How should a good Randian vote?
The Randian Right is mostly supporting the Democrats (see Leonard Peikoff, Diana Hsieh, John Lewis, and Craig Biddle), though Robert Tracinski (a rare ARI dissident from the Peikoffian party line) and Robert Bidinotto (a Center-Randian by institutional affiliation but a Right-Randian in terms of recent advocacy and attitudes) favour the Republicans.
The Randian Center (see Ed Hudgins and Neil Parille) seem neutral but with a slight leaning toward the Republicans.
And the Randian Left (see Chris Sciabarra and Arthur Silber) are crying for a pox on both houses.
Rand’s own first vote was cast for FDR, so who knows?
I guess I count as a Left-Randian; and tomorrow I’ll be voting for LP candidates Loretta Nall and Dick Clark.
Why vote when your vote won’t matter? You’re going to get precisely the same political return regardless of who you vote for, or even if you don’t vote.
Why to otherwise reasonable-seeming people treat their vote as a magic talisman?
Because if that were a good argument against voting, it would be an equally good argument against contributing to any cooperative effort whose success depends on other people’s cooperating also. And so, for example, it would be an equally good argument against being a libertarian blogger — since no one libertarian blogger is likely to make the difference between whether libertarianism triumphs or not.
That argument would have some force if the expressive power of your vote were equal to the expressive power of your writing. But that’s not remotely true, the expressive power of your vote is negligible. It’s unlikely that anyone will even know for sure who you voted for.
Surely you feel that your writing on the web expresses considerably more than whatever is expressed by the difference between the 1,768 votes your candidate will get if you vote and the 1,767 votes he’ll get if you don’t.
Do you really suppose the power of Glenn Reynolds’ blog and the power of his vote are even remotely comparable?
The difference in leverage between the two actions is so overwhelming that it would clearly be counter-productive to waste time voting when that time could be better employed improving your next blog entry.
I say a bit in reply to this here.
Wow, ARIers indirectly calling each other irrational? Don’t they usually huddle for a common line before they publish on the Internet?
Roderick,
I can’t even find your candidates in the returns this morning. Any idea how well they did?
While I find many articles about Nall’s cleavage I can’t verify that she got any votes at all.
What purpose do you think your vote for her served?