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Diadem comments on Rationality test: Vote for trump - Less Wrong
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The US federal budget is 3.7 trillion. The president probably can't meaningfully affect the spending of most of that, but his impact is still significant. If I had to ballpark it I'd say a trillion over 4 years seems likely. Plus his long term effect on the nation through laws and regulations.
How many Americans vote? About a hundred million? So the average value of a vote is in the area of $10,000. That is a lot of money. Sure it is much less if you live outside a swingstate, but not by a factor 100k.
Even if your non-swingstate vote was meaningless there is still a tragedy of the commons. If every California Democrat stayed home because the Democrats will win California anyway... they won't. The rational solution to a tragedy of the commons is not to defect.
That's a meaningless phrase. You want to buy my vote for $10,000? No? Who is going to buy it, then?
Not to mention that when you're calculating "affecting spending" you need to look not at the total number, but at the marginal difference between Hillary and Trump plus weight that difference by your values.
In which way is it a rational solution if you're the only one doing that?
But this is a total budget spending per voter, not a difference between your income under hypothetical scenarios where each of the candidates win.
Only if you think your solution also affects or chooses for the other players. It's not the rational unilateral solution if you believe the other players will defect anyway, as they usually do.
I agree with the general approach here but not with the details.
It may well be true that the president can affect how $1T is spent over four years. But that doesn't mean that the difference between one president and another is $1T over four years.
(I mean, it could. For instance, if that $1T is spent on munitions that get used destructively in a war whose other net consequences are negative. But most of the controversial things federal money gets spent on are of some value either way.)