"Voting against their own interests"

Not all women have abortions.

All women benefit when their colleagues and neighbours can have children when and if they so choose. (You'd be surprised how many abortion clinic workers report having to serve women they've seen protesting in front of their clinics, who visit them in secret so their families don't find out.) Hell, men benefit from that too.

I disagree, enough people deciding not to vote has swayed elections I'm sure.

"Enough people" voting for third party candidates would also sway elections. Not really relevant to the point, however.

The Jared Diamond book that looks at the complexities of family farming in Montana (as well as Easter Island, the Anasazi, the Mayans and the Greenland Vikings) is "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"

"All women benefit when their colleagues and neighbours can have children when and if they so choose. (You'd be surprised how many abortion clinic workers report having to serve women they've seen protesting in front of their clinics, who visit them in secret so their families don't find out.) Hell, men benefit from that too." - Taoist

The relevant question isn't whether they benefit but whether they perceive that as adequate moral justification. Obviously, women who protest abortion clinics yet get abortions do, and are hypocrites to claim not to. But that isn't the same as it being "voting against her own interests" for a woman who wouldn't get an abortion to vote against it.

But your argument is about how men benefit from that too... your argument, apparently, is that both genders benefit. Would it not be "voting against your own interests" for men to vote against it as well, by that logic? Why single out women for that?

edited 25th Jan '11 1:02:43 PM by neoYTPism

Women are more likely than men to be in a position where they would want an abortion, simply because the probability of a man getting an abortion is 0%. (Some men may want abortions to be legal so their partner can get abortions, but a: they can walk out thanks to human biology, and b: it's not their decision to make. Choice cuts both ways; deciding that she'll carry to term is her right.) EDIT: I misread your post. Matter of degree. I would argue that it is against anyone's self-interest to criminalize abortions, but a man's interests are not so heavily compromised by that position as a woman's.

This thread is about self-interest arguments, so a morality argument is a different kettle of fish entire. (If they wanna play that game, I ask them about the morality of the pre-legal abortion situation where women died in alleyways to bloody coathangers and rich folk flew out of the country to get abortions anyways.)

edited 25th Jan '11 1:19:44 PM by RadicalTaoist

Don't ask them that question. The answers are almost invariably horrible.

So I watched the Baldwin video, but I didn't see a refutation. He appeared to be acknowledging that voting for him wasn't going to achieve anything, and instead urging people to vote for him on principle alone.

"I misread your post. Matter of degree. I would argue that it is against anyone's self-interest to criminalize abortions, but a man's interests are not so heavily compromised by that position as a woman's." - Taoist

Fine, but that still doesn't make it the same thing as "a woman voting against abortion is voting against her own interests."

Right; when we talk about voting against your self-interest, we generally mean:

1. Voting against your particular self-interest, rather than voting against something that's in everyone's self-interest
2. Voting obviously against your self-interest, rather than voting arguably against your self-interest

edited 25th Jan '11 4:01:17 PM by jewelleddragon

There are Pro-Life women too.

There are in fact more Pro-Life women than Pro-Life men. Mostly because of pressure by the left telling said men "no uterus, no say".

edited 25th Jan '11 4:30:23 PM by Pykrete

"There are in fact more Pro-Life women than Pro-Life men. Mostly because of pressure by the left telling said men "no uterus, no say"." - Pykrete

Well, if their current views are only about bowing to social pressure, one has to question the legitimacy of whatever their views "would have been" in the first place.

"There are in fact more Pro-Life women than Pro-Life men. Mostly because of pressure by the left telling said men "no uterus, no say"."

I'd say that it has to do more with the fact that of the two groups of people directly affected by abortion, women are the only ones who can talk.

If its potentially my son or daughter that will be aborted, I feel that since I lent a hand in creating it, I should have some say in it as well. :V

Well, if their current views are only about bowing to social pressure, one has to question the legitimacy of whatever their views "would have been" in the first place.

Never underestimate social pressure. Especially really aggressive, angry, and unrelenting social pressure.

edited 25th Jan '11 4:57:09 PM by Pykrete

Voting against your particular self-interest, rather than voting against something that's in everyone's self-interest

Wouldn't the latter include the former?

Thread Hop.

