If there are a hundred thousand people like you who are being asked to sell your vote and you stand to lose $1000 from the wrong person being elected, your vote can only be 1/100000 of the reason the person is elected, so you should sell it for $1000/100000 = 1 cent. Under the proper decision theory, you shouldn’t sell it for less than $1000, but the number of people in the real world who understand (let alone both understand and agree with) such decision theories is negligible on the scale of voting.
All of which goes back to my point: even if we know the benefits received, we can’t know in advance how much a vote would go for. It’s a missing piece of information from standard democracy that can only be obtained empirically.
Again, I know this will never happen at the level of politics, so this entire discussion is purely academic. What I’m more interested in is how this plays out under closer to ideal conditions (smallish group with similar resources and similar smarts).
If there are a hundred thousand people like you who are being asked to sell your vote and you stand to lose $1000 from the wrong person being elected, your vote can only be 1/100000 of the reason the person is elected, so you should sell it for $1000/100000 = 1 cent. Under the proper decision theory, you shouldn’t sell it for less than $1000, but the number of people in the real world who understand (let alone both understand and agree with) such decision theories is negligible on the scale of voting.
All of which goes back to my point: even if we know the benefits received, we can’t know in advance how much a vote would go for. It’s a missing piece of information from standard democracy that can only be obtained empirically.
Again, I know this will never happen at the level of politics, so this entire discussion is purely academic. What I’m more interested in is how this plays out under closer to ideal conditions (smallish group with similar resources and similar smarts).