Voting VS Spending

[Xerographica]

Why?  You can't be bothered to address ours.

I think that any neutral person who read this thread would disagree with you.  I addressed every one of your points.  You didn't agree with any of my responses, but that's a different issue. 

I don't know what you were expecting.  Did you think that my arguments were going to persuade you that spending is better than voting?  I already knew that the chances of this happening were vanishingly small, which is why I primarily wanted to focus on testing and comparing the two systems.   

What I was expecting was that, even though we strongly disagree about whether voting or spending is better, we could strongly agree on the necessity of testing and comparing different ranking systems.  Unfortunately, you kept stating that the results of my proposed experiment would be meaningless. 

We obviously both agree that voting and spending are very different things.  Naturally we should also agree that they would produce very different hierarchies of atheists.  So how could the results of my proposed experiment be meaningless?   All the meaning would be derived from the difference between the two hierarchies. 

1. Spending and voting are very different things
2. The two hierarchies would be very different
3. This difference is the source of meaning
4. The experiment would reveal the difference
5. The experiment would be meaningful

Debating and discussing the actual results would be so much more productive than simply debating and discussing the imagined results. 

It's not too late for us to be friends and collaborators. 

[trdsf]

I think that any neutral person who read this thread would disagree with you.  I addressed every one of your points.  You didn't agree with any of my responses, but that's a different issue.

I gave you a whole list of fundamental problems that need to be addressed before it's even reasonable to consider your ideaâ€"much less give it a trialâ€"and you have ignored every single one of them.

You have not corrected the flaws that you yourself have admitted in your methodology.

You have not explained the bases of your assumptions.

You have not explained how it is that you want to measure the accuracy result of the donation end of it by the voteâ€"which you insist is less accurate, so even within the flawed terms of your proposal, you explicitly import what you claim is an inaccuracy to measure your accuracy.  This is necessarily either an admission that the vote is the accurate part, or that your final measurement must be inaccurate.  Either way, this is fatal to your proposal, and I don't mean 'oh dear the goldfish is floating upside down' fatal, I mean 'thrown off a 40-story building into busy traffic to be run over by several buses, afterward shoveled into a wood chipper, and running the resulting slurry through a sulfuric acid bath just to be absogoddamnlutely sure' fatal.

And you fail to understand that "oh let's just run the experiment anyway" corrects none of these.  A flawed test gives meaningless results.

So far, the only thing you've demonstrated is that you haven't got the faintest idea how to set up a comparative trial.

[Cavebear]

I gave you a whole list of fundamental problems that need to be addressed before it's even reasonable to consider your ideaâ€"much less give it a trialâ€"and you have ignored every single one of them.

You have not corrected the flaws that you yourself have admitted in your methodology.

You have not explained the bases of your assumptions.

You have not explained how it is that you want to measure the accuracy result of the donation end of it by the voteâ€"which you insist is less accurate, so even within the flawed terms of your proposal, you explicitly import what you claim is an inaccuracy to measure your accuracy.  This is necessarily either an admission that the vote is the accurate part, or that your final measurement must be inaccurate.  Either way, this is fatal to your proposal, and I don't mean 'oh dear the goldfish is floating upside down' fatal, I mean 'thrown off a 40-story building into busy traffic to be run over by several buses, afterward shoveled into a wood chipper, and running the resulting slurry through a sulfuric acid bath just to be absogoddamnlutely sure' fatal.

And you fail to understand that "oh let's just run the experiment anyway" corrects none of these.  A flawed test gives meaningless results.

So far, the only thing you've demonstrated is that you haven't got the faintest idea how to set up a comparative trial.

The Alt-Right crossed the line from rational conservative debate to furious denial of facts some years ago.  And quite frankly, right now we have an Alt-Right Government.  That can really only be changed in the next few elections.  And the sooner, the better...

[Jason78]

The higher the price of coal, the more sparingly it's used and the more incentive there is for entrepreneurs to find and develop alternative forms of energy.  Anyways, have you at all addressed my main point in this thread?  Rather than simply debating voting versus spending, we should conduct our own experiment to see how voting and donating rank prominent atheists.  Do you object to this experiment?

I own the only coal mine.   I can lower the price of coal to whatever I want.  Or raise it to whatever the market will bear.   I wouldn't even have to use all my own money, a lot of people will vote my way just to keep prices low. 

What was your point?   People with money are rational?

[Xerographica]

Trdsf, last year the Libertarian Party (LP) used donating to choose its convention theme...

