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? THE COMMON GOOD AND THE VOTER'S PARADOX ?
? ?
? by ?
? Leon Felkins ?
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"If voting could change anything, it would be illegal."
--Graffiti
How many times has someone told you that everyone would
be happy, healthy and content *if only* people would forget
their selfish desires and work for the common good? By
serving the common good, don't we also serve our own
enlightened self interests because the common good guarantees
the maximum benefit for every individual? Wasn't the *me*
generation a tragic mistake? Isn't it time we returned to
the ideal that each individual puts the community interests
above his own selfish interest?
Does working for the common good give a person greater
benefits than working for one's own selfish behavior?
If the answer is *yes*, then we should to be able to
demonstrate that an individual sacrifice has a real effect on
the common good. If my single, personal sacrifice can alter
the final result, then I can say that my sacrifice produces
more in rewards than my personal costs. But if my sacrifice
makes no difference to the final result, why should I make
it, especially if I receive the benefits of the sacrifice of
others even if I make no personal sacrifice?
The truth is that an individual sacrifice for the common
good never produces a personal reward equal to the cost of
the sacrifice. Let's look at some examples to demonstrate
what we are talking about.
Almost everyone will agree that voting is an important
civil duty. Moreover, it's a duty that requires little
personal sacrifice in our society. For most of us, it takes
no more than a few minutes of time. Polling places are easy
to find, almost always near the place where we live,
registration is simple, the process is painless and most of
us have pretty definite opinions about whom we want to elect.
So how come only about half the eligible voters actually get
to the polls?
Let's say that on election day you find yourself 150
miles away from home on a two day meeting. (The meeting was
scheduled after the final date for requesting an absentee
ballot.) Your have a choice: you could do your duty, drive
home, vote and drive back. Or, you could just forget the
whole thing.
Most likely you will chose the option of forgetting
about it--this time. Your reasoning is sound. The cost for
you to vote is substantial while the return is, for all
practical purposes, zero. Why is that so? Because your vote
will not actually make a difference in the results of the
election! While you may have other reasons for voting or not
voting, as far as the election process itself is altered,
your vote is just not significant.
You won't be alone in deciding not to bother to vote.
As many as half the voters will not only decide voting is not
worth the sacrifice of driving two hundred miles, they'll
decide it's not worth the sacrifice of the risk of getting
rained on, missing a favorite TV show, being late for dinner,
or driving six blocks out of the way on the way home from
work.
Let us look at the voting situation more carefully and
examine some of the counter arguments often made for why you
should vote.
*What if the election resulted in a tie? Would not my*
*vote count then?*
Sure, if that ever happened. But ties don't ever occur
in large elections and if they did there would be a re-count.
Your vote would still get obliterated!
*But I like to vote. I really don't care whether my*
*vote does any good or not - I get an internal feeling of*
*having done my duty. And, if the candidate I vote for wins,*
*I can brag about how I help him get elected.*
This is the real reason why most people do vote. They
have bought into a group of myths that make them think that
their single vote really does count. Because they believe
those myths, voting makes them feel good. If voting gives
you a good feeling, by all means do it, if it doesn't cost
you a lot of time or money. But what if you don't like any
of the candidates, you know they are all crooks and that not
one of them will do what he or she is promising they will do?
Do you really feel good when you are forced to choose between
Slick Willy, Read My Lips, or a rich Texas shrimp?
*What about the possibility that my employer may reward*
*me for voting and/or there are other rewards for being a*
*registered voter?*
If the reward exceeds the cost of voting, then vote.
That is rational. But how often does that actually happen?
The question is not why do so few people vote, but why
does anyone bothers to vote at all. Voting may be a fun and
pleasurable experience but it doesn't make rational sense as
a way of getting a payoff for the effort and sacrifice.
*If my voting will do nothing, what can I do to help*
*get my candidate elected?*
Simple: get other people to vote, lots of them. If you
can get 10,000 people to vote the way you want and your
personal reward for doing that exceeds the cost of your doing
it then, rationally, you should do it. It doesn't pay to
vote, but it does pay to donate a great deal of money to a
political candidate which is then used to con less
intelligent and less rational people into voting for the
candidate who will promptly ignore the desires of those who
voted from him but do everything he can to serve the desires
of those who made big contributions to his campaign.
