My intuition for voting is that your political values somehow correlates with your decision whether to vote or not, so although I always vote, I do not mind when other people go like “what’s the point of voting?”, because it means more political power for people like me, and less power for people like them.
With paying extra taxes, there is no “more power” for the kind of people who would decide to pay more. It all goes to the same budget, governed by the same algorithm. There is no victory for people like me over other kinds of people, if people like me pay extra taxes and the other kinds of people do not. On the other hand, I might donate money to a specific cause (even if the donation is anonymous, so I get no personal benefit from doing that), because that would mean that causes preferred by people like me get extra support.
Also, I think that people exaggerate the difficulty of voting. Especially in cases where it only requires 5 minutes of walk. Please do not tell me that your life is so optimized that taking a 5 minute walk once in a few years would make a visible difference; I am not going to believe that. (You have probably already spent way more time explaining on internet why voting is a complete waste of time, than I have spent actually voting.)
Voting takes much more than five minutes and if you think otherwise you haven’t added up all the lost time. And determining how you should vote if you want to vote for things that lead to good outcomes requires extremely more than five minutes.
Many people who do not vote still have strong political opinions, so they already spent that time anyway. Speaking for myself, if I am not sure how to vote, I have some people whose opinion I trust, so I just ask them in a private message, and for some reason they are happy to tell me.
If someone has no idea about politics, and is unwilling to effectively donate their vote to their peer group, then I agree it would take significantly more than five minutes for them.
Even voting online takes more than five minutes in total.
Anyway, I’d rather sell my votes for money. I believe you can find thousands of people, current non-voters, who would vote for whatever you want them to, if you paid them only a little more than the value of their time.
If the value of voting is really in the expected benefits (according to your own values) of good political outcomes brought forth through voting, and these expected benefits really are greater than the time costs and other costs of voting, shouldn’t paying people with lower value of their time to vote the way you want be much more widespread?
You might not be able to verify that they did vote the way you wanted, or that they wouldn’t have voted that way otherwise, but, still, unless the ratio is only a little greater than one, it seems it should be much more widespread?
If however the value of voting is expressive, or it comes in a package in which you adapt your identity to get the benefits of membership in some social club, that explains why there are so many people who don’t vote and why the ones who do don’t seem interested in buying their votes. And it also explains why the things people vote for are so awful.
I believe you can find thousands of people, current non-voters, who would vote for whatever you want them to, if you paid them only a little more than the value of their time.
I think there are 100 people around me who do not value 10 minutes of their time higher than $1, so I would be happy to buy 100 votes for $100. Problem is, it wouldn’t work this way for two reasons.
Transaction costs.
On a free market, the price of a vote would not stay at “a little more than the value of their time”, but would grow much higher, because there is a limited supply of votes.
The problem is, if your interest in politics is something other than “steal as much money as possible”, you face a coordination problem compared to people whose goal is to steal as much money as possible.
Let’s assume that a politician with no conscience is able to steal 1 million of money without exposing himself to a significant legal risk. That means, it would be rational for such person to spend 1⁄2 million buying votes, if it resulted in probability of being elected greater than 50%.
So the people who want to prevent this kind of person from being elected would need to spend the same amount of money on buying votes; preferably more, to get a safety margin. In which case, congratulation, you prevented the 1 million from being stolen, at the cost of paying almost 1 million out of your pocket. Does not seem like a great victory.
My intuition for voting is that your political values somehow correlates with your decision whether to vote or not, so although I always vote, I do not mind when other people go like “what’s the point of voting?”, because it means more political power for people like me, and less power for people like them.
With paying extra taxes, there is no “more power” for the kind of people who would decide to pay more. It all goes to the same budget, governed by the same algorithm. There is no victory for people like me over other kinds of people, if people like me pay extra taxes and the other kinds of people do not. On the other hand, I might donate money to a specific cause (even if the donation is anonymous, so I get no personal benefit from doing that), because that would mean that causes preferred by people like me get extra support.
Also, I think that people exaggerate the difficulty of voting. Especially in cases where it only requires 5 minutes of walk. Please do not tell me that your life is so optimized that taking a 5 minute walk once in a few years would make a visible difference; I am not going to believe that. (You have probably already spent way more time explaining on internet why voting is a complete waste of time, than I have spent actually voting.)
Voting takes much more than five minutes and if you think otherwise you haven’t added up all the lost time. And determining how you should vote if you want to vote for things that lead to good outcomes requires extremely more than five minutes.
Many people who do not vote still have strong political opinions, so they already spent that time anyway. Speaking for myself, if I am not sure how to vote, I have some people whose opinion I trust, so I just ask them in a private message, and for some reason they are happy to tell me.
If someone has no idea about politics, and is unwilling to effectively donate their vote to their peer group, then I agree it would take significantly more than five minutes for them.
Even voting online takes more than five minutes in total.
Anyway, I’d rather sell my votes for money. I believe you can find thousands of people, current non-voters, who would vote for whatever you want them to, if you paid them only a little more than the value of their time.
If the value of voting is really in the expected benefits (according to your own values) of good political outcomes brought forth through voting, and these expected benefits really are greater than the time costs and other costs of voting, shouldn’t paying people with lower value of their time to vote the way you want be much more widespread?
You might not be able to verify that they did vote the way you wanted, or that they wouldn’t have voted that way otherwise, but, still, unless the ratio is only a little greater than one, it seems it should be much more widespread?
If however the value of voting is expressive, or it comes in a package in which you adapt your identity to get the benefits of membership in some social club, that explains why there are so many people who don’t vote and why the ones who do don’t seem interested in buying their votes. And it also explains why the things people vote for are so awful.
I think there are 100 people around me who do not value 10 minutes of their time higher than $1, so I would be happy to buy 100 votes for $100. Problem is, it wouldn’t work this way for two reasons.
Transaction costs.
On a free market, the price of a vote would not stay at “a little more than the value of their time”, but would grow much higher, because there is a limited supply of votes.
The problem is, if your interest in politics is something other than “steal as much money as possible”, you face a coordination problem compared to people whose goal is to steal as much money as possible.
Let’s assume that a politician with no conscience is able to steal 1 million of money without exposing himself to a significant legal risk. That means, it would be rational for such person to spend 1⁄2 million buying votes, if it resulted in probability of being elected greater than 50%.
So the people who want to prevent this kind of person from being elected would need to spend the same amount of money on buying votes; preferably more, to get a safety margin. In which case, congratulation, you prevented the 1 million from being stolen, at the cost of paying almost 1 million out of your pocket. Does not seem like a great victory.