Yes.
>
>> 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.
But this is the reason you were looking for above. You see yourself as part of a larger group--co thinkers, party, etc-- and thus your reason is that OUR vote can affect things. It is not individually rational, but it is rational for us. We act collectively by not free riding on the efforts of the rest.
I think this *is* why we vote, as opposed to the norm-following that Witek suggests.
>
>