Must Good Samaritans Vote?

Jason Brennan and I have a new article out at Politics titled “Must Good Samaritans Vote?” We’ve both argued that there is no duty to vote—it’s perfectly permissible (and perhaps obligatory) to help in other ways. In this article we address the objection that one must help in other ways and vote. From the introduction:

 

“Julia Maskivker (2018, 2019) has argued that citizens have a Samaritan duty to vote. Samaritan duties obligate us to provide easy aid – that is, to help others when we can do so at a low and non-repeating cost to ourselves. (Think of the proverbial drowning child that you can rescue with a single pull.) Competent governance helps millions of people, and at least for many already well-informed citizens, voting is a low-cost way of contributing to that good. Although Maskivker concedes that an individual vote will never be decisive and will usually have negligible marginal impact, she claims that the duty of Good Samaritanism obliges us to make easy contributions to collective activities that help others […]

 

Maskivker’s argument purports to rebut what are perhaps the most serious challenges to the claim that there is a duty to vote. For instance, Brennan (2011, 2016) argues against any general obligation to vote. He says that many defences of this purported duty run into a ‘particularity problem’: to show that there is a duty to vote, it is insufficient to appeal to some general duty and then show that voting is one way to discharge that duty, or to some general goal and show that voting could support that goal. One must explain why these goals could not be supported or these duties not discharged through some other means. One must show why voting in particular is obligatory, not merely that it is one way to discharge an obligation. For instance, if someone claims that voting is obligatory because one must avoid complicity with injustice, Brennan would ask why the duty to avoid complicity cannot be discharged through other means, such as by engaging in activism or contributing to charities which promote justice.

 

Freiman (2020: 131–137) goes further. He claims that if a person intends to help others or avoid complicity with injustice, then voting is not only one of many choices, but generally a bad choice people are obligated to avoid. Freiman argues that obligations to help others, avoid complicity, promote the public good, and pay one’s debts to society cannot be discharged by performing ineffective actions; for instance, if one donates 10% of one’s income to a worthless or harmful charity, one has not discharged the duty to act beneficently. Since individual acts of voting have no positive effect, they cannot qualify as mechanisms of helping others, avoiding complicity, and so on.

 

Maskivker’s work is perhaps the most explicit and rigorous attempt to date to overcome this particularity problem. She claims that the duty of easy aid obliges us to contribute in the ways we advocate but also obliges us to vote. That you have authorized a monthly donation to the Against Malaria Foundation does not permit you to ignore the unique opportunity to do good presented by an election. The opportunity to vote is unlike other opportunities to do good: elections only arise at certain times, they contribute significantly to social welfare, and you can vote easily. Thus, if we are saying, ‘Why not fundraise instead of voting?’, Maskivker can respond, ‘Why not both?’

 

We will argue that when Maskivker says, ‘Why not both?’ in response, we can successfully respond, ‘Instead of both voting and doing some other action, one can do two of those other actions’. If Maskivker responds, ‘Why not voting plus those other two actions?’, we can respond, ‘Why not three of the other kind?’, and so on. Thus, we show that Maskivker’s attempt to overcome the particularity problem nevertheless falls back into it.”

Grading the News

Many of my friends have interesting things to say about the election.  I do not.  But in the eleventh hour, I finally got into watching the news.  It’s been transfixing to me.  Here are my grades for some of the major news anchors on two dimensions: impartiality, and how much I’d like to go on a road trip with them.  I offer neither as an ideal to strive for. 

Wolf Blitzer.  Wolf Blitzer is flawlessly neutral, though his perfect impassivity makes me just slightly less impressed by the achievement.  All the same, I would be fascinated about what he would be like in person.  I imagine a Wolf Blitzer road trip as a seamless procession of descriptively accurate sentences.  “At this moment we are passing what – by all available evidence – appears to be a barn.  This is Wolf Blitzer, in North-Central Wisconsin…”

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A

 

John King.  John King has to be one of the big winners of this election cycle.  His tireless obsession with detail is already taking on its own legend.  This parody is spot on, but also reveals the absurd difficulty of his real-life job.  With a bizarrely comprehensive knowledge of county-level data seemingly anyplace in the country, John King comes off as half old-school newscaster and half lord of whispers.  “I have a contact in Cumberland County – a Republican but just a solid county official – who tells me she’s seeing more support for the President than had been expected.”  Could he keep it up all the way across Pennsylvania?  I wouldn’t bet against him.   

Impartiality: A

Road Trip: B+

 

Nora O’Donnell.  I’m so impressed by Nora O’Donnell.  Her impartiality is extraordinary, down to the smallest nuances of facial expression and intonational contour.  She is surrounded by people who don’t go to any great pains to conceal their perspective, which complicates things.  On election night, I heard her repeat a colleague’s impassioned comment, but somehow her restatement cancelled its normative valence.  Her verbal fluency is near perfect, yet she seems fully human.  “The president is maintaining his lead in Georgia, but it’s getting prosciutto thin.”  Does she think of this stuff in the moment? 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: A+

 

Lester Holt.  Lester Holt is the paradigm of respectability.  Every sentence, every question, every expression – no mistakes.  He could have any personality in the world, and we would never know.

