Fatalism, Capitalism, and Voter Turnout

I think that most of the reasons that Steve Smith and Mustafa Hirji have identified for declining voter turnout are either side-issues/minor contributors or epiphenomenal (it's a really useful word). In fact, I think that focusing on youth voter turnout is itself at best a distraction. The decline in voter turnout cannot be accounted for by focusing on some arbitrary segment of the population called "youth", even if the effect is more acute the closer the age group is to 18. I actually think that the focus on the Youth Vote is a distraction from the real crisis that is occuring.

Nor can we blame the effect on most of the factors mentioned. Fact is, assuming "youth voter turnout" is declining, most of the reasons have always been true in the past. Young people do pay less taxes, they do use some public services less--but they use others more, such as education. And this has always been so. Politicians have always been a little corrupt and there has always been government waste; this is no different from any other large organization, public or private.

For me, the problem is quite simple: fatalism. Across the board, people feel more and more that the future of society is a foregone conclusion, no matter what they vote for. And I fear that they are right. Oh, we may take detours here and there. But ultimately the role of government--and therefore politics--has become increasingly constricted so that we are reduced to outraged scandalmongering. Real policy discussions garner less and less media attention, since it is easy to get a lot of short-term fireworks out of arguments over the latest boondoggle, which are itself rarely discussed in terms of their roots.

The biggest partisan culprits in all of this have been the Liberal Party and the Reform Party in its various incarnations. The Liberals have acquiesced to the irrelevance government. The Reform Party has gone one step worse, and used scandals to demand further restriction on the role of government. But to what are they acquiescing? The answer is global capitalism. Everything that a government does, particularly for export and investment-driven countries like Canada, often provokes reactions from "global markets" to alleged economic experts. It is a religion now the world over to crumble before the slightest hint of a capital strike. So if the market has an ever-increasing veto on government, then more and more people will find their interest in democracy waning.

It's a vicious cycle. I don't have an easy solution to the problem. The NDP is not a long-term solution either, as they too will eventually be pressured into crumbling even if they were in office; they'll get Bob Raed.

As for why this may affect younger voters more, the answer to me is simple: habit. Older voters tend to keep their old habits of voting and taking politics seriously, even when it doesn't deserve it. Younger people have less of such a habit. When politics wanes, so does the attraction of civic responsibility.