$6,327.00 â€" I’m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 â€" Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 â€" Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 â€" Empowering the Individual
$395.00 â€" The Power of Principle
$150.00 â€" Future of Freedom
$135.00 â€" Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 â€" Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 â€" Free Lives Matter
$42.00 â€" Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 â€" Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 â€" Taxation is Theft
$15.00 â€" Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 â€" All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 â€" Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 â€" Liberty Here and Now

How differently would the themes have been ranked if voting had been used instead of spending?   For example, would the theme "Taxation is Theft" have been ranked higher or lower?  Personally, I hate this theme.  So if voting had ranked it higher than spending did, then this would have been decent evidence that spending is better than voting.  To be clear... this would have been decent evidence for me.  For somebody who loves the idea that taxation is theft, it would have been decent evidence that voting is better than spending. 

The experiment that I'm proposing for this website is just like the LP's fundraiser... but people would also have the option to vote for their favorite atheists.  Then we would be able to compare how differently voting and donating rank atheists. 

Voters would make the voting pudding.  Donors would make the donating pudding.  We would all taste both puddings and decide for ourselves which one is better.  The proof is in the pudding. 

What matters here is whether the results confirm or contradict our own beliefs regarding the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  My proposed experiment would give us the incredibly valuable opportunity to compare our beliefs to reality. 

You say that I have ignored a bunch of fundamental problems.  Of course I disagree.  But I'll go through your list and address each of your points...

Xero: I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you
Trdsf: AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY YOUR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK.  I can't make it any clearer than you just made it yourself.

I don't know how valuable $100 dollars is to all the people who participated in the LP's fundraiser.  This is true.  But how does this prove that voting is better than spending?  How does this prove that the themes would have been ranked better if the libertarians had voted for their favorite themes? 

Xero: It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.
Trdsf: That completely destroys its ability to reliably measure actual demand because it can be overridden on the whim of one or two people.  It doesn't matter at all whether it will happen, it's that it can happen that destroys your "experiment".

Actual demand, in economic terms, has never been about wealth equality.  So it doesn't make any sense to say that wealth inequality prevents actual demand from being reliably measured.  The LP fundraiser shows us the actual demand for each theme.  We can all clearly see that the demand for " Building Bridges, Not Walls" is a lot greater than the demand for "Taxation is Theft".

You're asserting A is superior to B.  You're going to run simultaneous trials of A and B.  And then you're going to use B to measure whether A is accurate, when one of your assumptions is that B is less accurate than A.  Do you genuinely not see the flaw here?

My argument is that spending is better than voting... so why would I propose using voting to rank the two puddings?  If anything I'd propose using voting and donating to rank the puddings.  Like I said though... the point is for you to compare your own beliefs to reality.  Right now you believe that voting is better than spending.  The results of my proposed experiment would either confirm or contradict your belief.   

You continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

You're correct that markets do not account for the fact that people unequally value money.  But again, this doesn't at all prove that the LP convention themes would have been better ranked by voting.     There's absolutely nothing wrong with a billionaire having more influence than a pauper, if we assume that the pauper is ignorant while the billionaire is informed.  Is this assumption reasonable?  What are the chances that Bill Gates is better informed than the average Joe?  We can certainly debate this, but it would really help if we also simply tested whether voting or donating is better at ranking things. 

You're simply not measuring what you think you're measuring.  The fact that one person with high resources can come in and completely change your results based on nothing more than their own resources negates your entire argument that you're measuring public preferences.

When I talk about measuring public preferences, of course I realize that, as far as the market is concerned, my preferences are far less important than the preferences of Bill Gates.  Do you think that I like the fact that my own preferences are relatively inconsequential compared to his?  Do you think I wouldn't prefer to simply spend a million dollars to conduct my proposed experiment rather than spend so much of my limited time trying to persuade all of you to help me conduct it?  I am acutely aware of, and unhappy with, the fact that Bill Gates has so much more market power than I do. 

However, just because I don't like how little market power I have doesn't magically make voting better than spending at ranking things.  The relative effectiveness of voting and spending can only be revealed by experiments that juxtapose their results.   

You have not refuted any of the points I have brought up:
- that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;
- that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;
- that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and
- that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I will further posit the following:
- Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;
- No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and
- No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

To be clear, the point of the proposed experiment is to refute your points.  But I'll go through and address them...

- that finance-based preference distorts rather than reveals public intent;

What actually distorts the public intent is voting... not spending.   Can you refute this?  Yes you can.  Just show me that voting is better than spending at ranking atheists. 

- that making public preference subject to the whims of individual and group resources thwarts public will rather than clarifies it;

It doesn't thwart the public will when the most informed individuals have the most influence.  The question is whether voting or spending gives the most influence to the most informed individuals.  My proposed experiment would help answer this question. 

- that when money isn't a significant factor, public intent is better revealed; and

Again, my proposed experiment will demonstrate whether or not money needs to be a significant factor. 

- that it is possible to allow weighted preferences without tying it to individual resources.

