 2008 was every bit as much of a nightmare to me (and millions more) as Sarah Palin winning in 2012 might be to you. I voted against him, and yet he won. There's no reason at all for edgar to believe that if he votes against his nightmare candidate; he or she will lose.

None of us are going to cast the deciding vote and none of us, therefore, are going to be ideological heroes at the ballot box. It's utterly silly to expect otherwise.

People who don't vote because "it doesn't matter," are pompous egoists, and I am only too happy to allow them to retire to the shadows.

They are the people who have no sense of history or understanding of the human condition.

Perhaps someone can calculate the percentage of humans who have ever lived who could say, with the authority of one voice among many, "I want this or I do not want that," but my bet is that it is very tiny.

You vote because you can. You vote to express your will, not to impose it. There are nuts galore out there who would vote for someone we all (lefties and righties alike) would consider horrific, but how many of us will be sympathetic to their arguing, similar to edgar, that they they see no point in voting because their position doesn't win when when they do?

If you're not satisfied with the power of your one vote, in a democracy, you're not limited to that single modest effort.

If you want to make a bigger difference, stop whining and engage. The more you get involved in the process, the more influence you have.

You guys are caught up in the cultural wars to the extent that half of what you say strikes me as irrelevant. We are being usurped by big money and big government, which are motivated by power and profit. Public revenue is their personal piggy bank. Human suffering is a by product, like slag from some industrial process and therefore acceptable in the hunt for ever greater standing. In my envisioned world, left/right politics is no longer a culture war, but flip sides of a coin, where people work together for a solution, rather than reinforce division. For instance, capitalism continues to exist, but a regulated capitalism. There is room in such a setup for left and right to seek accommodation, while enjoying mutual respect. People are allowed to make decisions about their life without government interferance, to the extent that people do no harm to others.

pottersville, thank you for speaking up.

Your envisioned world can not exist in a democracy. People, including you, have different opinions. Often these opinions, including yours, are very passionate opinions. We need a way to resolve them.

In a democracy we set up rules of to fight out our differences. The good thing about this is that we have a way to resolve our battles. Another benefit is that we don't have a ruling class, everyone who wants a vote has a vote. The downside is that it is a messy way for us to work out our differences.

Your vision is impossible. It is not the way Democracy has ever worked. It is not the way Democracy is supposed to work. The only way for anything like your Utopian society could ever exist is in an Oligarchy with a unquestioned elite class.

But we live in a Democracy. I think it works best when people participate.

We have to fight to do away with your misguided view of what democracy is about. It is to give people an opportunity to live together, not cut each other's throat. In a managed capitalism, how it gets managed is a subject for negotiation and voting. Democracy at work. Un-managed capitalism sets Black Beard the pirate loose upon us, subverting the balance between left and right thinking.

No, but he would be doing his part in trying to prevent it---just as you did your part in trying to prevent your nightmare.

I am possibly getting a pass by some of my friends, who likely disagree with me, but don't want to hurt my feelings by registering opinions. People - It's okay. I am here to grow.

Just who do you imagine constitutes the ruling class? Right now it looks like a composite of Labor Unions, environmentalists, champions of more government regulation and control of the private decisions we and those we chose to do business make every day... not to mention George Soros and his friends. There is, of course, another cadre of self-interested players in this game and they largely include the conservative opposite numbers to the collection above. However they are out of power now.

A sure way to create a permanent ruling class is to continue your supine whining about the hopelessness of it all. Slavish behavior like that usually ends up getting you the real chains you only imagine now.

Every once in a while I find myself agreeing with Finn. This is one of those times. I often agree with Thomas, well... fairly often, and I agree with him here as well.

Your vote is what you can do to register your opinion. Your actions beyond voting are what you can do to effect change. My vote of preference is to vote for a third party candidate who doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, but it reflects my opinion that the two-party system we have doesn't work for me. There are times, however, that I find myself casting my ballot on behalf of one of the two party candidates as an attempt to prevent the other person from getting into office. Sometimes I have to compromise my preferences in order to try to prevent what I think would be a real disaster. It was a bitter pill indeed that I swallowed to cast a ballot for John Kerry, but voting against GWB for a second term was the only option I saw.

I was encouraged when the tea party movement first started making noise about bringing real change to Washington. Then they got funding from outside interests and the message and meaning changed dramatically. There are LOTS of folks who are dissatisfied with the status quo, but they differ diametrically with respect to what they'd like to see changed.

This brings me back to my centrist position of I'd rather see someone elected from the middle - someone who pisses off both fringes - than be overrun by idealists from either side of the spectrum.