I think that many people if given the choice between changing the next president between the two primary parties or being paid an amount of money equal to the product of the amount of gas they spent to drive to vote and 10^7 would take the money.
Just pointing out that this is a lot of money. Using the first value I could find for the mean road distance to a polling place and a 20mpg car, it comes to just under 1.5 million (1). I don’t think that it’s much of a conclusion to say “most people would prefer 1.5 million dollars to deciding whether Candidate 1 or Candidate 2 wins”. I suspect many here could argue that they could do more with the money than their choice would in expectation (depending on the candidates).
On the other hand, it’s being weighed against a big effect. If you believe that your disfavoured candidate has an extra 10% chance of getting the US into a futile $10B war (note: this is at least two orders of magnitude less than Iraq, even if we consider nothing but financial costs) and consider money spent on war to be wasted (rather than e.g. as a form of redistribution, with impoverished defence contractors as beneficiaries) then preferring $1M for oneself at that cost amounts to a 1000:1 preference for self over others in the same country. Far from implausible, alas, but it’s still quite extreme.
(Note 1: The above calculation is really simplistic. I know. I don’t think a less simplistic version would give drastically different results. Note 2: I am not assuming that all wars are futile. Note 3: There are plenty of other ways in which one candidate could be much better than another; e.g., 10% chance of a difference of $10B in GDP growth would look rather like 10% chance of a futile $10B war; GDP growth under past US presidents has varied by much more than that.)
Just pointing out that this is a lot of money. Using the first value I could find for the mean road distance to a polling place and a 20mpg car, it comes to just under 1.5 million (1). I don’t think that it’s much of a conclusion to say “most people would prefer 1.5 million dollars to deciding whether Candidate 1 or Candidate 2 wins”. I suspect many here could argue that they could do more with the money than their choice would in expectation (depending on the candidates).
(1) Mean road distance to assigned polling place in Atlanta, Georgia divided by 20 miles per gallon, plugged into WolframAlpha for price, * 10^7 =1.416 million US dollars
On the other hand, it’s being weighed against a big effect. If you believe that your disfavoured candidate has an extra 10% chance of getting the US into a futile $10B war (note: this is at least two orders of magnitude less than Iraq, even if we consider nothing but financial costs) and consider money spent on war to be wasted (rather than e.g. as a form of redistribution, with impoverished defence contractors as beneficiaries) then preferring $1M for oneself at that cost amounts to a 1000:1 preference for self over others in the same country. Far from implausible, alas, but it’s still quite extreme.
(Note 1: The above calculation is really simplistic. I know. I don’t think a less simplistic version would give drastically different results. Note 2: I am not assuming that all wars are futile. Note 3: There are plenty of other ways in which one candidate could be much better than another; e.g., 10% chance of a difference of $10B in GDP growth would look rather like 10% chance of a futile $10B war; GDP growth under past US presidents has varied by much more than that.)