I never denied that it is possible.  I simply strongly believe that money is entirely necessary to give the most influence to the most informed. 

- Weighting votes to personal resources is explicitly anti-democratic since it allows a small handful of individual with large resources to completely overwhelm the majority;

When was the last time that we had an openly atheist president?  There's nothing about the majority that makes it inherently right. 

- No amount of money validates a poorly-reasoned position; and

This is true.  But spending is far better than voting at ranking positions.   

- No amount of money invalidates reliable evidence.

This also true.  But spending is far better than voting at ranking evidence. 

Now please stop saying that I've ignored your points.  I've addressed all of them.  It's fine if you don't think that I've adequately addressed them.  It isn't necessary for me to use arguments to persuade you that your position is wrong while my position is right.  All I have to do is show you the evidence.  Are you interested in seeing the evidence?  If so, then you should support my proposed experiment. 

[Baruch]

"Building Bridges, Not Walls" ... that is a winner, even without the obvious topical association.  All for alternative parties, vote R or D, enjoy your FEMA camp.

[trdsf]

Just saying "no it isn't" isn't addressing.  So no, you really have not addressed any of the flaws in your thesisâ€"what I've pointed out are flaws in your methodology, and whining "but run the experiment" doesn't fix those or demonstrate anything.

As for the few things you did try to say:

How differently would the themes have been ranked if voting had been used instead of spending?   For example, would the theme "Taxation is Theft" have been ranked higher or lower?  Personally, I hate this theme.  So if voting had ranked it higher than spending did, then this would have been decent evidence that spending is better than voting.  To be clear... this would have been decent evidence for me.  For somebody who loves the idea that taxation is theft, it would have been decent evidence that voting is better than spending.

Emphasis added.

The fact that it does not produce unambiguous evidence is all you need to know that it's a pointless exercise.  Because here's what's going to happen: if the vote goes against you and the spending doesn't, you're going to say "that proves spending is better" and if the spending goes against you and the voting doesn't, you're going to say "that proves people didn't value my choice as much as I do", and if both go against you, you're going to say "well, that didn't prove anything" and if both go in your favor, you're going to go "hey, we were both right".

If everyone can extract their own personal 'evidence' out of it, then it's not anything even remotely resembling an experimentâ€"it's no different from faith in various gods at that point, if you can take away from it what you feel like taking away from it.  This is religion, not science.  You've pre-decided the result you want, and you're ignoring everything you have to in order to hang on to that.

If two different observers can pull mutually exclusive conclusions out of it (you say 'spending is better' because spending coincided with your choice and voting didn't, and someone else says 'voting is better' because voting coincided with their choice and spending didn't), then you're not getting any results at all.  The results need to stand without any regard whatsoever for what the observers hope the answer will or will not be.

So you're not getting an unambiguous answer, and you can't measure the accuracy of the donations without referencing the voteâ€"which, as I've said repeatedly, means that either the vote is the accurate side of it or that you cannot demonstrate the superior accuracy of donations.

I don't know how valuable $100 dollars is to all the people who participated in the LP's fundraiser.  This is true.  But how does this prove that voting is better than spending?  How does this prove that the themes would have been ranked better if the libertarians had voted for their favorite themes?

If you don't know how the $100 is valued by the participants, then you cannot judge demand.  You're not measuring anything more than the arrogance of plutocracy.

Actual demand, in economic terms, has never been about wealth equality.  So it doesn't make any sense to say that wealth inequality prevents actual demand from being reliably measured.  The LP fundraiser shows us the actual demand for each theme.  We can all clearly see that the demand for " Building Bridges, Not Walls" is a lot greater than the demand for "Taxation is Theft".

No, it's not.  You don't know what the demand is until you know how many people actually wanted each one; the dollars mean absolutely nothing.  If one person put in $5200 on the first motto, and 162 people put in $10 each on the second, you cannot in any way say that the first motto is the choice of the people.  It's the whim of the one person with more resources than anyone else.  That's personal preference, not public preference.

What you're proposing is the dictatorship of the dollar, plutocracy, financial fascism -- take your pick.  If you want decisions made that way, that's your problem -- what you can't do is call it anything remotely resembling public demand because it has absolutely nothing to do with public demand.

This is explicitly anti-democratic.  Which again means that the vote is by definition a better measure of public will.

You're correct that markets do not account for the fact that people unequally value money.  But again, this doesn't at all prove that the LP convention themes would have been better ranked by voting.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with a billionaire having more influence than a pauper, if we assume that the pauper is ignorant while the billionaire is informed.  Is this assumption reasonable?  What are the chances that Bill Gates is better informed than the average Joe?  We can certainly debate this, but it would really help if we also simply tested whether voting or donating is better at ranking things.

