I think there are a few implications in how you compute the mathematics here which suggest the practice itself is degenerative toward the implied goal of democracy. I don’t think this is a good or legitimate practice in principle, and political donations are heavily regulated in my country of origin.
Having “goodness” of a particular electoral result priced into a particular outcome, with no variable that updates or adjusts based on information about others’ preferences, implies a kind of epistemic superiority over what outcomes are best—an authority that stands outside, and potentially above, the collective decision procedure democracy is meant to embody.
But the core principle of democracy is not simply that good outcomes occur. It is that outcomes are generated through a process in which individuals’ preferences are given equal standing, regardless of wealth, influence, or strategic sophistication. In that sense, democratic legitimacy depends not only on results, but on the fairness of influence over those results.
Are your donation preferences being deployed to prevent capital intervention and relative skew of institutions toward structures that limit monetary intervention by privileged groups—or not? How do you reason that participation in buying elections can be considered good, rather than a form of self-exemption from an established decision policy via consequentialism?
From the outside, it looks like the entire process where this is employed has led to extreme policy skew toward privileged groups, over and above what democratic governance was intended to produce. The reason for this being institutional capture from drift via self-exemption by bad faith actors.
I think there are a few implications in how you compute the mathematics here which suggest the practice itself is degenerative toward the implied goal of democracy. I don’t think this is a good or legitimate practice in principle, and political donations are heavily regulated in my country of origin.
Having “goodness” of a particular electoral result priced into a particular outcome, with no variable that updates or adjusts based on information about others’ preferences, implies a kind of epistemic superiority over what outcomes are best—an authority that stands outside, and potentially above, the collective decision procedure democracy is meant to embody.
But the core principle of democracy is not simply that good outcomes occur. It is that outcomes are generated through a process in which individuals’ preferences are given equal standing, regardless of wealth, influence, or strategic sophistication. In that sense, democratic legitimacy depends not only on results, but on the fairness of influence over those results.
Are your donation preferences being deployed to prevent capital intervention and relative skew of institutions toward structures that limit monetary intervention by privileged groups—or not? How do you reason that participation in buying elections can be considered good, rather than a form of self-exemption from an established decision policy via consequentialism?
From the outside, it looks like the entire process where this is employed has led to extreme policy skew toward privileged groups, over and above what democratic governance was intended to produce. The reason for this being institutional capture from drift via self-exemption by bad faith actors.