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How Much is Your Right to Vote Worth?
Attila Dimedici writes "Two thirds of the students at NYU would give up their right to vote in the next election for a full scholarship. Some would be satisfied with an ipod. A few would be willing to give up the right for the rest of their lives for one million dollars."
Theoretically, if we had candidates that represented us instead of the interests of corporations and special interest groups, our right to vote would be worth a great deal.
However, since our choices are limited to list A of sycophants or list B of sycophants, I'm thinking the college kids have over-valued the vote.
We can't elect anyone worth much to the general population, we can't get them impeached when they break the laws, violate the constitution, torture, engage in warmaking, arrest without probable cause, hold people incommunicado without hearings for extended periods of time, make a huge industry out of imprisoning the population for personal choices about what intoxicants they prefer...
Yes, I'd say an ipod is worth considerably more than a vote is today. It shouldn't be; but here we are.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
How much is my vote worth? I can answer that pretty easily...
Give me enough cash to live on comfortably, buy an island of my own where I won't be bothered, enough to bring people I want to visit there, and of course protect against pirates. Anyone know how much an army of ninjas costs?
Everyone has their price - that's mine.
I'd almost say who wouldn't give up their vote for a big material gain? One vote makes a really small difference, and most votes are basically between a douche and a turd.
We have a saying in Poland:
Q: What's the height of insolence?
A: Vote for PiS and leave the country.
(PiS is a major party, extreme right-wing when it comes to religion, nationalism and authoritarism, strong left economically). And no wonders, there's a mass emigration going out of Poland...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I'll only give up voting when they pry the lever from my cold, dead hands!
Seriously, even though corporations have control of our government at the moment, voting is not a right that you can sell or give away.
Vote at the polls, vote by taking action, and vote for yourself as someone who can make our country better.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
When I gain power, they'll be the first to the wall.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I would happily and joyfully give up my right to vote in the next election for one million dollars.
A quarter of it would go to the Ron Paul campaign, since I really enjoy how he's fucking with the status quo. Half of it would go to the campaign of whatever final candidate I like the best. A quarter would go to me, since I'm greedy that way.
"But Zorba! How could you give up your vote!" Come on, do you honestly think that the various groups I like couldn't get far more than a single vote with that much cash spent on advertising? I'm not giving up my vote by taking this deal - I'm multiplying it enormously.
I don't know what the "break-even" point would be on this trade, I'd have to think about that seriously. But if you don't mind going into advertising a little bit, pretty much everyone should be willing to give up their next vote - or even all of their votes - for a sufficient amount of money. Unless the physical action of putting a piece of paper in a box is really that important to you, I suppose.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Voting is a precious right but it exists, in a practical sense, to give people influence over their government. Viewed that way, swapping the right to vote for anything that gives someone a better ability to influence the government is a smart trade.
How does this work in practice? Large corps have great political influence even though they have no right to vote. What they do have is money. In the real world, then, money applied to the political process is the equivalent of voting.
Given enough money that I am enabled to influence politics via means other than voting, I would consider selling my right to vote a perfectly rational, even patriotic thing to do.
In my case, I'm eligible for early retirement and could be politically active in a variety of ways post-retirement, but my pension wouldn't be big enough to give me enough free time to labor toward political goals. With just enough money to augment my pension I'd be free to pursue tasks other than eking out an existence.
I figure USD$1M would do it, barely. I'd certainly sell my right to vote for USD$5M.
It costs about $160,000 for us to go to NYU for 4 years. A bit more, actually. I'd trade my vote for $160k - imagine the political influence you can have with $160,000. In addition, I'd trade my vote for $160k and then buy votes with iPod touches. Every vote makes a difference, but that kind of money makes more difference.
Is it any surprise that people value the right to vote differently?
Obviously, since voter turnout is less than 50%, over half the people in the US value the right to vote less than the amount of effort and time required to actually vote.
Consider that, from a logical perspective, VALUE(right to vote) == SUM{[IMPACT(act of voting)]/[(COST(act of voting)]}.
Only when elected government commits truly heinous acts, or actions that directly affect the person in question, does the impact of the act of voting get large enough to make the value of the right to vote very high. This is magnified by the dilution of votes -- if you are in a state with 10 million people, ask yourself -- how much does your vote really count?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You could have far more influence over the government with that $1,000,000 than you ever will by voting.
What would THAT change, pray tell?
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.
Now all we need is to vote in candidates who are willing to enact a retroactive 200% tax on vote selling and we can pay off the national debt.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If the candidates are equally good (or bad) to someone, it doesn't matter whom he votes. However, if a significant portion of people gives up their right to vote, one cannot reasonably expect the behavior of all the candidates to remain the same.
All this really reveals is priorities:
"Two thirds of the students at NYU would give up their right to vote in the next election for a full scholarship."
