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.
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.