I am not shooting myself in the foot when I vote for the Republicans. I agree with their style of economy (capitalism) far more than the democrat's style (socialism/communism). Nothing more. I'd rather have the chance to be rich than have half my check sucked away so poor fucks without a job can get welfare.

edited 25th Jan '11 5:05:06 PM by Chagen46

Nevermind, offtopic

edited 25th Jan '11 5:06:28 PM by BobbyG

This post was thumped by the Stick of Post Thumping

The way people calculate their political interests can be complex. many people assume that truly understanding a particular issue (say wealth disparity) would require a level of expertise that just isn't practical for ordinary people to master. So that forces you to trust someone else (or a group of someone else's) to make an informed decision for you. This is usually a matter not so much of perceived expertise, as it is of trust. Many people, since they dont feel informed enough to understand the issue themselves, or even to judge who is the most competent expert, will align themselves with the person or party with whom they appear to share the most strongly help values with. Chagen, for example, has expressed that he/she trust the Republicans more than the Democrats due to an assessment of their general values. The thought process is something like "That person (or party) seems most like me, so I trust them to make the same decision I would if I had as much information about the issues as they have". It's not necessarily irrational, I think most of us do this (I know I have), but given the vast amount of information we are confronted with, and limited cognitive resources, this may be a heuristic that a lot of people follow. However, it can result in voting patterns that seem strange according to a classic economic analysis.

I'd rather have the chance to be rich than have half my check sucked away so poor fucks without a job can get welfare.

More evidence for Thorn's opinion (first page).

It's a good thing you don't like socialism, because in the US, neither party supports it.

I'd rather be rich and have half my check sucked away so poor people both with and without jobs can be on welfare than pay no taxes but never be able to go to a city because horrible poverty makes it completely unsafe.

And this sort of reaches back to the point of self-interest; one the one hand, I want to have to pay less in taxes, but on the other hand, I have an interest in my neighborhood, and to an extent other neighborhoods, are safe, and if addressing poverty through limited redistribution of wealth can lead to safer neighborhoods, then it may be in my self-interest to vote for someone who I know will raise my taxes because I know I will value what s/he will do with my taxes more.

Agreed. Let me submit my case. I, personally, prefer fiscal conservatism. This is mostly out of selfishness. But I still prefer the Democrats. I'd rather live under the Democrats and not have as much money, than be richer and have to live under the Republicans. In the end, the whole economic issue is invalidated for me, because I care more about social issues.

So yes, I go against my own interests. The Republican party is tailor-made to give me personally more power. But I'll stick with the Dems, thanks.

'Voting against their interests' was the explanation devised by the Democrats to explain why they have been hemorrhaging white working and middle class voters for some time.

The thread title mostly doesn't happen.

For why, I need to give an example: suppose you live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Would you be in favor of driver license laws? Or more specifically, would you be in favor of them GIVEN that there is no DMV within something like an hour's drive and GIVEN that rarely is there more than one car on the road at any one time and never more than two? Probably not, right?

So if you wouldn't support friggin' drivers licensees, what regulation would you support? Probably none, right? You would vote consistently for "smaller" government, in the sense of a government that gives you as little hassle as possible. So, less regulation, lower taxes, probably in favor of gun laws because you can't count on the police being reliable, in favor of more police regardless... is this sounding suspiciously like the Republican platform to anyone else?

Then since Republicans can't win entirely on the base of rural voters, they have policies to appeal to rich people as well, and the rural people vote for them anyway because they're still better then the Democrats from their POV.

Voters vote the candidate that seems best for them. They may care about any number of arbitary reasons and rationalisations for this but the winning side gets what it chose. Therefore it is pointless to argue that poor people voting Republican, women voting against abortion or environmentalists voting anti-nuclear is against their own interests since they have shown that choosing Republican, opposition to abortion or anti-nuclear satisfies their true interests instead of what seems "their own interests" from the outside.

Even if we allow for the possibility that people would choose otherwise if they had more information (facts) available to them it's dubious as to how much this would change people's preferences since political opinions are rooted in really ugly parts of the human mind and most noble reasons for holding a particular one tend to be mere justifications after the choice has been made.

edited 28th Jan '11 6:26:10 PM by ChurchillSalmon