Joseph Noonan:
> >Well I voted two weeks ago. I voted for Nader and a handful of
> >Greens running for statewide offices. For the hell of it I
> >voted against Tom Delay (I have no idea what his name was --
> >doesn't matter Delay will win with 75%) and against the County
> >Sherif who is truly a vicious asshole. Every other slot on
> >the ballot was an unopposed Republican.
> >
> >So was my voting something 'substantial'? Only a fool would
> >think so.
Brad DeLong:
> If you lived in Florida, I would say that your *individual* vote was
> *very* *very* substantial.
On the contrary, before the votes are counted, one has only a certain probability of the election being decided by one's vote. It is very, very low, events in Florida notwithstanding. If one pretends to rationality, one must find another reason for voting than its significance in deciding large elections.
> I find it kind of interesting that you are denying the possibility of
> collective action--that *your* decisions are in a very real sense
> also the decisions of the millions of Americans who think like you
> do. I sense a profound anomie: a sense that you are completely cut
> off from the rest of society, and so that your decisions are yours
> alone, and not part of our collective decision-making process.
>
> Perhaps this marks the Gramscian hegemony of Hobbesian liberal
> individualism. But it's not a healthy state of mind to get in. It
> produces a lot of people who do nothing because, individually, they
> can't make a difference. Collectively, however, the people are very
> strong.
>
> The strength of collective power is a very old point--the bundles of
> rods carried by the Roman lictors were there to remind people of it
> more than two millennia ago.
>
> Why do people still have to be reminded of it today?
Because they don't vote collectively and they don't have collective power. I'm assuming power and voting (meaningfully) imply cognition and will.