You genuinely don't see that the unequal valuation of money completely obviates your proposal?  It's not that difficult -- if you don't know what the value of each dollar is, you cannot make a final valuation when all the money is collected.  All you can do is just add it upâ€"you will learn nothing about the actual value placed by each donor, you only have naked dollar amounts.

When I talk about measuring public preferences, of course I realize that, as far as the market is concerned, my preferences are far less important than the preferences of Bill Gates.  Do you think that I like the fact that my own preferences are relatively inconsequential compared to his?  Do you think I wouldn't prefer to simply spend a million dollars to conduct my proposed experiment rather than spend so much of my limited time trying to persuade all of you to help me conduct it?  I am acutely aware of, and unhappy with, the fact that Bill Gates has so much more market power than I do. 

However, just because I don't like how little market power I have doesn't magically make voting better than spending at ranking things.  The relative effectiveness of voting and spending can only be revealed by experiments that juxtapose their results.

I recommend doing your thing and not giving a fuck whether Bill Gates (or Sam Walton, or Jeff Bezos, or anyone else) wants it too.

And if you don't like it, why are you so gung-ho to cede your rights to his money?  That's mad.  It's probably ideologically pure, but it's still mad.

In fact, the vote necessarily is better at ranking things since a) it levels the playing field and b) permits universal access rather than charging to participate.  Further, money does not give someone else the right to drown my vote.  I do not accept the idea that my preferences are less important than hisâ€"I cannot deny that he has the resources to indulge his, but that doesn't mean they're more important or better informed than mine… or vice versa.

Which again means ranking by money is not a measure of public will.  It's only a measure of money.

There's nothing about the majority that makes it inherently right.

There's nothing about money that makes it inherently right.  There are, by and large, reasons to think that majority rule tends towards better public policy in the long run since it will tend towards the most good for the most people.  We have already seen that money tends towards the most gains for those who already have the most moneyâ€"look at Republican tax policy over the last 35 years.

The rest of your "responses" were just "no it isn't!" which, as I pointed out above, isn't addressing them, it's just ignoring them.

If you still think that there's a point to your proposal, you simply know nothing about how to measure public will.

[Xerographica]

Just saying "no it isn't" isn't addressing.  So no, you really have not addressed any of the flaws in your thesisâ€"what I've pointed out are flaws in your methodology, and whining "but run the experiment" doesn't fix those or demonstrate anything.

From your view I didn't adequately address your points.  From my view I did. 

The fact that it does not produce unambiguous evidence is all you need to know that it's a pointless exercise.  Because here's what's going to happen: if the vote goes against you and the spending doesn't, you're going to say "that proves spending is better" and if the spending goes against you and the voting doesn't, you're going to say "that proves people didn't value my choice as much as I do", and if both go against you, you're going to say "well, that didn't prove anything" and if both go in your favor, you're going to go "hey, we were both right".

Given that I believe that spending is so much better than voting, if, from my view, there isn't a clear winner, then this evidence would be incredible.  Right now I'm certain that a hare would beat a tortoise in a race.  If there was no clear winner, then this evidence would be incredible. 

And it's not like we'd only conduct this experiment once.  Every month or two we'd conduct it using a different topic.  If there continued to be no clear winner, this would indicate that voting was the winner.  Like I said before, if spending produces an outcome that isn't noticeably better than voting, then there's no point in people making the mental effort to decide how much something is truly worth to them.  We might as well replace all spending with voting. 

If you don't know how the $100 is valued by the participants, then you cannot judge demand.  You're not measuring anything more than the arrogance of plutocracy.

There's nothing in economics that says that demand can only be measured when we know how much $100 dollars is valued by the participants.  Economists talk about measuring demand all the time despite the fact that it's entirely unknown how differently consumers value $100 dollars. 

If one person put in $5200 on the first motto, and 162 people put in $10 each on the second, you cannot in any way say that the first motto is the choice of the people.  It's the whim of the one person with more resources than anyone else.  That's personal preference, not public preference.

Tyranny of the minority is entirely possible with spending.  But my best guess is that, in most cases, the minority tyranny of spending will be better than the majority tyranny of voting.  But do you think this is the kind of thing we can solely resolve with debate?  It really isn't.  We need the evidence that can only be produced by directly comparing the results of voting and spending. 

What you're proposing is the dictatorship of the dollar, plutocracy, financial fascism -- take your pick.  If you want decisions made that way, that's your problem -- what you can't do is call it anything remotely resembling public demand because it has absolutely nothing to do with public demand.

You're free to characterize spending however you want.  But again, the proof is in the pudding. 

This is explicitly anti-democratic.  Which again means that the vote is by definition a better measure of public will.

