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ozb • today at 7:01 AM • 0 replies • view on HN

in this Israeli election, an individual voter likely has an O(1-in-a-million) chance of swinging the election one way or the other (ie the chance that their vote brings their party another seat, which ends up being pivotal to the coalition; source: chatgpt simulation)

it's not hard to come up with an aggregate social welfare valuation of many billions of dollars for this election, especially considering the effects on non-Israelis also

So here the case for voting, at a cost of thousands of dollars, is rather straightforwardly rational, assuming only that one is somewhat unselfish; and possibly even if one is selfish the individual stakes could be equivalent to thousands of dollars