Okay, so how about they all vote for a candidate who will deliver a European-style Universal Third Level Education?
Yup...
This is hard for me to draw a strong opinion on, because both sides can be argued in many ways. On one hand, those that would willingly give up their right to vote for *any* reason maybe should not be voting in the first place. The opportunity to vote is a privilege that should be seen as priceless. However, education is a path to freedom. Perhaps giving up the right to vote in one election, but having the opportunity to become educated and therefore possibly a more useful and better-informed citizen would be a tradeoff. Maybe they're trading something priceless (if they have no other opportunity for college) for a temporary drop of another priceless right.
The emperor is naked.
If it's just US elections, give me the million and I'll set myself up in British Columbia.
At least you guys have a choice. Voting is compulsory in Australia, and every time there is a local election we are requited to turn out.
Wow, you would think that everyone who was against compulsory voting would have voted against a law like that.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
We'd get a President who could run a successful, large company -- a damn big step up, I'd say.
I *DID* RTFA... While most of the discussion (and the intro) was about the *next* election, some of it also referred to the right to vote, period... including the very last sentence/comment: "anyone who'd sell his lifelong right to vote should be deported."
To which I say: A-freaking-men.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
a tacit endorsement of the Steve Jobs for Ultimate Ruler of the World campaign anyway?
They got my vote!
Monstar L
The going rate for the year 2000 election was the $200-300 tax rebate Bush promised. I remember, quite explicitly, a colleague saying "I want $200, I'm voting for Bush."
People don't care about their country, their children's futures, or their own long-term well being. They say they do, but they don't. When it comes down to it, they sell out their souls, their childrens' souls, and their nations souls for a pittance.
The truth is that people get the government they deserve. A shit government elected by lazy, apathetic, and happily clueless citizens who simply don't deserve better.
If they did, they wouldn't elect the people they do. The shit politicians we elect are *obviously* shit politicians. Few try and say they're not going to do that, so they vote for the joke politicians: Ron Paul, Ross Perot, whoever. Instead of sitting there with the politician they actually like and voting for them, even when they know they'll fail. Admitting they voted for someone who lost. Instead, we disconnect and feign apathy, as we've spoiled ourselves in our fantasies about what kind of government we deserve. Why do we get so many shit politicians? The good leaders gave up on the US citizenry, for good reason.
Want proof? How many people pay attention in the primaries, where the good candidates actually show up once in a while?
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
What was the other third thinking ? Seriously I don't think they believe their vote matter or will possibly change anything.... My guess is that democracy represents some kind of religion for them, a cult of the state where each good citizen does his duty by casting his ballot, protecting his precious liberty... in this mindset, their right to vote holds some kind of mystical power. I am glad the two other third don't buy in this naive cult, freedom has always been destroyed through the ballot.
\u262D = \u5350
Federal elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY electoral votes go to the Democrats.
State elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, the NY assembly wastes all the money and asks for more.
Local elections: It doesn't matter who I vote for, everything is dictated by the federal and state governments, except how much money my town wastes on doomed projects.
I'd like a Ritter Sport, but would settle for a few Hershey's Kisses.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
I gave up my vote, simply for a chance to live and work in Europe.
Overseas votes aren't counted, unless what? There's a tie... ok.
I still vote out of ceremony, but I know full well it is tossed into the garbage can each time.
I think all this shows is what people perceive their vote is really worth. All you can really do with your vote is join an effort to throw the bums out. Maybe the next set of bums will be better, but it's usually only a matter of degrees.
A really interesting experiment would be if we allowed US citizens to sell their citizenship to someone else. The deal is once you sell it, you can never get it back. How much would you take to give up your US citizenship forever? That's when we'd find out how serious people really are. It would also give us an idea how the rest of the world views living here.
Would I sell mine? That's a good question. I'm pretty ashamed of the last seven years of US history and shamed by the 25% still supporting a corrupt, incompetent administration. Seeing Bush in a prison cell next to Cheney and Rove, stand a couple telco execs up against the wall for cooperating with the effort to spy on the American public, purge the FBI and Justice Dept. of anyone who used investigative powers toward political ends...the answer might be different. But I don't see that happening.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Your vote is not worth a lot. That is, your specific, individual vote is worth next to nothing. You can influence all of the elections you would have voted on far more with a million dollars than with a single vote.
Of course, the point is that the right to vote is priceless. And if everyone could exchange their right to vote for cash, then suddenly that million dollars would not buy you any influence.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
If you want to really cheat the buyer, sell them your lifetime votes for a million dollars. Then kill yourself. That'll teach 'em.
I'd like to see how many of those college students would give up their other Constitutionally protected right, freedom from slavery. Would they take a million dollars in exchange for becoming a slave for about 40 years, until they turned 65 years old? Ten million?