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B+

 

Savannah Guthrie.  Savannah Guthrie may be the most endearing human.  Any agent that did not find Savannah Guthrie endearing I would suspect of being a zombie, which also would move my credences about whether zombies are possible.  In the long hours of election night she broke the monotony by teasing her co-anchors with great affection, highlighting exactly those parts of their performances they seemed to most value about themselves.  She’s not especially impartial, as the send up of her town hall with Donald Trump emphasized.  But in the end, she just wants Americans to get along, and believes they can.  She concludes the night with a kind of civic homily admonishing us to have faith in each other.  I don’t even go in for these values, but I’m still kind of inspired by it.  She even lent Kate MacKinnon the actual suit she wore for the town hall so that Mackinnon could wear it to make fun of her.  Maybe if we were more like Savannah Guthrie, Savannah Guthrie would be right about us?

Impartiality: B+

Road Trip: A+

 

Chris Cuomo.  Chris Cuomo is full of mistakes, misstatements, and bias.  Somehow it all makes him seem more relatable and genuine.  Plus, his biases aren’t exactly partisan in the Fox/MSNBC way.  He’s just against anybody punching down.  Chris Cuomo is like the American citizen’s protective brother.  “Hey, leave those vote counters alone!  Don’t you know they’re doing a civic service?!  You got a problem, take it up with your Secretary of State!”

Impartiality: B

Road Trip: A

 

Fox News, News Desk.  I have to say, I think Fox News did a great job.  If anything, they seemed a bit overzealous in making calls for Biden.  They may have Republican faces, but the news staff seem committed to getting it right. 

Impartiality: A+

Road Trip: B

 

Remaining Questions:  What would the world be like if media outlets were more civil?  Mostly that would be good, I think.  But it’s surprisingly hard to say, because sometimes in-group incivility in media actually pushes people away from their party.  Are rural voters responding differently to media?  I would like to know.  Would I purchase SG monogramed clothing to match my RF monogramed clothing?  Yes.  How would Wolf Blitzer respond to Savannah Guthrie on a road trip?  No idea.

 

Why You Should Probably Not Vote to Change the Outcome

There’s a great new paper in Philosophy and Public Affairs by Zach Barnett titled “Why You Should Vote to Change the Outcome.” But contrary to some of the claims I’ve seen people make (claims *not* made by Barnett in the paper, I should note), the paper doesn’t show that everyone should vote tomorrow to change the outcome. 

First, the paper focuses on the probability that your vote will be decisive. But with the Electoral College, you can cast the decisive vote in your state without changing the outcome of the election because your state’s electoral votes may not be needed.

Furthermore, depending on your state, the odds of an upset may be far lower than in Barnett’s cases (check out the latest odds here). As Columbia statistician Andrew Gelman quips, “The prediction markets will give you 34-1 odds that Biden wins California, which would be a fair bet if Trump had a 3% chance of winning California, which is approximately 3 percentage points higher than it should be.” 

Indeed, as I wrote in my book: "Even if your vote does defy the odds and makes or breaks a tie, the result would be a recount—a recount whose final tally will surely differ from the initial one. And we’re still not done: if history is any guide, a razor-thin margin of victory will send the election to the courts. As Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt note,

The closer an election is, the more likely that its outcome will be taken out of the voters' hands—most vividly exemplified, of course, by the 2000 presidential race. It is true that the outcome of that election came down to a handful of voters; but their names were Kennedy, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. And it was only the votes they cast while wearing their robes that mattered, not the ones they may have cast in their home precincts.

Thus, the outcome of even an extremely close presidential election will probably not be decided by your vote, but rather by lawyers and judges."

 

Lastly, Barnett assumes that “The average social benefit of electing the better candidate is more than twice as great as the individual cost of voting.” I have no doubt that this is often true; the problem is figuring out the total long-term value differences of the two potential presidential administrations before casting your vote. Since we are talking about global-scale impacts playing out over decades, it’s hard to have much confidence in our judgment—especially when we consider how partisan bias distorts our beliefs about the comparative effectiveness of candidates and policies. If you *are* confident in your ability to make these predictions, you could win quite a bit of money in betting markets. (I should say that I am less skeptical of the value difference between candidates in this election, as I believe we have very good reasons for thinking that Biden is far better than Trump.) 

 

So at most, this argument shows that only some people should vote to change the outcome--in particular, only voters in the following states: Florida, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio,Texas. The rest of us may stay home.

If You Don't Vote, You *Can* Complain

In some of my previous posts, I’ve explained why there is no duty to vote. But maybe you should vote for a different reason—you can’t complain if you don’t vote. As I write in my book:

I take this objection particularly seriously. Why? Because, as my friends, family, co-workers, department chair, students, head of human resources, office manager, neighbors, mail carrier, barber, editor, doctor, veterinarian, daycare providers, Uber drivers, flight attendants, and baristas will tell you, the right to complain is something I hold sacred.

But I contend that you can complain even if you don’t vote. Typically when we say that you can’t complain about X if you don’t do Y, it’s because doing Y would prevent X. Consider:

“Ugh, my lower back is always sore.”

“No problem—here are a few simple exercises you can do to easily alleviate the pain.”

“Eh, I’d rather not.”

“Okay, then don’t complain when your back is sore!”

