Zach Barnett proves that it's rational to vote

Just in time for Election Day, Zach Barnett has a forthcoming proof that it's rational to vote in most elections.

Some people think it's not rational to vote because the chance of changing the outcome is so small. Of course, the stakes are very high (assuming you care about others). How do these factors trade off against each other?

Zach shows that your likelihood of deciding the outcome is usually more than one divided by the total number of voters. If there are a million voters aside from yourself, there are a million and one possible vote totals (1 million-to-zero.... 999,999-to-1... 999,998-to-2...). In a competitive election, the totals around the middle are much more likely than the ones at the edges. So an exact 500K to 500K tie, where your vote decides the election, is one of the more likely possibilities.

This means that in expectation, voting directs more than your share of tax dollars and government resources. If you could, you'd probably go to the trouble of voting to simply determine who directs your own share of all this (about $10,000 in annual revenue and $400,000 in assets, to divide the government's revenue and assets by the population). Your small chance to direct the $3.5 trillion federal budget and $124 trillion in assets is worth even more.

Humans being humans, I don't expect that Zach's argument is the key to converting many nonvoters into voters. But it's a nice formal explanation of why voting matters.

Boris won't feed the kids

Boris Johnson's Tory government has voted against giving poor children free school meals during the holidays. Before the pandemic, 10% of UK children were poor enough to go hungry, and estimates are up to 20% now. This is unconscionable penny-pinching from a government that subsidized restaurant meals as a stimulus measure during a pandemic.

Feeding poor hungry children is a good idea in so many ways. Most obviously, it improves their immediate well-being. It helps in the long-term, both through direct nutritional effects and by letting them do things now that are good for them. It stimulates an economy that's running below capacity. I'd bet on it as a market-beating human capital investment, giving the UK more healthy and productive future citizens.

India's Constitution explicitly honors a right to food. My utilitarian view of natural rights supports this. If legally guaranteeing something improves the general happiness, there's a right to it. By feeding people when famine strikes, India has avoided the mass starvation that repeatedly killed millions under British rule.

The former colonial rulers are still getting it wrong.

Amy Coney Barrett is unqualified: she doesn't respect the Constitution

Amy Coney Barrett is unqualified for her Appeals Court position. If she joins the Supreme Court, it must be radically reformed.

When asked whether the Constitution allows the President to delay the election, she replied that she'd have to consider matters “with an open mind." At greater length: "I would need to hear arguments from the litigants and read briefs and consult with my law clerks and talk to my colleagues and go through the opinion-writing process." 

This is like being open-minded about whether murder is legal. The Constitution allows only Congress to change election dates, which are set by Title 3, Section 1, Chapter 1 of the U.S. Code. 

When asked, "Under federal law, is it illegal to intimidate voters at the poll?" she replied, "I can’t apply the law to a hypothetical set of facts." But hypotheticals are irrelevant. Federal law bans even attempted intimidation, requiring some combination of fines or prison for "whoever intimidates, threatens, coerces, or attempts to intimidate, threaten, or coerce, any other person for the purpose of interfering with the right of such other person to vote."

If these are sincere statements of her beliefs, she doesn't know vital parts of American law. This renders her incompetent to be any sort of federal judge.

But I expect she knows election law perfectly well. She just doesn't care. Her policy preferences would be promoted by undermining elections so her allies could hold power. She will happily support voter intimidation to achieve that end.

Barrett describes herself as an originalist about Constitutional interpretation. Yet her answers violate the Constitution. This reveals the point of originalism -- to defend gruesome prejudices that society mostly surpassed by summoning them back from the 1700s in their full monstrous form.