Andiamoci piano a giudicare come irrazionali certe scelte personali.
Quando scegliamo, infatti, dobbiamo economizzare anche sui neuroni e l'energia cerebrale, due risorse scarse spesso trascurate.
… The way we vote can help or harm people. Electoral outcomes can be harmful or beneficial, just or unjust… I argue that we have moral obligations concerning how we should vote. Not just any vote is morally acceptable…
… Should citizens choose to vote or abstain? If a person is indifferent to the outcome of an election, should she abstain? When citizens do vote, how should they vote? May voters use their religious beliefs in deciding how to vote? Must voters vote sincerely, for the candidate or position they believe best? What counts as voting for the best candidate? In particular, should voters vote solely for their own interest, or should they vote for the common good, whatever that is? Is it ever acceptable to buy, sell, or trade votes?…
… When you order salad at a restaurant, you alone bear the consequences of your decision. No one else gets stuck with a salad…
… Now, in voting, nobody chooses by herself. Each vote counts, but it does not count much. We decide electoral outcomes together…
… Even though individual votes almost never have a significant impact on election results in any large-scale election, I argue that this does not let individuals off the hook. Individual voters have moral obligations concerning how they vote…
… Some call voting a civic sacrament. Many people approach democracy, and voting especially, with a quasi-religious reverence…
… 1. Citizens typically have no duty to vote. However, if citizens do vote, they must vote well…
… I am not arguing that voters should vote for whatever they believe promotes the common good. Instead, I am arguing that voters ought to vote for what they justifiedly believe promotes the common good. So, on my view, if a voter votes for some candidate whom she believes will promote the common good, but this voter lacks good grounds for her beliefs, then the voter has acted wrongly…
… many politically active citizens—writers, activists, community organizers, pundits, celebrities, and the like—try to make the world better and vote with the best of intentions. They vote for what they believe will promote the common good. However, despite their best intentions, on my view, many of them are blameworthy for voting…
… People often assume that if it is morally wrong to do X, then it is morally permissible to stop people from doing X…
… Consider an analogy to the right of free speech. The right to free speech means, at the very least, that people should not be interfered with or punished for saying and writing certain things.12 This does not mean that saying anything one likes is morally right. Neo-Nazi rocker Michael Regener has the right to write music spreading the hatred of Jews…
… Why not have a poll exam—a test of competence that determines whether a citizen may vote? Or why not give extra votes to educated people, as Britain did until 1949?…
… Actual human beings are wired not to seek truth and justice but to seek consensus. They are shackled by social pressure… Unfortunately, this leaves us with a deep bent toward tribalism and conformity. Too much and too frequent democracy threatens to rob us of our autonomy…
… you need both A and B to get C: A. Normative Theory: Voters ought to do X. B. Empirical Account: Voters in fact do Y. C. Evaluation of Actual Voters:Voters behave well/badly… I discuss B, social-scientific evidence describing how voters in fact behave. In light of this, I conclude C, that many voters in fact behave badly…
… Not all voters are equal. They have equal voting power, but their contributions are not of equal quality. Some people tend to make government better; some tend to make it worse…
… Some voters form their policy preferences by studying social-scientific evidence—from economics, sociology, and history—about how institutions and policies work. They are self-critical and use reliable methods of reasoning in forming their policy preferences. They actively engage contrary points…
… For instance, a 2009 poll of likely voters in New Jersey showed that 8 percent of them (including 5 percent of Democrats and 14 percent of Republicans) believe that Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, while 19 percent of them (including 40 percent of self-identified left-liberals) believe George W. Bush had knowledge of the 9/11 attacks before 9/11.20… many voters in the 2008 U.S. presidential election rejected Obama on grounds that he is “a black Muslim terrorist-sympathizer.”…
… Increased political participation could mean that most voters start asking for foolish, ineffective, or immoral policies…
… There are different kinds of information needed to vote well. It is one thing to know which policies different politicians favor and are likely to promote. However, it is another matter to have the relevant social-scientific knowledge needed to evaluate these positions…
… imagine you are choosing between two physicians who have proposed different treatments for your asthma…
… Individual votes are of little instrumental value in influencing electoral outcomes or the quality of government. In the next chapter, we look more closely at attempts to show otherwise. These attempts fail. Collectively, votes matter. Individually, they do not…
… I am not going to argue that because your vote is insignificant, you should not vote… From my perspective, the insignificance of individual votes is neutral in how easy it makes it for me to argue in support of this book’s conclusions…
… People who lack certain credentials (such as knowledge, rationality, and intellectual virtue) should abstain from voting…