Here it does seem like you shouldn’t complain about your sore back. You can take steps (at a reasonable cost to yourself, etc.) to fix your sore back and so you have no one to blame but yourself if your back isn’t fixed. Now compare:

“Ugh, I’ve got a terrible cold. It’s a bummer because as we all know, there is no cure.”

“Why don’t you use my healing crystals?”

“Wait, will those actually help?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then I’ll pass.”

“Okay, then don’t complain about your cold!”

Here it seems like you do retain the right to complain about your cold despite not using the healing crystals--using the healing crystals wouldn’t cure your cold. Similarly, you retain the right to complain about politics even if you don’t vote because casting a vote wouldn’t change political outcomes.

There is No Expressive Duty to Vote

The odds that your vote will change the result of the upcoming election are small. But maybe you ought to vote to send a certain sort of message rather than to change the result. As the philosopher Stanley Benn puts the point, “Political activity may be a form of moral self-expression, necessary not for achieving any objective beyond itself (for the cause may be lost), nor yet for the satisfaction of knowing that one had let everyone else know that one was on the side of the right, but because one could not seriously claim, even to oneself, to be on that side without expressing the attitude by the actions most appropriate to it in the paradigm case.” Perhaps you should vote to express your commitment to particular moral values. However, in Why It’s OK to Ignore Politics, I explain why arguments for an expressive duty to vote are unsuccessful:  

 

1) We might have good reason to be skeptical about duties to perform purely expressive actions. For instance, few would argue that you have a moral obligation to publicly wish for world peace when you see a shooting star even though the wish expresses your desire to see the world at peace.  

 

2) You can express your commitment to the relevant values without voting--for instance, by putting politically-charged bumper stickers on your car. 

 

3) It doesn't seem as though we have a duty to express our attitudes about moral matters in general--for instance, you're not obligated to "like" a Facebook post about the Against Malaria Foundation--so why would we have an obligation to express our political attitudes in particular?

  

4) To send the right message, you have to cast the right sort of vote. If you cast a vote without making an attempt to ensure that it is informed and unbiased, then you aren’t showing that you genuinely care about justice and the common good. Of course, you could always put in the work of researching and debiasing your vote to send the right message but I'm not convinced this is a good idea. The reason is because you’d be siphoning time and energy away from projects that actually make the world a better place simply to send the message that you care about making the world a better place. As I write in the book: 

 

Forgoing the opportunity to help people to send the signal that you care about helping people actually sends the wrong signal. Helping people is the right way to send the signal that you care about helping people [...] Consider a case that makes the choice between consequential action and expressive action particularly vivid. You pass a starving child on the street who asks you for money to buy food. You have some money but you’re reluctant to hand it over. Why? Well, it happens that you were on your way to buy a shirt that reads “Feed the Hungry” and you don’t have enough money for the shirt and the child. Surely letting the child go hungry so that you can afford the t-shirt sends the wrong message (to say nothing of the wrong you would commit by allowing easily preventable harm to come to the child). In the words of philosopher David Schmidtz, “If your main goal is to show that your heart is in the right place, then your heart is not in the right place."

 

The best way to express your commitment to justice and the common good is not to cast a purely expressive vote but rather to take action that actually promotes justice and the common good.

The Debate Will Be Terrible

 Who will win the debate?  No one.  No one will win, because it will be terrible.  Political debates are always the worst.  And I say this as someone who loves debate.  I always want debates to be like the debate episode of the West Wing.  (It was a simpler time.)  But that’s not how they are.  What is going wrong?

If ever there was ever a debate that might have been like the West Wing, it was Clinton vs. Trump.  Clinton was highly qualified, incredibly prepared, and extremely competent.  Trump was…not.  And yet, debates didn’t move the dial for Clinton. 

There’s a longstanding debate among debate people about whether sometimes the judges are just wrong.  I’m on the side that it’s fine to blame the judges – but then maybe that’s because I lost my share?  (Or at least, the judges voted against me, which is note the same as losing.)  Anyway, I do think sexism is part of the story, but I think the story is more complicated than just sexism against Clinton. 

In the last few days lots of people have been posting debate advice.  I want to get in on this before it’s too late.  Here are seven guidelines.

1. It’s hard to gain ground; it’s easier to lose ground.

For the most part nobody cares about debate.  So as long as you don’t do anything dramatic, you can play for a draw.  If you do shake things up, that’s taking a risk.  Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost a race for Boy’s State Governor, when victory was otherwise a good bet, by going for something interesting.  (Yes, I called myself a speechwriter in high school.)

 2. Be charitable.  It’s a mistake to try to make your opponent’s position look as bad as possible.

A very successful competitive debater once told me that the biggest mistake novices make is trying to argue that everything their opponent says is wrong.  For some reason it’s very tempting to think the right play is to make the opposing side look as weak as possible.  But this intuition is exactly backwards.  You should try to make your opponent’s position look as strong as possible.  This makes you look better.  If the opposing argument is so bad, why does it look like a draw from the outside (see rule 1)?  When you make your opponent’s points look good, it makes you seem like you’ve considered all the angles.

3. Facts are boring.

Lots of people on the internet are saying this so I won’t make heavy weather of it, but the studies are in.  You can’t get someone to believe the facts by telling them the facts.  That is not a winner. Once as a speechwriter in high school I lost an election for student body president by thinking it was a good idea to make it about “the issues.”  To my knowledge, I may be only political consultant in the actual world who has literally never won anything.  Good thing I got a philosophy job!

