No Stupid Questions

Because everyone thinks of themselves as a potential rich person. Or in other words: people think that being rich is the ideal state, so let’s align everything around that.

If we truly put a yoke on the rich and contained them, we would also be reining in the smallfolks dreams.

By contrast, rich people don’t sit around dreaming about being smallfolk and planning aspirationally for the day that will happen.

Because civic education is lowly valued. It's not, strictly speaking, intelligence. It's that they were never taught what politics actually means, and after a while, they figure that since they've gone so long without it and things have been 'fine' in their life, it must not matter all that much.

The incredibly recent Sri Lankan election enters the chat… and feels sad at being ignored.

Anger, Self-Loathing, and misguided Hate

Anger is like a fire. They're a useful yet dangerous tool that burns and breaks stuff. When handled correctly, fire can shine light in the dark, give warmth in the cold, cook meals for the hungry, or protect you from wolves. In other words, a well controlled Anger is good at getting work done.

Not everyone has learned how to manage their Anger properly. Some let their Anger go too dim, making it hard to do stuff. Some redirect their Anger at themselves, out of fear of hurting others or believing they deserve it. Some let their Anger spread without a care of who it hurts, as long as it gets the job done. Some learn to concentrate their Anger into a beam of Hate, but don't know who or what to aim the beam at.

Going back to the question "why do people vote against their own interests?" It is Self-Loathing. It is people who are so used to having a piece of themselves set on fire by others that they start setting themselves on fire of their own volition. It is misguided Hate. It is people who know there's a problem and want to fix it, but have been misled about the source of the problems by people who are interested in not getting targeted by Hate.

"Why do they vote to benefit the rich?" We don't have a choice there when either vote would have benefited the rich and powerful anyway. Just choosing between different types of benefits. Money and Power have a tendency to rise upwards, so any aid we give to those struggling at the bottom will end up benefiting those at the top anyway. But I hear ya, giving benefits to the poor and letting it rise away still beats just giving it to the rich and hoping it'll trickle down someday.

TL;DR: I blame FPTP.

Hm, I'd argue that this is a byproduct of the spoiler effect — I think it's due to strategic voting. I think that it's likely not due to people consciously voting against their own interests to benefit the rich (assuming that they indeed do this ­— ie that voting to benefit the rich is against their interests), but instead that the entities that support these sorts of beliefs, also tend to align with other beliefs that are more important to the voters, and "benefiting the rich", while possibly perceived negatively, is a sacrifice that the voters are willing to make.

It's hard to vote for one candidate that represents all your values or interests. Typically every candidate will be against your own interests in some manner. Preferential voting systems mostly curb this issue by allowing you to select many candidates in order of preference.

Something to consider is not everyone's interests are aligned. I'm not American so I can't comment on that specific area of the world, but that sort of question comes up a lot in my country and one of the biggest reasons is one party wants to make my hobbies/job harder and the other doesn't. So I don't think I'll vote for them. Now you, someone who doesn't have said job or hobbies, probably doesn't give a fuck about that. So you support said positions.

Bexause you have a two party system where both sides are corrupt

Since I didn't see it listed yet, fear of change.

Some folks are just fearful of change.

Rarely is a change proposal black and white. We can show you good data to support the change. We can look at it from a reputable source. We can look at how the change affected others. We can agree it's most likely a good change.

But sometimes we fear it.

What if we're wrong?

What would be an example of this? It's not obvious to me that by simply voting in a manner that benefits "the rich" then also means it's against your own interests. When someone gains something it doesn't mean I must lose something in exchange.