Where Fun Comes to Die

Most election years I vote Libertarian, because that’s the sort of cranky weirdo that I am. And if I happen to be living in a swing state, people invariably tell me that I’m throwing my vote away and that I’ll be sorry if the Republicans (who I generally like even less than the Democrats) win. This is pernicious nonsense.

It bothers me when people talk about how close their particular state is when they’re making up their mind about how to vote, as if their individual vote could change the election. It can not. The odds against an election coming down to a single vote, even in a very close race, are astronomical. And even if it did come down to a single vote, our election systems aren’t finely tuned enough to detect the true winner at that margin. There will always be miscountings, smudged ballots, Diebold chicanery, and other such snafus. If an election is truly within a single vote, there’s no way our system is precise enough to say who actually won. 

Voting isn’t about personally making a difference. Your individual vote will not, and can not, make a difference. But your individual vote will state your preferences about who should lead the country and where it should go. Getting the opportunity to express yourself like that is a very precious right.

Here’s an analogy that I think is useful. Let’s say that Congress is considering a new bill to bail out the perverted arts to the tune of $30 billion. And let’s say for the sake of argument that I hate this bill. I write a letter to my Congressman telling him to oppose the bill, I write an angry letter to my local newspaper expressing my opinions, and I put a “Honk if you find Richard Mapplethorpe’s sadomasochistic nudes less compelling than his technically accomplished floral still lives” sign up in my yard. If the bill doesn’t pass, it will be because the bill faced opposition from a sector of society including me. But there’s no plausible set of circumstances under which my individual opposition could be the deciding factor. 

Voting is not a long-shot attempt to personally pick the President. A ballot is not a lottery ticket offering a one-in-a-billion chance to be in charge of the Illuminati’s President-picking department. What it is is a chance to express oneself and have your voice be heard. The only time a vote is ‘wasted’ is when somebody votes for their second-choice candidate out of the bizarre delusion that they need to vote tactically. 

(For the record, this year I am voting Obama.)

Maybe I’m just seeing the connections here because of the whole bailout debate, but this article seems to describe what we can now label as an epidemic of people trying to pass off toxic debt to the government, whether in the form of bad mortgages or badly-behaved teenagers.  The article describes Nebraskan parents who are taking advantage of the American taxpayer by offloading their low-valued troubled youths at hospitals and police stations under a law that was meant to allow parents to hand over their very valuable newborns.  If Nebraskan officials continue to accept these children, will it set bad precedent for all other citizens considering the possibility of a parenthood bailout?

Torture may be bad. It may be inefficient, it may be politically unpopular, it may be morally wrong. Nations having a policy of torture, however – that may be good for both the torturer and the torturee.

Imagine the following hypothetical: you are a spy with valuable state secrets. You get captured. You know you will give up these state secrets, and with very dire consequences (e.g. the injury or death of thousands of people). Would you rather be tricked into divulging these secrets, or tortured? An informal poll suggested that most people would rather be tricked. Why? Because torture is painful and they did not want to endure the pain of torture. Fair enough.

Follow up question: when you return home, would you tell your superiors that you were tricked or tortured? Disclosing state secrets is serious business. Because there is a huge financial incentive to sell state secrets, your home country officials will naturally be suspicious. How can you prove that you disclosed the secrets against your will? Wouldn’t it be just as likely that you sold the secrets and lied about being tricked? If you end up being tortured, on the other hand, you can console yourself with the thought that the more horrible the torture, the more evidence there is that you disclosed the secrets against your will. Torture may be painful, but death by a firing squad could be worse.

Even if a nation is morally opposed to torture, having a policy of torture can actually encourage efficient disclosure. Spies will be reluctant to disclose secrets if it means death for treason. When a nation has a policy of torture, spies can sell secrets, give themselves a black eye and some burn marks, and have a relatively credible lie about being tortured. In a nation that is categorically opposed to torture, spies would not have this option so the cost of disclosure (firing squad) would be greater. Of course, a spy could always defect or otherwise not return to his home country, but as would-be mob informants know, living life as a known rat can be dangerous. In any case, the higher the cost of disclosure, the more spies will fight to keep secrets and the more aggressive the capturing country will need to be to elicit secrets. Giving people the credible excuse of torture decreases the possible costs of disclosure.

Torturees might like the option/excuse of torture so they could reveal state secrets when it suits them. Having torturees freer to divulge secrets is better for the capturing country because they could get more secrets faster. Trickery, torture, why not at least have options? Even if the country does not torture or does not torture frequently, having a policy of torture benefits both the torturer and the torturee.