Voting

The Paradox of Voting

Even if you have 1/million chance of making a difference, if $100 million is at stake, your vote has a value of $100 ($1m* 1/m). If, however, you share that $100 benefit with a million other people, your personal benefit is only $100/1m = less than a penny. So if your *cost* of voting is, say, $10 in terms of time and effort, you won't vote. Note, however, that if you are altruistic, caring only for the total welfare of society, then you *will* vote.

Turkey, 1990's

"After one of its coups, the military made a law that only parties with at least 10% of votes could get seats in Parliament - the better to keep out small parties that the military might not be able to control. One unexpected consequence was to translate small victories into large victories, and large victories into colossal ones - many small parties would simply not make it to Parliament, and the remaining seats would be distributed among the larger winners. Something like this happened in 2002 - even though Erdogan got only 33% of the vote, he ended up with 67% of the seats in Parliament." "Book Review: The New Sultan| Summary and commentary on Soner Cagaptay's "The New Sultan: Erdogan And The Crisis Of Modern Turkey," Astral Codex Ten (2021).

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