no one’s trying to design a system against their own interests.
Well, to an extent that can be in a political philosophy.
Certainly rational self interest is factored in as to “affordability”. E.g. you support some benefit that you, personally, will never ever benefit from but it just seems the right thing to do, even if it may cost you 0.01% of your income, because that seems pretty affordable for someone else to benefit. Generally, people have voted explicitly against their self-interest.
Now the point can be made about welfare sorts of programs that it is a matter of self interest. That the small amount you lose in contributing is a small price for making everyone else contribute in case you need it. This case can be made for a lot of these scenarios, but the fact remains folks do vote against ‘rational’ self interest in various other ways.
I’m not sure that doing something that only directly benefits other people but makes you feel better about yourself as you’ve done something good (or less bad as you’ve not spent the money on something you’d have felt guilty about) isn’t in your self-interest. Other kinds of making yourself feel good count.
Well, to an extent that can be in a political philosophy.
Certainly rational self interest is factored in as to “affordability”. E.g. you support some benefit that you, personally, will never ever benefit from but it just seems the right thing to do, even if it may cost you 0.01% of your income, because that seems pretty affordable for someone else to benefit. Generally, people have voted explicitly against their self-interest.
Now the point can be made about welfare sorts of programs that it is a matter of self interest. That the small amount you lose in contributing is a small price for making everyone else contribute in case you need it. This case can be made for a lot of these scenarios, but the fact remains folks do vote against ‘rational’ self interest in various other ways.
I’m not sure that doing something that only directly benefits other people but makes you feel better about yourself as you’ve done something good (or less bad as you’ve not spent the money on something you’d have felt guilty about) isn’t in your self-interest. Other kinds of making yourself feel good count.
Hence why they like to specify “rational” self interest.