In the last six months or so, in political conversations and articles and blog posts that range from light to intense, I've repeatedly heard or read a certain phrase. The context is mostly the health-care bill these days, but of course I heard it a lot back during the presidential campaign cycle too. Maybe you have as well. The implications of the phrase seem oddly illogical to me. Help me out here.
It's this: The person says (or writes) about some bloc of voters, with a note of incredulity in his/her voice (or style): "They just won't vote in their own interest." Or: "I don't understand why they don't vote in their own interest." Or "If only we could get them to vote in their own interest." Or something along those lines.
What I don't understand is the incredulity here.
I mean, there's nothing WRONG with voting in "one's own interest," which I take to mean a purely practical calculation: I will personally be better off if this policy gets enacted, or if that politician takes office, rather than the alternatives. I expect that a largish fraction of voters follow this line of reasoning on a largish fraction of issues.
What I don't get, though, is why anyone with a reasonable grasp of the diversity of human philosophies would be confused by the tendency of significant numbers of people NOT to follow that reasoning.
First of all, have the people who use this phrase never heard of "the common good?" What's so odd about someone saying "I know I will never benefit from such-and-such a policy, but many other people will, and I cast my vote on the side of those other people?"
Even if you truly believe that rank individualistic pragmatism is the way to go, and I can see the logic in thinking that if the majority of voters cast their votes in "their own interest" then "the common good" would necessarily be served, it just doesn't seem all that crazy to me that large numbers of people would prefer to cast their vote — or think of casting their vote — in the direction that they believe serves the wider society best rather than the one that serves "ME" best. In fact, I'll bet a lot of people who really DO vote only "in their own interest" like to tell themselves they are voting for "the common good."
Second, the phrase assumes unquestioningly — despite the evidence to the contrary that is implicit in the aforementioned incomprehensible voting behavior — that the speaker knows what those people's "own interest" is. Can such a speaker comprehend that other people's idea of "their own interest" may be different from his? This possibility is so obvious that I am almost embarrassed to point it out. And no one who uses the phrase ever seems to acknowledge the fact of this assumption with any qualifiers. I can't think of any commentary I've read that goes, "I just can't understand why those folks don't vote according to what I think is their own interest."
The obvious rejoinder is "You don't understand it because you haven't asked, 'Why do you perceive this policy, and not its alternative, to be in your own interest?" Or else, I suppose: "You have asked, and you reject the answer and believe that you know better than someone else what his own interest is."
In sum, it just strikes me that to wonder aloud (or in writing) why a group won't "vote in their own interest" is to openly admit one of these three things:
- a philosophy of total cynicism, in which it is irrational to act for the common good;
- open contempt for the agency, intelligence, and motives of other people
- at best, a complete failure of imagination
A better question is …. "Why is making such an admission in the speaker's interest?"
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