That is why it's so easy to buy elections. The thinking
voter gets no real, tangible rewards for voting; the bought
voter gets whatever pay-off he/she is offered.
But if a single vote makes no difference to the outcome,
what about the other things our leaders ask us to do as a
civic duty?
Let's look at another example of civic duty, one in
which we could argue that the personal sacrifice has a much
greater impact on the public good than the simple act of
voting. Suppose you live in a California city that happens
to be running out of water. The mayor declares - among other
things - that the residents are to take baths only two days a
week. Although this is not your day to bathe, you have just
finished making a plumbing repair in the basement and you are
feeling really grungy. The desire to take a bath weighs
heavy on your mind.
You consider the options. They can best be stated by
the following "payoff matrix".
| Direct |Member of Community |
| Impact | Impact |
----------------------------------------------------------
Take Bath | Great | - negligible |
----------------------------------------------------------
Don't Take Bath | Awful | + negligible |
----------------------------------------------------------
(The '-' means slightly negative; the '+' means slightly
positive)
When I take any action that uses community resources, it
impacts me in two ways. I am impacted directly by my action
and I am impacted as a member of the community.
With regard to the bath water example, the pay off
matrix would provide enough evidence to a rational person to
conclude that the net pay off is heavily in favor of taking a
bath. The loss that he/she would get from cheating as a
member of the community is insignificantly small.
Both of these scenarios present examples of a situation
sometime referred to as "The Voter's Paradox". Basically
that paradox states that the return to an individual from a
group contribution that is beneficial to the group will be
less than the direct cost to the individual. The paradox
results from the fact that while the individual may have a
positive personal gain in not voting, if everyone declines to
vote, or to conserve water resources, we have a disaster on
our hands.
The two scenarios actually present two classes of the
problem.
With regard to the voting dilemma, the problem is that
there is no return *at all* to balance the voter's cost of
voting. The reason why this is so is because elections are a
binary (to use a term from the computer world) event. Your
candidate is either elected or not. We do not put 55% of
candidate A in office and 45% of candidate B. It is all or
nothing, which means that one less vote simply has no impact
on the final result. The very improbable case of a tie vote
is statistically insignificant.
The second example of a water shortage is not binary in
that every little bit of water in the reservoir does help,
even if the actual difference one bath may make is down in
the noise ( to borrow another term from electronics). But
one always gets a significant reward for cheating, i.e.
instant cleanliness. Yet, if half the population does as I
do, the impact is disastrous.
*What if everyone did that?*
Experience tells us that everyone won't. We can be
pretty sure that a significant segment of any human
population will believe the myths and do their duty. Like
the sheep they are, they will vote, conserve water, and offer
every sacrifice for the common good that the preacher,
teacher, or politician tells them to make.
But we are not writing this for the sheep who do what
they are told to do. We're addressing this to those who
think and act rationally in their own self interests. The
rational individual is first concerned with the results of
his/her actions as it impacts on his/her own happiness and
well being. Such a person may decide to make a sacrifice in
the common good, but will do so only if he or she is certain
that the personal sacrifice will produce a common good result
that is at least equal to or, hopefully, greater than the
value of the personal sacrifice.
What we are arguing is that such a situation almost
never occurs. Most of the time, a personal sacrifice never
produces an impact on the common good that would justify the
personal cost.
The final paradox is that if everybody did as I
contemplate doing, then it would me even less sense for me
not to cheat. The more people who cheat, the less rational
it becomes to be one of those sacrificing personal good for
the common good. The more rational, self directed, selfish
people there are in a community, the less likely that appeals
that everyone should work for the common good will produce
results.
This dilemma is sometimes called *The Tragedy of the
Commons* which refers to the early New England practice of
establishing a grazing commons used by everyone in the
village. The commons pasture was a limited resource which
all members of the village could use for grazing their milk
cows and horses. The assumption was that the good citizens
of the community will each limit their use of the commons to
a fair share that would insure that the grass was not
overgrazed. It never happened that way. In every case the
commons was overgrazed into a dust patch. The reason was
simple. Too many people recognized that as the grass was a
limited resource, they had to get the maximum amount into
their cows before some one else did. The expectation was
always that if one didn't take more than his or her fair
share, the next fellow would.