Democracy, in my view, is a better measure of public whim than will.  The majority voted for prohibition.  I'm guessing that this was more whim than will.  Maybe it wasn't though.  I think that, before a big chunk of  society's resources was used to enforce prohibition, that there needed to be strong enough evidence that it was truly going to provide a large benefit to the public.  The majority voting for prohibition really wasn't strong enough evidence that the benefit was large.  The only evidence that could possibly have been strong enough would have been adequately large spending on the part of the public.   

You genuinely don't see that the unequal valuation of money completely obviates your proposal?  It's not that difficult -- if you don't know what the value of each dollar is, you cannot make a final valuation when all the money is collected.  All you can do is just add it upâ€"you will learn nothing about the actual value placed by each donor, you only have naked dollar amounts.

The only thing that can make me change my mind about spending being better than voting is enough evidence.  Right now I don't have any evidence that spending is not better than voting.  If we conduct my experiments, and spending isn't consistently the clear winner, then I will change my mind about spending being better than voting. 

I'm telling you that there is a real, concrete, tangible, and relatively easy way for me to change my mind about spending being better than voting.  You really shouldn't oppose my suggested experiment.

And if you don't like it, why are you so gung-ho to cede your rights to his money?  That's mad.  It's probably ideologically pure, but it's still mad.

LOL.  Maybe I am mad!  If I am truly crazy, then why should I have the same influence over society's resources as Bill Gates?  There are a few things that the Bible gets right.  One of them is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Instead of a multitude of consumers giving their money to me, they gave it to Gates.  They all used their money to vouch for his sanity.  Far fewer people have used their money to vouch for my sanity. 

Do you think the prominent atheists are equally sane?  It's a fact that they aren't equally anything.  The point of the market is to use our money to draw the public's attention to the most beneficial differences. 

Right now here I am suggesting something different.  I'm suggesting that we directly compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  This has never been done before.  It is something completely different.  You clearly don't think it's a beneficial difference... and you aren't the only one.  So I have to accept the possibility that maybe I am crazy... which means that I can't possibly accept that it would be beneficial for me to have the same exact influence as Bill Gates. 

Everybody is different so everybody naturally does different things with society's limited resources.  We need the best possible system for identifying and reinforcing the best possible differences.  As far as I can tell, this system is the market. 

In fact, the vote necessarily is better at ranking things since a) it levels the playing field and b) permits universal access rather than charging to participate.  Further, money does not give someone else the right to drown my vote.  I do not accept the idea that my preferences are less important than hisâ€"I cannot deny that he has the resources to indulge his, but that doesn't mean they're more important or better informed than mine… or vice versa.

It's not about accepting that your preferences are less important than his.  It's about accepting the possibility that your preferences are less important than his.  It's about striving to minimize the possibility that your preferences are less important than his.  That's exactly what I am currently all about.  If I'm not crazy, and it is incredibly beneficial to compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending... then you could potentially be the main guy to help make it happen.  Right now you have the opportunity to be the main guy... but it's a fact that guys, and gals, aren't equally good at recognizing the value of opportunities that are right in front of them. 

This really isn't the first place that I've tried to sell this idea... and perhaps it won't be the last.  Maybe I'll eventually find a place where there's some guy who does recognize the incredible value of the opportunity and he will seize it.  He will be instrumental in making it happen.  Then you will simply be one of the many guys who failed to recognize a valuable opportunity that was right in front of you. 

Right now Jordan Peterson is earning around $50,000 per month on Patreon.  Why?  Simply because a lot of people voted for the Youtube video of him criticizing trans pronouns.  If spending is truly better than voting, then our experiment would prove it... and if you were the main guy... then you would be earning a lot more than $50,000/month... while Peterson would be earning a lot less. 

There's nothing about money that makes it inherently right.  There are, by and large, reasons to think that majority rule tends towards better public policy in the long run since it will tend towards the most good for the most people.  We have already seen that money tends towards the most gains for those who already have the most moneyâ€"look at Republican tax policy over the last 35 years.

I don't deny the possibility that voting is better than spending.  If this is truly the case, then it would be revealed by comparing the relative effectiveness of voting and spending. 

The rest of your "responses" were just "no it isn't!" which, as I pointed out above, isn't addressing them, it's just ignoring them.

We have different definitions of "ignoring"... and different definitions of "demand". 

If you still think that there's a point to your proposal, you simply know nothing about how to measure public will.

Maybe I don't know how to measure public will.  But if you're truly correct that voting is better than spending, then it would behoove you to figure out how to prove this to reasonable people.  All I know is that my experiment can potentially prove to me that voting is better than spending.  I'm not sure how you could possibly improve on this.  I'm not sure why you would even try to.  What more could you want than a believer in spending becoming a believer in voting? 

[Jason78]

From your view I didn't adequately address your points.  From my view I did. 

Wow.  It's like you think that your view is the only one that matters.