4. Stories have to be interesting.

Politicians tell the worst stories.  Just the worst.  “Lemme tell you about my friend, First Name.  First Name is a decent, hard-working American. But because of policies like the one Opponent favors, First Name is having a rough time…”  This is insulting to everyone.  More importantly, it’s a terrible story.  Anyone could have predicted everything what happens in advance.  For a story to be compelling, something unexpected must happen. 

I know it doesn’t sound like I’m giving debate advice, but I am.  If you make the story didactic, it becomes a way of trying push someone around with the facts.  People hate that.  This isn’t just folk wisdom.  Pushing people with facts does nothing, or maybe even provokes a backlash.  Most of us hate the experience of someone trying to persuade us, because it literally feels like a threat our autonomy.  On the other hand, when we hear a story we can relate to, we don’t feel threatened.  Here is the crucial point: we are more likely to be persuaded when nobody is trying to push our beliefs around. 

You know who told good stories?  Jesus.  The reason they were compelling is that it was genuinely hard to figure out what he wanted people to get out of them.  As theologians like John Dominic Crossan and Amy-Jill Levine have pointed out, Jesus was more provoking people to consider something than trying to get them to believe anything in particular.  Imagine if Jesus had said, “I have a friend who was a good, hard-working guy, but then the Romans came round with these policies…”  Nobody cares. 

5. You have to think about what your opponent will say back to what you say.

This is so obvious I don’t know why I’m writing it. But for some reason people are tempted to think about their opponent’s position, not what their opponent will say back when they’ve finished talking.  That’s a mistake.

6. It is very difficult to land pre-planned, contrived jokes.

Antithesis: it is remarkably easy to land a joke that could not have been written in advance.

7. Only attack someone if the audience will think they have it coming.

It doesn’t matter how many unjust deaths your opponent is responsible for; the audience will only take your side in a fight if they have just witnessed bad conduct for themselves.  We all love to see someone who really deserves it get the receiving end of a verbal attack.  But it’s hard to get someone to reveal that they deserve it. 

If you have never seen it, Jon Stewart’s premeditated dismantling of Tucker Carlson on his own show is a masterclass in baiting someone to throw the first punch, then going all in.  In less than three minutes Carlson finds himself on his heels in an argumentative terrain he hadn’t planned for or thought about.  Jon Stewart gets him to reveal exactly the disposition for which Stewart wants to criticize him, and then doesn’t let up for the duration.  It’s incredible to behold.  As the leading youtube comment notes, you can witness Tucker’s “villain origin story.”

So much for rules.  Now, advice.  I like backseat quarterbacking as much as anybody.

The advice: It’s weird that a Republican President who used the executive branch to make a propaganda video for North Korea should be a difficult mark in a debate.  But, here we are.  Probably the smart money bet debating Trump is to recite boring Democratic talking points so your base can pretend like you “won,” and call it a night. 

Say, though, that you wanted to try.  In that case, consider trying to get Trump to say something vaguely disrespectful of the military or another conservative institution.  This is apparently not that difficult in private.  Start with praise.  “It’s great that the President is against bombing people for no reason – so good job throwing out Bolton, etc.”  Then suggest consensus.  “But in our system it’s important that the president be willing to listen to people who know more.”  It’s very unlikely to work, but might Trump be tempted to say he was right in one of his famous un-doings of military decisions?  One could also try pushing to see if Trump will say more on opposing democratic outcomes of elections in America.

Of course, it’s all a long shot.  The likely outcome is boring.  May I recommend instead counterprograming with election episode of Gilmore Girls?  It’s not that realistic, but at this point, who’s counting?

The Value of Democracy and the Value of a Vote

Sometimes I hear the allegation that to claim that voting is not obligatory is to disparage the value of democracy. If democracy is a valuable institution, everyone ought to vote. 

But this simply doesn't follow. Hospitals are valuable institutions, but volunteering at a hospital is not obligatory. Fire departments are valuable institutions, but serving as a volunteer fire fighter is not obligatory. I believe that we're obligated to make substantial philanthropic contributions when we can, but what specific form this contribution ought to take will depend on a variety of considerations. 

In particular, we ought to think carefully about how much good we can expect different kinds of contributions to do on the margin. If your local fire department has more volunteers than it can handle but the hospital is in desperate need of help, that's a good reason to volunteer at the hospital. The decision to allocate your time and effort to the hospital in no way disparages the value of fire departments.

In the same vein, if you don't expect the time and effort you would spend preparing and casting a wise vote to do any good, then you have reason to use that time and effort on other causes that will do good. This decision to not participate in the democratic process no more disparages the value of democracy than your decision to volunteer at the hospital disparages the value of fire departments.

Three Arguments for a Duty to Vote (With Replies)

The Generalization Argument: You're obligated to vote because it would be a disaster if no one voted.