The *Tragedy of the Commons* poses an extremely serious
dilemma to those who would try to design a society based on
the assumption that individuals will contribute to the
group's well being rather than looking out for their own
selfish interests. If we recognize that individuals are
driven by selfish desires and we are looking for a rational
basis for voluntarily contributing to community welfare, we
are in serious trouble.
Faced with the reality of the tragedy of the commons,
society usually opts for one of two different methods for
insuring the common good as well as the preservation of
community resources. These two methods are not
complimentary, but contradictory.
One of these is the pay-as-you go method, that is, the
free market. In the free market approach, every common
resource, whether managed by private owners or by a community
government, is sold to the public at a price high enough to
insure that the resource is not depleted. If there is a
water shortage, then the price of water is jacked up until
people have no choice but to limit the amount of water they
use for bathing. This not only has the advantage of insuring
that water consumption goes down, it also gathers capital
that can be used to increase the supply of water through the
creation of new sources.
But the modern advocate of *socially responsible*
government objects to the market place approach because it
results in an *unfair* situation in which the rich wash their
cars while the poor can't take a bath at all. Such advocates
of the common good claim that the only way to fairly
distribute a common necessity is by regulation. That means
that you jail people who take baths on the wrong day and the
only fair way to gather capital to finance new public
projects is by taxation. You not only have to collect enough
tax to pay for the water system, but you must also collect
enough to hire the water cops, pay the judges, and to build
the jails where you will put both water and tax cheats.
But does such government action really solve the voter's
paradox or the tragedy of the commons, or does it simple
create a new commons, a public treasury, that then becomes
the target of plunder for selfish people who will always put
their own selfish interest above the common good?
If we look at recent political history, it is obvious
that the tragedy of the commons could also be called the
tragedy of the public treasury. No matter how much we
collect for the public treasury, it will never be enough to
meet the demands of those who claim a right to use the money
from the treasury.
It is not remarkable that each individual describes the
public good as those things that are in his own best
interest. The elderly want more social security and medical
benefits, the trucker better roads, the farmer crop
subsidies, the investor bank guarantees, and the politician
every single benefit that will result in more votes for him
at election time. The inevitable result is that the
government never spends the revenue in the public good, but
only for the benefit of those clever enough to manipulate the
system to their own benefit.
We can see the result in America today. The entire
political process has degenerated into a mad scramble over
what should be financed with public funds as our politicians
spend us into national bankruptcy.
This paradox affects our lives in a variety of ways
every day. A few more examples are provided for your
amusement and to further illustrate the general nature of the
problem:
-- The congressman votes for more spending and higher
taxes because his direct reward is greater than the small
loss to himself of having to pay higher taxes. Further,
the electorate of each district continues to encourage the
congressman to spend for the benefit of their area, while
complaining about the ever increasing national debt!
-- Even though free trade would benefit all nations and
most consumers, I, as an auto worker or textile mill
owner, will personally benefit more if I can elect
politicians who will set high tariffs and limit
competitive imports.
-- The ecology of the earth will not be measurably
affected by my actions. The destruction of the mahogany
forests does not really depend on whether I buy this
mahogany table or not. In any case, not much is likely to
happen in my lifetime.
-- If I somehow know that a chemical company stock is
about to gain $5, and I decide not to buy because the
company makes chemicals that end up in toxic dumps, two
things happen: I lose a chance to make $5 for every share
I could afford to purchase and the chemical company will
feel absolutely no additional pressure to abandon the
production of these chemicals. In fact there will be no
impact on the company, nor their policies, whatever I
decide to do.
-- Currently the government is encouraging all of us
to buy all we can in order to stimulate the economy. It
makes much more sense for me to cut my spending and pay
off my credit bills. If everyone does that, the recession
becomes a depression.
-- Young people who want to use their credit cards
demand that the government lower interest rates even
though that cuts the income of the elderly who are living
on the interest off their savings.