[trdsf]

There's nothing in economics that says that demand can only be measured when we know how much $100 dollars is valued by the participants.  Economists talk about measuring demand all the time despite the fact that it's entirely unknown how differently consumers value $100 dollars.

Then you're not measuring anything other than who's got money to spend, which as has repeatedly been pointed out has nothing to do with public will.

Tyranny of the minority is entirely possible with spending.  But my best guess is that, in most cases, the minority tyranny of spending will be better than the majority tyranny of voting.  But do you think this is the kind of thing we can solely resolve with debate?  It really isn't.  We need the evidence that can only be produced by directly comparing the results of voting and spending.

This is why libertarianism doesn't work, and it's for the exact same reasons that Marxism doesn't work: they both make unrealistic assumptions about human behavior and enlightened self interest.

Every single piece of evidence we have is that the 'minority tyranny of spending' will do what it can to concentrate more wealth in their hands at the expense of the rest of the public, and that they will not make decisions that are in the best interest of all.  If your "best guess" is that they will make the best decisions for society as a whole, I have to ask what planet you've been living on for the last forty years.

Democracy, in my view, is a better measure of public whim than will.  The majority voted for prohibition.  I'm guessing that this was more whim than will.  Maybe it wasn't though.  I think that, before a big chunk of  society's resources was used to enforce prohibition, that there needed to be strong enough evidence that it was truly going to provide a large benefit to the public.  The majority voting for prohibition really wasn't strong enough evidence that the benefit was large.  The only evidence that could possibly have been strong enough would have been adequately large spending on the part of the public.

There's no difference between public whim and public will.  The public is not always right in the long run, and neither is the market.  Had Prohibition been brought about by public spending that still wouldn't have made it a smart decision, only an even more expensive one than it turned out to be.

The only thing that can make me change my mind about spending being better than voting is enough evidence.  Right now I don't have any evidence that spending is not better than voting.  If we conduct my experiments, and spending isn't consistently the clear winner, then I will change my mind about spending being better than voting.

No, the evidence is both clear and unequivocal that spending is not better than voting, you just refuse to accept it.

I'm telling you that there is a real, concrete, tangible, and relatively easy way for me to change my mind about spending being better than voting.  You really shouldn't oppose my suggested experiment.

And I've shown how your proposal doesn't measure what you claim it measures.  Run it, for all I care, but don't claim it means anything, because your methodology is broken.  Fix it, and if it would then make meaningful measurements I'll be happy to support it.

LOL.  Maybe I am mad!  If I am truly crazy, then why should I have the same influence over society's resources as Bill Gates?  There are a few things that the Bible gets right.  One of them is that there's safety in the multitude of counselors.  Instead of a multitude of consumers giving their money to me, they gave it to Gates.  They all used their money to vouch for his sanity.  Far fewer people have used their money to vouch for my sanity.

I don't buy Windows because I have faith in Bill Gates' judgment.  I buy Windows because I have no fucking choice in the matter if I want to play certain games.  If I could get them to run under Linux, I'd be in a pure OpenSuSE environment in a heartbeat.  And the reason these games aren't available under Linux has nothing to do with the superiority of the Windows system, it has to do with the effective monopoly Microsoft has on the desktop computer market and with their monopolistic practices designed not to improve the computer software market in general but to maintain or enhance their own control over it.  I recommend looking up the history of Microsoft with regard to DR-DOS, WordPerfect and Novell.  Happily, this situation is slowly changing, but only slowly.

Which leads me to ask the (potentially derailing) question: do you think there is such a thing as an illegal monopolistic business practice?  Current law, of course, is that it's perfectly legal to have a monopoly, but that it is illegal to use that market control to prevent competition.  Do you agree?  Or do you take the position that once a monopoly is attained, the holder can do anything that's not otherwise illegal (no killing the opposing CEO, for instance) in order to maintain their monopoly?  Or something else?

Right now here I am suggesting something different.  I'm suggesting that we directly compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending.  This has never been done before.  It is something completely different.  You clearly don't think it's a beneficial difference... and you aren't the only one.  So I have to accept the possibility that maybe I am crazy... which means that I can't possibly accept that it would be beneficial for me to have the same exact influence as Bill Gates.

You're proposing exactly the same broken system we Americans in particular are living under, not anything new or different.   The consequences of a de facto market-driven political system vast parts of which are controlled by a small group of oligarchs isn't working out terribly well for the public in general.

This really isn't the first place that I've tried to sell this idea... and perhaps it won't be the last.  Maybe I'll eventually find a place where there's some guy who does recognize the incredible value of the opportunity and he will seize it.  He will be instrumental in making it happen.  Then you will simply be one of the many guys who failed to recognize a valuable opportunity that was right in front of you.

