Vote Market

Tim Benham pique at netspace.net.au
Mon Apr 19 15:28:16 PDT 2004


> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 09:19:49 -0700
> From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv at cdc.gov>
> Subject: Re: Vote Market
>
> At 09:25 AM 4/17/04 +1000, Tim Benham wrote:
> >I think all this concern about voter coercion is rather overblown.
>
> Maybe we
>
> >should ban bank statements because people might be coerced into showing
>
> them
>
> >to someone and punished for hiding their money. Receipts might open up
> >opportunities for voter coercion but there are mechanisms for
>
> combatting
>
> >coercion other than coercive anonymity.
> >
> >What is missing in this discussion is mention of the benefits which
>
> would flow
>
> >from making voter anonymity optional. Non-anonymous voting is a
>
> necessary
>
> >precondition for a vote market
>
> And that is why this list is still worth reading.  Innovative
> socio-crypto speculation
> free of inhibition.

I'm glad someone liked it. The voting thread seemed mainly about achieving 
19th century ideals with 21st century technology. But it seemed to me as 
coercively non-libertarian to forcibly prevent people from verifiably 
revealing their vote as it is to do the opposite. Sometimes you don't want to 
be anonymous.

>
> Its interesting to consider what the economic benefits would be to
> individual
> voters, and the buyers.  The bizmodel.  How it varies with 'obedience'
> to one's vote-employer.   Receipts give 100% obedience.  No receipts
> could
> range from 0% to 100% depending on the population's behavior.  In
> some races, buying 10% obedience in 30% of the population can swing
> a race.

Yes, but the "optional obedience" model is what we have now, and it's 
obviously very inefficient. It leads to large amounts of private and common 
property being squandered in an effort to buy the votes of people who often 
don't even bother turning up of for work. My plan was to let people sell 
their vote before the election. I'll leave designing a scheme by which this 
can be done anonymously online to the lists crypto-mavens.

>
> How many issues could a voter play, what kind of money
> are we talking about?

How much to the parties spend on campaigns now? They should be willing to 
spend more on buying votes, because a bought vote is a much better product. 
How much they would *have* to spend would depend on the market, but the 
greater efficiency a vote market would attract more buyers, so it's 
reasonable to assume that the cost of buying an election would go up.

>
> The inertia (as in Men w/ Guns, besides insufficient anonymity /
> anoncash infrastructure)
> in getting such a market set up is large :-)
>
> Though in one sense, are the price of stock-shares the price of
> control-votes in guiding a
> private entity?  Except confused by the value of the stock as an asset.

If a company pays no dividends and returns no capital to its shareholders, 
then control's the only source of value for the shares. At least that's what 
my theory tells me (fair value is net present value of income produced by the 
asset + value of "externalities"), but there are shares that trade at nonzero 
prices which pay no dividends, return no capital, and have control locked up. 
I've never been able to work this out.

Tim B





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