Am I Being Informed? (And Many More Rhetorical Questions)

I personally believe that how well someone is informed is directly related to how much power that one person has. For example, a military general would need to be highly informed on every possible scenario before they were to make a decision. The prime minister, although he does not have entire power over the country, must still remain highly informed of potential problems in society. A child of 5 years old who does not the ability to vote has no real need to be informed of the problems of climate change or the problems surrounding the introduction of new policies.

Currently, I am not registered to vote.  Does that mean I should not be informed? In a way yes if you were to follow my aforementioned theory. I have relatively little power to sway any political argument that is currently in process. So why should I be informed? If I were to be told about the situation and realise I was highly against it but have no vote to my name, then surely I would have been better off not knowing. Ignorance is bliss as they say. Yes of course, I might suffer from the effects of the decision being made but if I couldn’t do anything about it then, how can I do anything about it now? The obvious answer would be to get myself registered and make my vote count but then I encounter another problem. Does one vote actually count? If the majority vote was in favour but I was against, would my single vote really make any impact on the outcome? I don’t believe it would. However if the majority vote was in my favour, would there be any need for my single vote? I don’t believe there would. Which leads us back to the start; do I really need to be informed on anything?

The next step would be to ask whether anyone needs to be informed. It is certain that they do. One person with a vote may not have that much power but an entire nation with an army of votes is a force to be reckoned with. The opinion of the voting public can be quite unexpected as shown in the 1936 Presidential Election when Roosevelt beat Landon 523 votes to 8.

Would one vote have made a difference in that scenario? If 9 tenths of those people who voted were removed because they had not been informed on the matter, would the results have been any different?

After 18 years of not voting, I feel as if I could go another 18 years of doing the same.

I feel that I am fairly well informed on most issues in society. I feel the government do a good job in keeping us up to date on important issues such as the effects of alcohol, practicing safe sex, what is happening with the economy. The media then amplifies these issues (usually biased) and the public then have a more detailed idea of what is happening in the world. At least that is how I get my information. We are constantly informed that different newspapers and different websites will be biased towards the opinions of the authors and editors of that article. A research paper undertaken by Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro suggests that newspapers are indeed politically biased but more so to attract new and keep their old audiences interested in the publication. The paper can be found here:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w12707.pdf

For those not willing to part with $5, a brief summary is available here:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2006/12/07/leaning-newspapers/

So what does this say about newspapers? For me, it says that newspaper companies, like any other company, are in it for the money but at least they are still informing their readers. This raises yet another question. Is money behind everything? The government sends out warnings, informing people of the hazards of smoking. Is the concern actually that people are damaging their internal organs? Or does the concern lie with how much money the NHS will have to spend treating illnesses caused by smoking? Would it be better to know the truth? For me, ignorance is bliss. Personally, I am more than happy to let those with the power to continue to run the country while I concentrate on what is most important to me at the moment.

Perhaps when I have a family to support and an honest job, I may start to devote more concern to how the economy is, to whether war might endanger us, my children’s education. Until then I cannot see myself registering to vote.