Before Voting
London is coming to its elections for Mayor and local councillors.
I was struck by a thought experiment Warren Buffet does before he decides how to vote. Buffet is one of the richest men in the world and tends to vote Democrat.
It is 24 hours before you’re to be born as a baby, and a genie appears.
The genie is going to let you set the rules of the world you’ll be born into. You can set the social rules, the political rules, the economic rules-whatever you like. And whatever rules you set will apply for your lifetime and your children’s lifetimes too.
You think: This sounds great! What’s the catch? And the genie then tells you that you don’t know if you’ll be born rich or poor; black or white; male or female; sick or healthy; intelligent or slow. The only thing you know is that there’s a lottery with 6 billion choices…. and how you start life will be represented by one of them.
Buffet called this the “ovarian lottery”.
Some of us are born pretty, some of us are born intelligent, some of us are born to rich parents…
Buffet votes as if he didn’t know which lottery ticket he would have, and which he thinks – not knowing how the lottery will turn out – will best serve.
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One Response to “Before Voting”
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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Sounds a bit like John Rawls