QUARTZ: “The purpose of voting is not to express your fidelity to a worldview. It’s not to wave a flag or paint your face in team colors; it’s to produce outcomes,” says Jason Brennan, a philosopher at Georgetown University and author of The Ethics of Voting. “If they’re smart, they’ll vote for the candidate likely to best produce the outcome they want. That might very well be compromising, but if voting for a far-left or far-right candidate means that you’re just going to lose the election, then you’ve brought the world further away from justice rather than closer to it.”
Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, says it’s important for voters to balance their principles with the consequences of their actions. He suggests creating an equation to multiply how much one favors a candidate by that candidate’s chances of having a positive impact. (read the whole thing)
5 comments:
Wasn't Georgetown one of Willie's Alma Maters?
Troop has two posts scheduled. He usually doesn't do that. The cockroach post has 4 comments with it. I think they're amiss. Possibly reverted to draft.
I think we're all steeling ourselves for Thursday night and trying to figure the odds of a compleat Hillary meltdown on national TV.
nd, of course, knows the good bookies.
Stalin vs Hitler, both polling near 50% with Jesus as the third party candidate without a chance in hell. Who do you vote for?
And you can't consider afterlife benefits because that's like Bernie supporting Clinton just for a cabinet post or to be the next Libyan ambassador.
What do ethicists say about voting for someone who is supremely unethical?
The problem is believing that the election this time holds our fate in the balance and that winning is all that matters and therefore, any message sent is irrelevant in the face of that existential choice this time. It seems like many of us believe that every time over and over.
Sometimes lots of bad shit happens, but never is it anywhere near as bad as projected, and neither is it as good as promised. Maybe we should chill out, and believe what we have seen over and over: the sun will come out regardless, and nobody really cares, let alone knows, who you voted for.
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