I guess I'm going to tell you how I've been thinking that voting decisions in the US seem to be made for two basic reasons (that are not unconnected). The first reason is "What's best for me" and the second is "what's best for everyone." There is an argument to be made for either side and they're certainly not mutually exclusive. The person who gives the first reason may be thinking "what's best for me and my family, which I consider to be indicative of what is best for America at large." On the other hand, I might give the second reason and my expression of that is "my vote should be used for everyone, and especially those who don't have the option of voting and therefore don't have the option of choosing themselves or everyone."
It bothered me when I was getting dinner at a restaurant near me because the owner assumed we (my roommate and I) were voting for Obama... we're young, not the worst assumption ever, but he was criticizing us saying "you'll understand when you own your own business."
I have so many problems with that statement.
He assumed that everyone makes their decision based on the first option and that somehow his representation of his own interests is more valid than my representation of my interests, which bothered me even though I did not mainly have personal interests at heart when I voted. He also assumed that Obama would be worse for small businesses and he assumed that someday I would have my own small business, which I really don't want to (unless it's a bookshop or something).
That experience aside, the saddest thing about being a college student who wants to vote "for the greater good" is that the people who should most be voting for themselves are college students.
Finally given the opportunity to vote, we almost never vote based on our own interests, which makes us the least represented citizens during policy-making including younger kids because parents often vote based on the interests of their children.
So you start out by saying that the two are not mutually exclusive and then you end up by saying it's either/or. I mean, why would voting for the greater good necessarily mean that YOUR interests are not represented. The greater good is just that: greater. It includes you, then your immediate family, friends, community, country, region, etc...
ReplyDeleteCollege students are pretty well-placed to have a clear view of the greater good: that's what you're ostensibly spending your days studying, the bigger picture. Your parents (and your greater society) have sent you off to college to study just that, so that you can come out the other end with an expanded, enriched view of how the larger world works. I think it would be a shame if you somehow felt that a vote for others is somehow a vote against you...
Also, the whole "wait till you have your own small business" (or family, or mortgage, or whatever excuse people give for voting their wallets) is LAME. Our government, whether liberal or conservative, has been decidedly anti-small-business, anti-individual and pro-corporate for decades now. Any stridently capitalist system has to be. Any system that depends on people's basest instincts (greed) to keep itself going is necessarily going to be unjust.
But to give up on ever having a just system, to give in and try to pretend that greed is a GOOD motivator, that if someone isn't relying on greed to guide their moral and political decisions, they're naive... That's a real problem. That's a deep, deep form of corruption.
So, I never really gave you a response to this wonderful response to my musings.
ReplyDeleteBasically, I agree with what you say in your last two paragraphs.
In response to what you say earlier, I was just saying that if there are people who believe that to represent themselves they have to vote selfishly and there are people who believe that they represented by voting in terms of the big picture, the people who vote for the big picture aren't benefiting as directly as the people who are voting more selfishly. Selfish voting is a weird concept in itself, but I think I just wanted to vent a little and express and idea about voters are tentatively grouping themselves into two categories (in my mind).