election day revelation.

so today was the day to go vote fer your favorite candidate, or "the lesser of two evils", or whoever best represents your ideals. so far, i think race has been a prevalent factor characterizing decisions. mostly every caucasian person i know advocated for mccain, while minorities and such got obama on their minds. maybe it's only a coincidence...



one of the thoughts that ran through my mind were among anyone, whether a family, group of friends, coworkers, whomever, if you had gone out to vote today. every vote for a candidate is a +1 and a vote for the other candidate is a -1 for your count, so this means if one person voted mccain, and one person voted obama, then in essence, we have gotten nowhere. might as well have stayed home if you guys knew who the other was gonna vote for, if in fact in equal proportions (1:1)



alongside with this thought was the one i commonly hold in that the voting system is a double edged sword in terms of "equality". in one sense, with each vote holding the same power, a racist, bigot, or informed voter has the same voice as someone who became educated, who sought out the issues, who really choose whom they thought was the best candidate. flipside of the coin is that the voice of the rich is the same of the poor. some greedy top 1 percentilist has the same bearing as a person who's been oppressed by welfare and poverty. of course, one could also bribe and influence people to vote a certain way, but that's another story for another time.



while in the bathroom thinkin about what to write for my econ project, i thought of two concepts that seemed relevant to the voting process: the prisoner's dilemma and the characteristics of an oligopoly.



the prisoner's dilemma refers to a hypothetical situation where two criminals are arrested for a crime which could lead to 20 years in prison. however, if one criminal gives up the other, the confessor is free, and the other serves 20 years. if neither criminal gives up the other, they each serve 6 months on a misdemeanor. if they both implicate each other, they both serve 10 years. the dilemma is that if a criminal keeps quiet, he serves either 20 years if his partner implicates him or 6 months if he does not. if the criminal implicates the other, he serves 10 years if his partner implicates him too, or goes away free if he does not. in both cases, it is the optimal strategy to implicate the other. in this scenario, both criminals implicate each other and serve 10 years, instead of only the 6 months if they both kept quiet.


the point of that is that people choose the best alternatives for themselves and forgo cooperation to serve themselves. in the situation of voting, assume there are two people in the world, person Democrat and Republican. if one person votes but the other does not, the other will die (since the winning political party will destroy the other). if they both vote, they will both die (since nothing has been accomplished). if neither votes, they will both live (since they both chose to cooperate together). much like the prisoner's dilemma, the best choice in both situations is to vote, leading both persons to vote.

the other part is the characteristic of an oligopoly and wasted resources. assume two people had to vote, but the voting area is in another city. both have to drive a car to get there. now, assume that if you vote, you earn a 10% bonus on your salary. if neither person votes, they both save the money they spent on gas to drive back and forth. if both persons vote, they don't get a bonus, and take in the cost of gas. of course, both persons will vote in order to get what they want, the votes tie up, and both persons lose out.

maybe i'm blowing it out of proportion. there's a moral reality and representation that comes with the voting process. one standing for their ideals, whether it be freedom of thought, independance, pro-life, pro-choice, healthcare, whether private or shared, social security, immigration, all that good stuff. the hard truth is, all this change....doesn't come by only voting for one person.... there are parties of people and powers, which are controlling the scenes from the back. we as a people need to know how to cooperate and work together instead of being fooled into naively thinking that one person alone is going to change our nation forever.

it is not that i do not have hope in people at all, but perhaps we are overstating the importance the election has on our country. if we wanted a better nation, then we should have been fighting for it every day, not only at the ballot booth.