Loren Lomasky and Geoffrey Brennan provide a convincing reply to this argument. In brief, it proves too much. It would be a disaster if no one fixed cars, but you're not obligated to become a mechanic. It would be a disaster if no one dispensed prescription drugs, but you're not obligated to become a pharmacist. And so on. They suggest a stronger version of the argument is as follows: "Strictly speaking, what makes an ungeneralizable action wrong is not that it fails the generalization test. Rather, it fails the generalization test because of underlying unfairness, and it is the unfairness that accounts for the action’s wrongness.” The mere fact that it would be bad if no one voted isn't what makes it wrong to not vote; rather, it's wrong not to vote because you wouldn't be doing your fair share. This brings us to the second argument: 

The Fairness Argument: You're obligated to vote to meet your duty to contribute to the common good and a just society.

Jason objects to this argument, rightly to my mind, via an appeal to what he calls the particularity problem. It's true we have a duty to not free ride on the contributions of others, but we can do our fair share in ways that do not involve voting in particular. Our contributions can take a variety of forms, including donations, volunteering, and more. Indeed, I might take this argument a step further and say that it's better to make non-political contributions. As I put it in my book:

Suppose we’re on a camping trip where everyone has plenty of water to drink. I’m debating what kind of contribution to offer. I can make a costly-but-needless trip to the well or I can do something else that satisfies an unmet need, like gather firewood. At a minimum, it’s permissible to not fetch water and gather firewood instead. Gathering firewood is a perfectly fine contribution to the trip; I am not guilty of “free riding” on the work of the campers who collected water simply because my contribution takes a different form. Indeed, it seems to me clearly preferable to gather firewood. Given that sufficient water has been collected, getting more water doesn’t do any good. So doing something else with my time, like gathering the firewood, makes a more valuable contribution. The same point applies to political abstention. Political activity is no different from other occupations such as delivering the mail: just as it would be inefficient for everyone to deliver the mail, it is inefficient for everyone to be politically active.

The Collective Samaritanism Argument: This argument comes from Julia Maskivker's outstanding book The Duty to Vote, which provides the strongest and most comprehensive defense of a duty to vote in the literature. We have a duty to contribute to highly beneficial collective activities when we can do so at a low cost to ourselves—even when your individual contribution is inconsequential. To adapt a case from the book, if we see a car in the middle of the road, we have a duty to help others push it to safety even if our individual contribution won’t make a difference to whether the car is moved successfully. Similarly, voting well is a highly beneficial collective activity that promotes justice and social welfare and so we have a duty to contribute our good vote given that we can do so at a low cost to ourselves.

However, I believe that an individual may do their Samaritan duty without voting, by promoting justice and social welfare in other ways. To elaborate on the car example, suppose you see that sufficiently many people are pushing the car to safety such that your help won’t make any difference. You also notice that a car accident victim is at the side of the road in need of CPR, which you are able to perform. Here you can do your Samaritan duty by tending to the particular person and allowing others to push the car out of the road. Indeed, the very consideration that speaks in favor of joining the car pushing effort—concern for the welfare of people on the road—speaks at least as loudly in favor of performing CPR. (We could even describe both forms of help as part of the same collective effort to ensure the safety of those on the road.)

Similarly, suppose you know that sufficiently many people are voting such that your vote won’t make a difference. You also know that the effort you could allocate to preparing and casting a good vote could be spent earning income to donate to an effective charity. Here you can do your Samaritan duty by donating rather than voting. Indeed, as in the car case, the very consideration that speaks in favor of voting—promoting social welfare and justice—speaks at least as loudly in favor of charitable contributions that make more of an impact on people's lives.

How to Argue for a Duty to Vote

 Chris's new book is fantastic. It's clearly written, compelling, and highly original. Highly recommended.

Both Chris and I are skeptics that there is any duty to vote; indeed, we both argue that most people have a duty not to vote, though we offer different reasons. 

Here, though, let me lay out what it would take to show there is a duty to vote. I want to help you all when you write your responses to Chris.

1. Overcome the particularity problem: It's not enough to point to some general duty, G, which you argue people possess, and then to point out that voting is a way of satisfying G. It's not even enough to show that voting is the best way to satisfy G. You need to show voting is the obligatory way of satisfying G.

For instance, suppose someone says, "You should exercise civic virtue, therefore vote!" The problem--which should be obvious but for some reason isn't--is that there are lots of ways of exhibiting civic virtue other than by voting. Indeed, voting isn't even especially good. 

Even if voting were the best, that wouldn't obviously make it obligatory. Suppose you have a duty to do productive work, as Stuart White and Lawrence Becker argue. Maybe the best job you could take, given your talents, is medical doctor. But that doesn't mean you are obligated to be a medical doctor; you could be free and permitted to do something less optimal, such as being a philosophy professor. 

1.1. Corollary: No bullshit when dealing with particularity: This may sound silly, but it's not. You can't just point to a special feature of voting and then declare the debate over. The special feature must plausibly explain why voting is special. I've refereed papers which say that voting is special because we do it together as a group. Sure, but why does that make it obligatory? No answer. You might as well say voting is special because it's the only major political act that rhymes with "boating" and "gloating". 

1.2. A heuristic: If you offer R as a reason to vote, ask yourself, does R imply that something other than voting is obligatory? Does R pick out some other action as even better than voting?

2. You need to deal with bad voters and bad voting: Most defenders of the duty to vote think there is merely a general duty to vote some way, not a specific duty to vote well, for the better side. But then your argument for a duty to vote nevertheless needs to explain, carefully, why the voters for the worse parties or worse candidates aren't doing something morally bad and wrong. 