No, I'm not at all worried about missing this opportunity, as the evidence is quite strong that it's not valuable.  And maybe the fact that you haven't got anyone else to buy into this should signal you to rethink your premises.  I mean, maybe they did laugh at Einstein, but they definitely also laugh at creationists and flat-earthers.

Maybe I don't know how to measure public will.  But if you're truly correct that voting is better than spending, then it would behoove you to figure out how to prove this to reasonable people.  All I know is that my experiment can potentially prove to me that voting is better than spending.  I'm not sure how you could possibly improve on this.  I'm not sure why you would even try to.  What more could you want than a believer in spending becoming a believer in voting?

I have provided evidence that your proposal is not a better reflection of public will than a vote, because a) the "experiment" you propose is already effectively being done in the realm of American politics and falsifies your thesis (such that it is), and b) your proposal cannot measure actual public will because it puts a price tag on participation and therefore prevents full public participation, and c) you cannot differentiate between many participants expressing their will and one high-resource individual expressing theirs in a manner that overwhelms the many.

[trdsf]

Wow.  It's like you think that your view is the only one that matters.

Yeah, it feels an awful lot like trying to have a debate with a creationist: no evidence counts unless it already backs up his position, everything else can be ignored without explanation why.

[Baruch]

"they both make unrealistic assumptions about human behavior and enlightened self interest." ... political-economy gold!  Eggheads of the underworld, unite!

[Xerographica]

I don't buy Windows because I have faith in Bill Gates' judgment.  I buy Windows because I have no fucking choice in the matter if I want to play certain games.  If I could get them to run under Linux, I'd be in a pure OpenSuSE environment in a heartbeat.  And the reason these games aren't available under Linux has nothing to do with the superiority of the Windows system, it has to do with the effective monopoly Microsoft has on the desktop computer market and with their monopolistic practices designed not to improve the computer software market in general but to maintain or enhance their own control over it.  I recommend looking up the history of Microsoft with regard to DR-DOS, WordPerfect and Novell.  Happily, this situation is slowly changing, but only slowly.

Which leads me to ask the (potentially derailing) question: do you think there is such a thing as an illegal monopolistic business practice?  Current law, of course, is that it's perfectly legal to have a monopoly, but that it is illegal to use that market control to prevent competition.  Do you agree?  Or do you take the position that once a monopoly is attained, the holder can do anything that's not otherwise illegal (no killing the opposing CEO, for instance) in order to maintain their monopoly?  Or something else?

From my very limited perspective, which naturally might be wrong, there's a huge disparity between your view and the economic view.  Is this disparity beneficial or detrimental?  I think it's very detrimental so I'll try and eliminate it by sharing some of the most relevant economics.  Like I said earlier in this thread, this strategy isn't usually very effective, but it's not like sharing the info is as hard as climbing Mt. Everest.

Here's Adam Smith's Invisible Hand...

It is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.  â€" Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Contrary to popular belief, it's not about self-interest, it's about people using their money to communicate what their interests are.  The supply is regulated by the spending signals of countless consumers. 

In Friedrich Hayek's 1945 Nobel essay he reinforced the idea that markets are all about communication...

We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating information if we want to understand its real function â€" a function which, of course, it fulfils less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price movement. â€" Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society

Hayek argued that command economies fail because, in the absence of prices, they are unable to utilize all the relevant and necessary knowledge that is dispersed among all the consumers and producers.

In 1954 the Nobel economist Paul Samuelson, who was a liberal, critiqued Hayek's essay by pointing out that, because of the free-rider problem, prices don't work so well for public goods...

But, and this is the point sensed by Wicksell but perhaps not fully appreciated by Lindahl, now it is in the selfish interest of each person to give false signals, to pretend to have less interest in a given collective consumption activity than he really has, etc. â€"  Paul Samuelson, The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure

Samuelson's basic assumption was that the optimal supply of all goods is entirely dependent on honest signals.  The problem with a good like Linux is that you can benefit from it without having to pay for it.  Let's say that your true valuation of Linux is $40 bucks.  If you only donate $20 dollars to it, you still can fully benefit from it, but you can take the $20 bucks that you saved and use it to buy a nice steak.  The amount you spent on Linux would be a false signal because it would be less than your true valuation of it.  Your false signal on its own isn't so much of a problem... after all... you only cheated Linux out of $20 bucks.  The issue is when everybody else does the same thing.  When everybody's contribution to Linux is a lot less than their true valuation of it, then naturally it's going to be a lot lower quality than everybody truly wants it to be.  Also, there's going to be far fewer freely available alternatives to Linux than everybody truly wants. 

To be clear, the only reason that consumers have the incentive to be dishonest about their true valuation of Linux (a public good) is because they have the option to spend their money on steak (a private good) instead.  If this option was eliminated, then so too would be the incentive to be dishonest.  This was the point that the Nobel economist James Buchanan made in 1963...