-- Should I contribute to Public Television? Not only
will my $25 contribution not impact whether the station
stays on the air or not, but my use of their service costs
them nothing more than what they already spend.
Rationally, I use but don't pay.
--Consider the situation of a bank near possible
failure. Suppose that you know that the bank's situation
is precarious and that if several people suddenly withdraw
their deposits, it will have to close. You have $5000 in
deposit. What should you do? The bank will not close
because of your individual action so your withdrawal will
not hurt other people. But if there is a "run" on the
bank, you lose $5000.
If the above arguments are correct, we can only conclude
that a rational and selfish individual will not voluntarily
contribute to community welfare even though he/she would
share in that welfare. We could even suggest that the
only people who do voluntarily sacrifice personal rewards
for the public good are nothing but patsies. The person who
refuses to contribute to the common good gets a double
reward. He or she gets the immediate reward of the money or
effort saved, and the long term reward of collecting whatever
public good the patsies created.
*But doesn't altruism have it's own rewards?*
There are very convincing arguments that living human
beings are rarely altruistic. It is easier to believe that
positive civic actions by individuals result from stupidity,
intimidation, bribes, or the success of propaganda campaigns
rather than true altruism!
But can't we educate our children through the school
system about the importance of working toward the common
good?
We have been trying to do that ever since the beginning
of this century. Education hasn't converted children into
altruistic adults in this country and it certainly didn't
work in the Soviet Union where the school system tried
desperately to create the new socialist man who would always
work for the common good. Indeed, it seems that just the
opposite happens, the more educated a person is, the more
he/she is likely to take rational actions and less likely to
be easily convinced to sacrifice his own good for the common
good.
What is the solution to this dilemma? Do those of us
wise enough to recognize the mythologies and the bull shit
that priest and politicians hand out decide that we have no
choice but to go along with the program of inducing guilt,
intimidating the ignorant, propagandizing the uneducated, and
bribing the electorate as it has been practiced by the
churches, governments, and teachers for thousands of years?
Or, do we shout out the truth? Do we admit to
ourselves, and tell anyone who wants to listen that
sacrificing for the common good makes no rational sense, that
the only way to achieve the common good is to make every
thing a pay-as-you-go proposition with the free market place
determining what the price of every commodity and benefit
will be? Moreover, do we make a rational decision to take
every legal advantage of the common good and the common
treasure for as long as others are willing to believe in the
myths that teach it is better to serve the common good rather
than look out for one's own selfish interests?
Indeed, do we dare examine the very concept that there
even is such a thing as the common good? Or is that idea as
mythical as the morality that claims humans must put aside
their own interest in order to serve the interest of the
community?
In reality, society is always a chaotic mixture of
competing needs in which the needs and wants of no two
individuals ever match. No matter how much you may want tax
supported public schools, I'll remain convinced that public
schools are a failed social experiment that should be junked.
Some argue that the war on drugs does more damage to society
than drug addiction could ever do. Do agricultural subsidies
really serve the common good of the consumer who must pay
higher prices at the food counter?
There is not a single major political issue in modern
America in which there is anything approaching a consensus
agreement about what action must be taken in the common good.
*Would a society in which no one gave a damn about the*
*common good, be such a bad place to live?*
Such a society would not put the butcher, the baker, or
the farmer out of business. We all must count on other
people, but the best way to make sure that someone does what
we want them to do is to return the favor by performing for
them what they perceive to be an equal favor. That's what
the free market is all about.
If you really think about it, we already live in a
society in which every individual is really looking out for
their own self interest. It's just that we've allowed too
many people to glibly lie that they were supporting the
common good when all they are really interested in is their
own selfish rewards. They lie about their love for the
common good because they want to take advantage of our
gullibility to get what they want out of the system. That
includes every person who now holds political office and
every person who is trying to get elected. Throwing the
current bunch out and replacing them is not going to solve
the problem.
But what about the voter's paradox? How do we solve
that problem?
Why bother? If we give up the idea that people should
sacrifice for the common good, we take away most of the
justification for the politician. In a free society, voting
shouldn't count for much. If people take full responsibility
for their own lives, that leaves nothing for politicians to
do. It's only when we allow the politician to make us slaves
of the common good that we have to worry about whom we elect.
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