For instance, it's an act of civic virtue if I cast a magic spell which prevent cops from exercising undue force. It's not an act of civic virtue if I instead train cops to get away with using undue force. I avoid free riding when I pay taxes for genuine public goods. I don't avoid free riding by burning the cash that would go toward them. 

Many of the supposed arguments for a general duty to vote seem to imply that you must vote well, not merely that you must vote. 

3. You need to follow the consequences of your argument. For instance, as Brennan and Lomasky have pointed out, one popular argument for a duty to vote leads to absurd conclusions. "If no one voted, it'd be a disaster, therefore you should vote." First, it wouldn't be a disaster, but secondly, notice the argument works even better for farming: "If no one farmed, we would all starve to death, therefore you should be a farmer." Dumb, right?

Some people argue that high levels of voting produce good consequences. (Probably false but OK.) Those same people almost never say apply this argument to other areas of life. They don't say, "There are very good consequences if everyone does [fill in the blank], so therefore it's obligatory to [fill in the blank]."

Does your argument for voting have implications you are not prepared to endorse? Think it through. After all, if you don't, Chris or I will, and you don't want to hand us free publications criticizing you, do you?

4. Don't magically assume that voters know the right way to vote and that voting well is easy. It isn't. Read up on voter psychology, which says most people just follow what others do and for most people, politics is not about policy. Look at what political hacks even supposedly smart, critical thinking philosophers are. (How many philosophers just parrot whatever the Democrats say today? Note that I wouldn't be surprised if all 3 Republican philosophers in the academy act the same with regard to the Republicans.) Consider how hard it is to be informed, not merely of the particulars, but of the social science needed to understand causation. Consider how difficult it is to predict what politicians will do if elected. (Did you expect Trump to be such a dove compared to Bush II? Did you expect Obama to use so many drone strikes? Why?) Consider how hard it is to find reliable thought leaders to follow. 

Of course, it's pretty common for philosophers to say that in the US, it is uniquely easy to vote well: Just vote Democrat all the time. Obviously the Republicans are worse so voting well is easy. 

5. Don't straw man liberals with half-baked arguments. I'm looking at you, communitarians! So many papers say, "Liberals emphasis rights but forget that there are duties too! Therefore, citizens should vote!" Not only is this dumb because by definition a claim right implies that others have duties, but it's not even an argument. Fine, citizens have duties too. Which ones do they have and why?

6. For political theorists specifically: Quoting an older theorist stating they believe there is a duty to vote is not an argument. 

7. Also for political theorists: Saying something like, "A duty to vote is implicit in our democratic culture" is not an argument for a duty to vote. Is this implicit assumption correct? 

Does Nonpolitical Altruism Ignore the Root of the Problem?

As mentioned in yesterday's post, my new book makes the case that citizens should forgo political engagement for more impactful forms of altruism, such as raising funds for effective charities. The basic idea is that time and resources allocated to preparing and casting a good vote are time and resources not allocated to altruistic endeavors that actually make a difference. Casting a vote won't result in any person getting fed who otherwise wouldn't get fed, but donating money to an underfunded food bank will. So if you are concerned about food insecurity, you ought to spend the time you would have spent researching and casting a vote for the candidate who is best on food insecurity working overtime and donating the extra income to the food bank.

A standard objection to this style of argument is that private altruism doesn't address the root cause of social problems but merely treats the symptoms. I'm unpersuaded by this objection, however, because most of us are simply not in a position to fix the root of social problems. As I write in the book:

Acknowledging the limits of our individual impact and acting accordingly does not imply the moral insignificance of systemic problems; rather, it’s a sober recognition of the reality of our situation. If you can ameliorate the effects of something harmful but not the root cause, then by all means ameliorate the effects. By analogy, boarding your windows, evacuating town, and setting up shelter for displaced residents before a hurricane hits does not imply that you endorse “quietism” about the hurricane. Rather, you are simply responding rationally to that which is in your control (mitigating some of the harmful effects of the hurricane) and that which is not (whether or not the hurricane strikes). Criticizing poverty relief for not addressing the root cause of poverty is like criticizing hurricane relief for not addressing the root cause of hurricanes.

Of course, if you are in a position to fix the root cause of a problem, you should do so. But there's nothing wrong with a division of labor. It's appropriate for general practitioners to treat the symptoms of a cold if they are not in a position to work on a cure. Similarly, it is appropriate for citizens to take direct action to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless if they are not in a position to change the policies that govern the distribution of food and housing.

Why It's OK to Ignore Politics

I've got a new book out titled Why It's OK to Ignore Politics, just in time for election season! I argue that citizens have no moral duty to be politically active and, indeed, have strong moral reasons to forgo politics in favor of more effective forms of altruism. I realize this is a controversial view. In the book's introduction, I write: 

 

As a philosopher, I earn a living by challenging conventional wisdom. For instance, I routinely present my students with the argument that they should kill one innocent person if they can harvest her organs to save the lives of two others. Although most students don’t buy the argument, they are happy to at least entertain its merits. But when I present an argument for not voting, they’re downright scandalized. Murder? Well, they can see the point of that, but staying home on Election Day?! There are just some ideas that decent folk refuse to consider.

