Quote:
Originally Posted by
DuB
Interestingly, the great majority of political scientists, economists, and sociologists over the past 50+ years seem to think that it's a very relevant analysis. I've been hesitant to play the appeal-to-authority card, but this is one of the most well-studied problems in social science, the reason being that the logic is sound and compelling, notwithstanding your refusal to grasp it.
Whether it is effective or insignificant is a matter of viewpoint; you don't need to have studied years in university to see this. If just
Quote:
Oohh, so you're telling me that by casting my vote, I can raise the ticker from 70,000,000 : 60,000,000 to 70,000,001 : 60,000,000? My God, if I only I had realized my vote held so much influence! Believe you me, I'll never be late to the polls again.
More seriously, if the definition of "influence" and/or "contribution" that is being sold to me is simply that I can say "Yeah, I was there on top of the dogpile for Obama!", with practically no expectation that my actions actually made a damn bit of causal difference, then hopefully you can understand my reluctance to drink the voting Kool-Aid. I have better things to do with my time. In fact, I can't think of anything more worthless.
Voting has its place in the world, and given typical circumstances if anything was changed it probably wouldn't be called 'voting' anymore. If you want your votes to be worth more, or maybe just want to better have your say, maybe you should be a politician. Because otherwise at this stage, the allocated selection of choice is just what you have to deal with. If you're just complaining because it doesn't mean much to you and you want it to be different, then you're inventing your own dilemma. Voting should not be about how much power or influence you have, but the point lies in the bigger picture, and that is, what power or influence the population has