Something that consistently annoys me about the left, regardless of the variant, is how they all say that a vote for the "right" is a vote against their best interest. I'm going to explain why I take issue with such a sentiment being said and why it's dangerous.
People have different life experiences, perspectives, questions and answers. Nobody ever wholeheartedly agrees with another individual on every single political issue. If you were to prod individuals, you would see that they agree on 2/3 of issues, but would disagree on the remainder. If people don't agree on that that 33%, then you're left with a situation that can easily open a rabbit hole of issues. How can you even get people to agree on the same issues to talk about in the first place? Let alone answer them. Questions that a communist would ask are different than what an individual to the right of Stalin would query about. In the USSR, there were political questions that were different to what were being asked in the west. It all comes down to a matter of the environment people grew up in. What the general ideology of the country is. How people around them act and what they believe. This begs the question; what are the correct questions to ask in the first place? It's impossible to have 'correct questions' due to people having different life experiences and outlooks.
There is no such thing as a 'correct answer'. In politics, there are always going to be advantages and disadvantages, positive and negative consequences, pros and cons. You could make an argument that one answer could have more pros than cons. At face value, this makes sense. If there's more 'pros' to gain, then wouldn't that just be the 'correct answer' because there's simply more benefits? The problem with this perspective is that while you can get a bunch of benefits, there's no way of "weighing" the effects of it. If there were to be a 0-100 scale for issues, rating their impact, this would change a lot of peoples perspectives. If a con of something were to be that you lose a multi-billion dollar industry (60% impact), but you restored the local environment (10% impact) and now people have a place for recreation (5% impact). Wouldn't it be better to keep the multi-billion dollar industry in place because there's more impact than if you got rid of it and gained 2 benefits, which only have a 15% benefit. You're left with a massive deficit in this case by going with the answer that has more benefits at firsthand. In this case, it's better to keep that industry and vote against something that has more benefits, because the impact and importance is much more significant.
If you believe in voting "against your own best interests", you can't agree with democracy. To say that something is directly true or false goes against the face of democracy and governance. It might seem mad that democracy and governance can't be correct. In a perfect world, that's true. We're not in a perfect world however. This leaves us in a situation of having to compromise, try aim for the best outcome possible and define objectives that not everyone will agree with. After 9/11 happened. the War on Terror began and from that day civil liberties were curbed in the name of security. Ideologically, that's wrong. People's civil rights are being trampled on by the very government that ought to be protecting them. On the other hand, you now have (the illusion of) a security apparatus. The benefit to this is that we're told this will save lives and stop terrorism. What is lost however is our right to privacy. This is an unfair trade off to anyone who likes their freedom. To those who believe in security this is a great thing and it'll "help defend freedom". Is having such a large spying apparatus a bad thing morally? We were told that it's there to help keep us secure. That's quite a noble intention and a moral thing to do (keep others alive). This leaves us in a situation where either having civil rights, but more risk is right OR having less rights, but more security. It all depends on your perspective and how you see things. There is no "correct" answer.
Since it's typically left-wingers who talk about "voting against your best interests" I take offense that someone from a centralised position is telling me how to live my life for me. How can forcing ideas onto an individual, without knowing their situation. How can this be a solution / correct answer if you don't actually know the problems and questions you're actually dealing with? This is like going into a maths test, without studying it, winging it and hoping for the best. You're going to be off point, and fail. What if I'm a working class individual who doesn't want to be on the benefit? Believe it or not, people don't actually enjoy going on welfare if they've got actual duties and obligations to fill. How will giving me a benefit me of any assistance to me (or correct) if I don't want it? Your correct becomes my wrong and vice versa.
If you can't dictate matters to be constantly on point, then what should we do? You can't be correct or incorrect, but you can try set some aims and try to look for the best result possible. This involves autonomy and individualism. The only person who knows their issues and the way to rectify it is the individual themselves. Only mechanism you can use to cope with this is capitalism. To stick with my belief that nothing in totality is right or wrong, we need some statist provisions to help make capitalism run along. This includes state assets and them controlling natural monopolies, a little bit of temporary welfare and common sense regulation. Nobody will ever agree to them in totality, but they're certainly the best modification which can help the system run along. Since it's never permanent, and the system is ever changing for a plethora of reasons, you can always tweak the system to adapt to these changes as best as you can. The aim should be to have as efficient of a system as possible, rather than being correct and wrong on a bunch of issues. That makes economic liberty extremely important. The only way you can improve efficiency, the price of goods and rise the living conditions of people is by allowing for experiments and theories to be tested. All of these changes compound into something larger, which is a strong and powerful nation in all senses of the word. A country is at it's strongest when there aren't rioters (BLM & ANTIFA), because you want them to work. A country is at it's strongest when people are employed and the dollar is worth something. There is no uniform solution, only constant tweaks trying to get it right /as possible/.
Those are just my thoughts on this "voting against your best interests" argument people like to make. I believe it to be a disgusting argument to make and something that is unrealistic.
More posts with sweeping generalisations pls.