Rights are inalienable. We can't surrender them, though sometimes we can suffer their infringement. The more temporary the infringement, the more voluntary, the more we can suffer it. But any infringement pressures people in a way that inevitably becomes intolerable, and we don't tolerate it. That's why we create governments to protect those rights. Because not only our rights, but the rights of everyone around us, are infringed only at a much greater cost, even if it can sometimes be postponed.
--
make install -not war
From Rational Choice Theory you can calculate how much a vote is worth for you (assuming that you are rational):
http://wikisum.com/w/Riker_and_Ordeshook:_A_theory_of_the_calculus_of_voting
This is like saying if Firefox is broken somewhere then jump into the source and fix it.
On one hand I tend to agree with the statement, but then again running for office (or fixing Firefox) is not for the faint-hearted. Or I suppose you can just say that in life we have winners and losers - deal with it :(
Actually, you can't give up your right to vote, because not voting is a type of voting; you are voting for the status quo.
In effect, by not voting, you are saying, "I am happy with the status quo", there are no issues I really care about. In a way, that is a testimony to the wonderful job the government is doing; most of the population considers the government "background noise", irrelevant to their daily lives, which is an excellent place for a democratic government to be.
In this thread, we hear a lot about differences between leaders, either in Congress, or in the Executive branch. But the leaders are not the ones who really decide what laws get enforced, and what direction society goes in.
Kennedy Kasselbaum (HIPPA) or Sarbanes Oxley? The first spawned a nice black market in medical records for debt collectors looking to locate people, and the second was just another way for accounting and consulting firms to siphon money from stockholders. The fact is, Congress passes laws and the bureaucracy and the private sector ignore, them, or interpret them to do the exact opposite. Even if someone in congress wanted to make a real change in society, by the time it got past the hundreds of others, it would be watered down to a meaningless gesture. Look at the records of the number of bills that die before getting voted on, for example.
The same is true for the leaders in the Executive branch. Do you really think that Bush is continuing the Iraq war all by himself? Look at his approval rating. he doesn't have that kind of personal support. It isn't even Bush plus the Senators that are blocking the Iraq withdrawal bill passed yesterday. It is the infrastructure, the social network behind them that pushing the war (for entirely different reasons than the ones stated publicly, by the way). That social network is not voters, with voting percentages so low, voters are ignorable. As long as you can buy enough media time, the job is yours, is the current thinking. No, that social network is members of the bureaucracy (mostly State and Defense) and the complex network of obligations and favors they are embedded in that are the real force behind the decisions.
And, counterintuitive as it may seem, that is the system working exactly as it was designed to do, to resist short term fads but adapt to long term trends. It is obvious by now, that the US will get out of Iraq, although the exact date is uncertain. That is because it is obvious that the majority of the American public wants it, not because of a one time vote, however nationwide.
When I was young, a half century ago, many minorities did not have full citizenship; I remember how Blacks were treated, and gangs hunting Jews for sport in my neighborhood. Now we have Barack Obama as a legitimate candidate for president, and I have run into only two serious antisemites in many years.
That took decades of Americans working toward the world they wanted to become, not instantaneously upon the passage of Title 7.
And that is why votes are not important. They have no real power. The real vote is the one you make every day, to strive in your everyday behaviour as though you were living in the world you would vote to create. Because that is the only way that world is ever going to materialize, just look at prohibition for an example of what happens when a vote doesn't match what people want.
And, in the end, thats why America works, and why we should be so proud of it. Because we do not need to pull a lever in order to make a dream of a better world come true. We don't need revolutions to make changes to what we are. All we really need to do is want to make it happen, and those levers pull themselves, sooner or later.
There is no denying we, as a people, still have many flaws and inequities. But when you look at how far we have come, in so short a time, you cannot deny that we must be doing something right.
So don't worry about whether those students would give up the right to vote, worry about what sort of world they want to live in, because voting or not, thats the world they (and us) WILL be living in.
My right to vote is worth the lives of every US politician.
*cracks knuckles threateningly*
In my opinion, voting for either a Democrat or Republican in a national election, at this point in time, is equivalent to a vote for the "status quo" of corruption in our "democratic system".
.... but the more votes are cast for folks like him, the more of a "wake up call" is sent to whoever DOES win that some people out there are really unhappy with the current state of affairs. They're going to start asking "How can *I* win those people over when I'm up for re-election?" and it might cause some useful change.
On the OTHER hand, rather than abstaining from voting (and having your "voice" be completely ignored), you could vote for an independent candidate. I know I'm casting a vote for Ron Paul, this election year, if at all possible. It's obvious he's not a candidate who advocates leaving the current systems in place and functional "the way we've always done it". Does he have a chance of actually winning? Well, probably not
T.J. was a deist, if that. Please stop the mythmaking about our founders being Christians, it just fuels the wackaloons who want to turn America into a theocracy.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .