Admitting that I didn'f fully follow the topic: I think my selfish incentives are enough to make me vote. Maybe I have also altruistic incentives but they are surplus. Also, my selfish incentives in great part have ethical and community nature, but still selfish.
How can a selfish motive have ethical nature? Simple. If I don't steal an exotic fruit from the supermarket, my motives have ethical nature, but some of them selfish: I don't want to be punished. So, what are my costs about the voting? Five minute walk to the place, five minute vote, and five minute walk back. (And consider that I like to walk, sometimes I do it just for recreation.) Knowing about politics I don't count as a cost. Even if I didn't have the right to vote, I would know about politics to make decisions about my life, to not look dumb when conversating, and from simple curiosity, which means something like hoping to utilize knowledge maybe somewhere, some time, in some field (but it's not as much a decision, as an instinct, evolution-made - not all of those work well, for example, our instinctous carbohydrate craving can make us less healthy, but curiosity is still okayy). So let's make the cost a dollar (this is not a very high GDP per capita country - Hungary). Let's see the plus side. In my country a million voter minus already would somehow endanger democracy. Let's suppose it's a 0.1 probability of a fascist dictatorship which kills me or makes my life as miserable as death with a 0.1 probability. So roughly my voting makes my life 0.00000001 safer. Question is wheter my life is worth a hundred million dollars. I'm not sure. It's also important to note that in such magnitudes utility can not be considered as a linear function of money. (For Bill Gates, a million dollar plus doesn't mean nearly as much as for me would.) As a matter of fact, my voting or not voting makes more than one vote plus or minus because other people tend in this respect more to follow than to counterfollow my example. Since voting is considered as an ethical act, I vote to make my reputation better. I could maybe lie in this respect, but lying also has high costs. My family members know when I'm coming and going, I can be caught if something interesting happens in my voting place and I don't know about. This can be considered like this: for some extent I also protect other people from a fascist dictatorship, and they also protect me. So we have an agreement to vote. But my keeping of the agreement is not fully altruistic because others know what I do. Also, if something interesting happens in my voting place, it's good for me, I can talk about it, I can get some attention in the company, which is such a hard thing to do. Even if nothing particular happens, voting is a little bit fun. Maybe I forgot something, I don't know. Just one more note: Since the previus elections Hungarian Parlament created a law to make cheating less probable. By this, in every constituency, only one voting place is able to get votes from people who don't vote in their own dwelling place. In these places, some people waited for six hours in line to vote. I don't know what I would have done in this situation. Probably would have wait for my turn. Why? Would have this been able to explain by purely selfish motives? Maybe. Becaus if I do my thing in such circumstances, it makes me look even better before others. The probability of something interesting happens grows. And not only something to talk about: it can be an interesting experience. What people say in this situation? How the authorities react? Taking part is sometimes valueable because media often lie about events. If you are there, you have chance to know. Peter Barath <a href="http://ad.adverticum.net/b/cl,1,73468,1603402,1600294/click.prm" target="_blank">________________________________________________________<br>Autót vásárol? Balesetmentesen vezet? Genertel kötelező szenzációs kedvezménnyel!<br></a> ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info