 

However, I believe that the prevailing defenses of a duty of political participation don't succeed. I'll write a few posts detailing my arguments, but for now I want to draw attention to one part of my case: most of us are probably overconfident that we are casting our vote for the right candidate. Just as a doctor shouldn’t prescribe a medication for her patient if she can’t trust her medical judgment, citizens shouldn’t vote for a candidate if they can’t trust their political judgment. 

So why might we be self-skeptical of our political beliefs? For one, there is the familiar of rational political ignorance. Citizens tend not to know very much about particular policies and politicians or the relevant social science. A popular response to this worry points to various shortcuts or heuristics that citizens might use to vote well. You could consult social scientific experts, the candidates’ parties, endorsements for the candidates, and so on, to inform your vote. But there are a number of problems with the appeal to heuristics. First, we tend to be biased in favor of ideologically-friendly heuristics that confirm the partisan conclusion we started out with. In this case, it's hard to see why using heuristics would be an improvement.

 

Moreover, the case for heuristics is strongest when voters defer to experts who share their basic values but are more up to speed on the facts about the issues and candidates. But his leaves open the question of what your basic values should be. As I put it in the book:

 

George Will is a fine stand-in if you’re a staunch conservative. But the most important question remains unanswered: is staunch conservativism true? By analogy, few would advance the following claim: “You don’t need to do all that work figuring out what to think about religion. Don’t bother reading the world’s major religious texts or analyzing the theological claims they make—just use the Pope as a proxy.” No doubt the Pope is a good proxy if you want to know what a Catholic should think about contraception. But the question of whether you should be a Catholic in the first place is still unsettled. 

 

You might reply that you'll think hard about your basic values and try to ensure that your selection of heuristics is informed and unbiased. However, note that the need for heuristics arises because political ignorance and political irrationality are rational: it's not worth your time to inform and debias your vote because your vote will have no meaningful impact on the outcome of the election. But this consideration suggests that it's not worth your time to inform and debias your selection of heuristics either. As Ilya Somin writes, "Since the whole point of relying on opinion leaders is to economize on information costs, the voter is unlikely to invest heavily in researching the leaders’ qualifications.” 

The Indispensability of Unilateral Coercion

Many theories of political authority are grounded in an argument about solving a coordination problem. Sometimes people talk about public goods like the protection of property, maintaining roads, or pollution mitigation. These versions of the arguments are weak because there are so many ways of overcoming these coordination problems without centralised coercion. The stronger argument is one drawn from Kant; it is not the provision of any kind of beneficial public good or service that we need political authority for, it is the existence of law itself. Even if we believe in natural law, and even if we believe everyone knows the content of the natural law, and is motivated to follow it even when it is not to their direct benefit, we still need a human-made positive law, and a state that has political authority to create, interpret, and enforce it. Why?

            Well, Jeremy Waldron thinks there can be disagreements within the bounds of reasonable interpretation of the natural law, and where that happens, we need to know that there is one interpretation that we will all be forced to follow. It is more important that we coordinate on the same version of natural law, than we follow a morally perfect version of the natural law, because the whole point is to avert a situation in which we regard ourselves and each other justified in enforcing our own interpretation of the law. That would lead to a situation in which no one can trust one another, and society falls apart.

Why can’t the strongest person just credibly signal to all the others that his interpretation will be the one the flies, and the people on his pay-roll will enforce it? This will provide convergence on one reasonable interpretation of the moral law that is needed for people to trust one another, and make the most of their freedom in a pro-social context.

            This won’t do because because the interpretation and execution of the moral law in this scenario is unilateral – it emanates from the intentions and actions of an individual who thereby has power over everyone else. Even if there exist incentives that can be relied upon to ensure this agent maintains a reasonably just system of coercion such that it really is institutionally robust, that fact that is unilateral raises a moral problem. Even if the other members of his society look like they are enjoying freedom as is consistent with everyone else’s freedom under law, they are not, because their freedom is subject to the will of this ruling individual agent. Being subject to unilateral coercion, whatever its effects, is a state of unfreedom. Having the socioeconomic autonomy to pursue one’s goals freely is not enough, one must also have political autonomy to be truly free, and that means not being subject to another individual’s will. The whole edifice of their freedom, as robust as it may be, is dependent upon this ruling agent’s unilateral will.

            What political authority (de jure not de facto) does is execute coercion omnilaterally. Through something like a democratic state, we all coerce ourselves and each other together, in a way that provides a just framework of coercive laws, but without rendering anyone subject the coercive will of any given individual. The moral law must be interpreted and enforced omnilaterally by an agent authorised by everyone. That way, society coerces itself (a prerequisite for freedom and justice), rather than individuals coercing one another (a condition of private domination).

            I think that a version of this account of political authority is given in almost all democratic theories thereof, including public reason liberalism, neo-Roman republicanism, and deliberative democratic theories.

Assume this is all true. I think unilateral coercion is still indispensable to getting political authority off the ground because it is sometimes going to be necessary to generate the coordination that is itself has political authority.

            Yesterday Jason Brennan wrote a post showing that, when the mode of coordination itself is morally arbitrary, but coordination of some kind is morally essential, it is the actual mode of coordination that emerges that has political authority – which is to say we are duty-bound to comply with it. If, for example, a state made it the law to drive on the left, but everyone drives on the right, and expects others to drive on the right, and believes that others think they ought to drive on the right, one would have a duty to comply with this convention rather than the one’s laid down in the positive law of the state. Equally, I think, if society converges on some reasonable interpretation of the moral law in a similarly robust way that is at odds with the positive law, our duty is to comply with society rather than the state. It would erode the trust that grounds the system of coordination that itself grounds our socioeconomic autonomy.