Under most real-world taxing institutions, the tax price per unit at which collective goods are made available to the individual will depend, at least to some degree, on his own behavior. This element is not, however, important under the major tax institutions such as the personal income tax, the general sales tax, or the real property tax. With such structures, the individual may, by changing his private behavior, modify the tax base (and thus the tax price per unit of collective goods he utilizes), but he need not have any incentive to conceal his "true" preferences for public goods. - James M. Buchanan, The Economics of Earmarked Taxes

Let me hedge my bets by sharing how other people have explained the idea of individual earmarking...

One strand of this approach-initiated in Buchanan’s (1963) seminal paper-argues that the voter who might have approved a tax increase if it were earmarked for, say, environmental protection would oppose it under general fund financing because he or she may expect the increment to be allocated to an unfavored expenditure such as defense. Earmarked taxation then permits a more satisfactory expression of individual preferences. â€" Ranjit S. Teja, The Case for Earmarked Taxes

Individuals who have particularly negative feelings concerning a publicly provided good (e.g. Quakers on military expenditures, Prolifers on publicly funded abortions) have also at times suggested that they should be allowed to dissent by earmarking their taxes toward other public uses. â€" Marc Bilodeau, Tax-earmarking and separate school financing

Imagine if Netflix gave subscribers the opportunity to use their monthly fees to help rank the content.  Would subscribers have any incentive to be dishonest? Nope. This is simply because they would not have the option to spend their fees on things like food or clothes. Subscribers would not have the option to spend their fees outside of Netflix. Therefore, how subscribers earmarked their fees would honestly communicate their true valuations of the content.  The result would be the optimal supply of content. 

The expert economic discussion looks basically like this...

Adam Smith (1776): Consumers should have the freedom to spend their money to help rank goods.
Friedrich Hayek (1945): It's true, the market is the only way to utilize all the dispersed knowledge.
Paul Samuelson (1954): While the market does work for private goods, it fails for public goods.
James Buchanan (1963): Actually, earmarking would allow the market to also work for public goods.

This is economics in a nutshell. We all should have learned this in school. Why didn't we? Well, schools aren't markets. So of course there's a big disparity between what students learn, and what they should learn.

Now what? Obviously these highly regarded experts didn't bring up your concern that people unequally value $100 dollars.  Their main focus was on communication.  So the real economic issue is whether your payment honestly communicates your true valuation.  Does the amount of money that you've donated to this forum honestly communicate your true valuation of it?  If so, then you must be the exception rather than the rule.  Because if you were the rule, then taxation should be voluntary rather than compulsory. 

My proposed experiment will not eliminate the free-rider problem.  But it would give members of this forum more incentive to make a donation.  This is simply because they would be given the perk of elevating/promoting/advertising their favorite people and things. 

Your concern is that using donations to rank things would essentially silence the poorer members.  But it's a basic fact that no members, whether poor or rich, would benefit if this forum went under for lack of financial support.  So I think it's entirely reasonable and desirable to give the most weight to the preferences of the people who are most responsible for keeping this forum afloat.  Plus, everybody would still be able to vote, which would allow us to compare the relative effectiveness of voting and spending. 

Regarding your criticism of my proposed experiment... it doesn't make a lick of sense.  On the one hand, you argue that voting is clearly better than spending.  But then on the other hand you argue that my experiment won't reveal that voting is clearly better than spending. 

My proposed experiment would allow us to directly compare voting and spending.  If, as you strongly believe, voting is clearly better than spending, how in the world could my experiment not reveal this? 

Here's how you should respond... "Yes, I do strongly believe that voting is clearly better than spending, but your experiment will not reveal this because __________________________ "   Please fill in the blank. 

Hopefully it's very clear that there's a big disparity between what you say about economics, and what the experts have said about it.  Either you are wrong or they are.  I'm pretty sure that they aren't wrong.  The optimal supply does depend on honest signals.  In order for your signal to be honest, your payment must equal your valuation. 

[Baruch]

Sorry, quoting any economist, including Adam Smith pretty much destroyed your argument.  Or quoting any politician.  Might as well quote Al Capone on law enforcement.

[trdsf]

Here's how you should respond... "Yes, I do strongly believe that voting is clearly better than spending, but your experiment will not reveal this because __________________________ "   Please fill in the blank. 

I have filled in that blank multiple times this thread, and you know I have.  You just refuse to address the issues I have raised and for you to pull this stunt now simply confirms that you're a dishonest debater.  You don't see what you don't want to see, which is what makes this exercise exactly like debating a creationist.

I have been perfectly clear what my objections to your thesis, assumptions and methodology are.