At 02:47 PM 12/4/2008, Peter Barath wrote:
Do you think that if we vote simply with money, the rich have more power than the poor? Yes, it is true. And exactly that is the situation right now, too.
Actually, it's not true, it depends on what is done with the money. Suppose, for example, the extra money provided by those who bid on a result is paid to those who bid differently.
Without getting deeply into it, a system might redistribute the payments into it by offering those against a proposal compensation for their accepting it.
I.e., if I prefer option A to B by some absolute preference strength, a payment to me of the equivalent of that preference in dollars should make me indifferent to A and B. You want B to happen, and I get A>B's worth of dollars? Fine, be my guest, enjoy. I will too, or at least I won't be suffering.
> The big issue is that according to economic theory, nobody would > vote. If someone is in a polling booth, they have already ignored > economic theory and thus there is no way they are going to care > about a tiny probability of paying.
Has to be a real probability of paying, not a tiny probability. I.e., if you get what you want, you pay for it. How much do you pay? A fair price, determined by the market value. I.e., an auction. A million people paying a dollar balances one person paying a million dollars.
Suppose you are poor. How much would you pay for a government that makes a difference for you -- or you think it will? Having been there, and maybe even still being there in terms of income, I'd pay a significant amount. And someone more affluent might pay a lot more.
Frankly, I think you'd pay a lot. And you'd certainly pay much more attention to the possibilities and not offer to pay for ones that won't really help you.
I feel here some mixing up economicness and selfishness. Yes, when I go to vote, I have so little probability to save myself from being killed by Nazis that even this big stake maybe doesn't make my voting economic. But I also save many others while hoping that they also save me.
Voting is a poor bet, in one sense. But we vote for other reasons. It's a ritual. And I won't go into Durkheim.
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