            It seems empirically highly likely and at a bare minimum in principle possible that unilateral coercion could be successful in generating coordination on which side of the road to drive, or which version of contract law to abide by, in such a way that people expect one another to comply with this version of rules and believe that others expect it of them. Once that convention is sufficiently off the ground, it has political authority – everyone is duty-bound to comply with it. Nonetheless, it is the seed of unilateral coercion.

            Imagine an isolated island in a state of nature. Simultaneously, a man arrives with an army calling himself King William, and a group of natives form an organisation called the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic People’s Democratic Alliance. King William uses all his scribes and soldiers to create and enforce a system of private law, and is so successful due to the coercive capacity at his disposal that all the people on the island comply, and come to expect others to comply, in a way that rules become, in large part self-enforcing. Everyone trusts that everyone else will obey these rules and they get on with their lives. Meanwhile the ASCPDA is calling upon the people of the island to participate in meetings in which a different version of private law will be imposed upon the land such that everyone has an opportunity to determine the content of these laws. Rather than King William’s will, it will be everyone’s will together that determines the shape of coercive law. However, given that William’s system is already in place, is already robust in such a way that everyone can be trusted to act in a way that facilitates reciprocal external freedom, acting in accordance with the decisions of the ASCPDA seems to be a violation of one’s duty. Defying the King’s law involves acting upon a different reasonable version of the moral law that no one else converges on or expects one to act upon. If coordination is the output we want, unilateral coercion may sometimes be the thing that gets us there before omnilateral coercion can.

            There seems to be two replies the friend of omnilateralism could give. The first is that political autonomy trumps socioeconomic autonomy, and therefore one is duty bound to act against a system of coordination if it originates in a unilateral will, in order to try to create an omnilateral system of coercion. This does not seem plausible to me. Surely, it is more important that people have some kind of legal rights that they can depend on, and plan their lives around than that they self-determine the law the grounds those rights. Indeed, in her new book Anna Stilz – a staunch defender of self-determination – agrees that the protection of “basic justice” is more important than political autonomy, and cannot be thrown under the bus in search of self-determination. It is incumbent on a self-determining organisation to show that in addition to being self-determining, they can also protect basic justice at least as well as the current unilaterally coercive agent.

            The second reply is that the demand for political autonomy kicks in once basic justice is secured. It is incumbent upon moral agents to reform their political order from the inside to make the legal order it generates count as an omnilateral one. This reply seems plausible to me. But it requires wholeheartedly admitting that unilateral coercion can be necessary step to get us into a state of coordination from which we can then progress to a more democratic or self-determining one, as opposed to a non-starter. Political autonomy is something to aspire to, rather than a pre-requisite of political authority.

            Beyond sometimes being necessary to getting a robust system of coordination going, unilateral coercion is also necessary to creating institutions and organisation that can act on the omnilateral will. Some individual or group has to unilaterally take up some model of what self-determination and democracy mean in order to coordinate with other pro-democratic reformers, and prior to their installing their system of omnilateral coercion, it cannot be said to really be omnilateral, it is just the private and shared will of a group of democratic campaigners. Even if they are operating in a state of nature and creating a system of law from scratch, someone has to call the first meeting, someone has to decide who gets to speak first, etc. It is hard not to think that the use of unilateral coercion may sometimes be the only way such matters get settled, even when the ultimate output is a truly omnilateral system of government.

            Personally, I think that if a society trusts one another to converge on a system of rules, then it can be said to be omnilateral, since constant coercive intervention is not necessary to bring them all into line, I think this is pretty much as close as you can get to a system in which each person can be said to will the overarching order. But even if you have a more defined and substantive notion of the political procedures necessary for a legal order to count as omnilateral, you have to at least admit that unilateral coercion may often be better and getting the coordination that the theory of authority is supposed to be all about securing, and the unilateral coercion is necessary to put and omnilateral system in place.

Authority, to a certain extent, depends upon prior, successful unilateral coercion. Someone has to be the first mover in any coordination game. It is the ugly truth of the fact of coercion in human social orders that sometimes this means people just get to exert power over the rest of us. To think that you could get a system of coercion without anyone ever having any morally problematic power is to reject politics.

I think the upshot of this is that on a view of political authority that places socioeconomic coordination at the centre will have to admit that sometimes warlords, private defence agencies, tribal patriarchs, colonists, absolutist monarchs, have genuine political authority, when it is their unilateral execution of coercion that offers the best route to coordination under the circumstances. We’re back to Hobbes, but not quite.

It also means that civil society itself – where it just endogenously converges on some socioeconomic order – has political authority without any rulers. Where each person expects to be coerced in one particular way, and trusts that others will comply with these coercive constraints, there is convergence on a system of coercion without any exogenous ruler, and the order itself has authority, rather than any ruler who supposedly provides the order.

Even if political autonomy is a distinctive political good, under the right circumstances, stateless societies as well as all the other reviled forms of social order mentioned above will be authoritative to the extent that there is no democratic alternative than can secure coordination at least as well as the status quo.