15 ms·

Too Much Dark Money in Almonds

238 points by gbear605 7y ago

YawningAngel 7y ago
The writer is very quick to assume Exxon Mobil's own figure for political spending is disingenuously low, but very quick to countenance the idea that the total amount of spend on political influence is publicly available. Maybe more money is being spent nontransparently? For example, it's a common practice in the UK to hire former (or current!) politicians for sinecure positions at greatly inflated salaries. I doubt anyone admits to these quasi-bribes as being political spending.
- opportune 7y ago
  Yeah, there is tons of money spent on politics outside the above the board lobbying industry. If I run a commercial saying to vote for Pedro I’m not going to be counted in these metrics.
  - tdcbfdct3 7y ago
    Yes you will be. https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/ https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/
    - kortilla 7y ago
      Unlikely. Most small time stuff won’t ever be reported properly like that.
    - opportune 7y ago
      What if I don’t tell the FEC? What if I run an ad that’s not directly affiliated with a political campaign like via PragerU?
      - sb057 7y ago
        Then you've broken the law by failing to register under the appropriate channels and are subject to prosecution.
- aetherson 7y ago
  I'm sure they don't report such things as political spending. But it also seems hard to me to imagine that adding up to very much. There are what, each year maybe a few hundred politicians who leave office and might be up for such patronage? If all of them get a million dollars, that's a few hundred million dollars a year. The movers and shakers of Washington DC are also... I mean, a lot of them become lobbyists or media people, and while they probably get good deals in doing that, it's hard to argue that a former congressional committee chairperson is going to be a bad lobbyist or whatever. I think that actually, the people who become movers and shakers in government tend to not have a ton of trouble getting enough money to live solidly upper-class lifestyles, and they have self-selected as people who value having influence more than money.
  - YawningAngel 7y ago
    The specific mechanism is quite limited in scope, but others aren't. Offering contracts, loans, or investment to companies owned by politicians allows the transfer of considerably more money, for example. I'm not staking a claim as to how much this happens or what mechanisms are used, merely pointing out that it isn't clear that the public figure is accurate.
  - blackflame7000 7y ago
    I mean, Netflix effectively tripled Obama's net worth with one deal. I'm not saying it's quid pro quo, but ex-politicians can command quite a lot of money in exchange for their influence.
    - wyxuan 7y ago
      That’s arguably more for the name he provided rather than influence
    - gwern 7y ago
      That Netflix could so casually triple Obama's net worth kind of emphasizes OP's point. (Note that quite aside from being the most recent two-term US president, who is considerably more popular than the current office-holder, Obama was a best-selling author & Nobel Laureate.)
- pessimizer 7y ago
  > it's a common practice in the UK to hire former (or current!) politicians ...or their consulting firms, or the companies they run, sit on the boards of, or simply own a large piece of.
- loeg 7y ago
  The Exxon thing is an off-the-cuff joke, not a serious statement of malfeasance.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Politicians and big business in their district don't have to collude. They already have the same interests. If the Big Company does badly, voters will lose their jobs, and it will be a tough reelection. The politicians don't need to be bribed.
foobar_ 7y ago
One of the ideas that I cherish is radical transparency. It would be better to see exactly what each company wants to donate to and how money is being spent. Money is a form of voting.
- aetherson 7y ago
  You basically do get that, but it's hard to work around indirections. If I'm in company A and I give money to an industry lobbying group X (and so do companies B, C, D, and E), and then industry lobbying group X gives money to super-PAC alpha, and then super-PAC alpha donates to politicians Bob and Fred, then... how does that become digestible to the public? Some amount of "Company A's" money went to Fred, but it's gone through several fungible buckets since then, and you can't necessarily draw a clean link. Informally, it may (or may not!) be that Fred was told by someone that his continuing to get these kinds of checks was dependent on him doing a specific favor for company A, but probably not everyone who receives some money that was originally sourced at company A did.
  - foobar_ 7y ago
    Makes sense. How about git log for money?
    - setzer22 7y ago
      This looks like a perfect use case for blockchain... oh wait
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I'd be fine[1] if every time this money changed hands it was fully taxed at the pre-trump corporation book rates... so somewhere upwards of 30%. 1. Well, finer - it'd be nice just to not have lobbying and switch over to public funding.
- cwyers 7y ago
  There is such a thing as too much transparency in government. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-case-for-corruption/357568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-cas... TL;DR: It's hard to build consensus out in the open. Consensus requires the ability to apply positive and negative pressure to get followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. Radical transparency cuts down on the levers to build that consensus and makes it harder to pass budgets and other necessary laws.
hondo77 7y ago
> The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year. How much of that is actually from sales in the US vs. exports? In 2018, California produced 80% of the worldwide almond crop and exported 70% of it. Americans aren't quite as hungry for almonds as the author assumes. Ref: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/07/09/record-crop-for-california-almonds-as-growers-uncertain-about-tariffs/ http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/07/09/record-crop-for-...
- bduerst 7y ago
  I was curious, so I looked into it - apparently the US exported $4.5 billion worth of almonds 2017, with Spain being the largest consumer ($0.5 B). Also learned that the US imports almost exactly as many pecans as it exports. Seems like they may have included it based on export percentages.
koboll 7y ago
>If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is going to do it, and their $100 is just going to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean that doesn’t change anything. People know that a single person can’t make a difference, so they don’t want to spend any money, so no money gets spent. I wonder if something like the National Popular Vote compact could work here. It works like this: state legislatures pass a law that says if enough states sign onto the compact to pass 270 electoral votes, their electors are automatically assigned to the winner of the popular vote. In this way, nothing changes and no one has to sacrifice anything until enough states agree to actually effect a change, and then they act together to effectively obviate the Electoral College. Sure, if I donate $100 to a homelessness charity, it'll feel like a drop in the bucket. But if some charity starts an initiative to take my credit card information and only charge it once enough people donate to end homelessness, I might be more inclined to do it. Either the threshold is reached and homelessness ends, or I get a feeling of altruistic pride for doing nothing. Everyone wins!
- snegu 7y ago
  That's how kickstarter works, isn't it?
- newnewpdro 7y ago
  I don't get the impression that everyone who says they want to end homelessness means they want to give the homeless homes for nothing to do so. Many people just don't want to see it on the streets. It's ruining their view and social standing having such riff-raff on the streets of their expensive world-class cities. But give them homes? Sure, if they include bars and a keyless lock. That's the impression I get from many Americans. The whole empathic nuanced understanding of homelessness, substance addiction, and mental illness, is a fairly niche perspective and something I only encountered substantially in the SF bay area. And even then, it was mostly just paying lip service to the popular attitude from what I could tell, few actually did anything about the problem.
  - opportune 7y ago
jessaustin 7y ago
Think tanks may be more talent-limited... Zing!
EdwardDiego 7y ago
The biggest problem with almonds is the unsustainable farming practices used to grow them.
- OrgNet 7y ago
  let's grow them where no water is sustainably available...
  - s1artibartfast 7y ago
    That depends on your definition of sustainable. Most almonds are/were grown using sacramento river, which can provide a self replenishing source of water. It is more of a water use issue than a sustainability issue.
    - EdwardDiego 7y ago
      Was also thinking about the massive issue they have with the large monoculture meaning they can't really support self-sustaining populations of bees. Of course, it's not just almonds that have this issue, wine regions in my country (NZ) have the exact same problem which they're belatedly trying to fix.
dumbfoundded 7y ago
If I had to guess why there's so little money in politics I'd guess it's because there are more efficient ways to spend the money. Political contributions right now seem to function mostly as a tax avoidance strategy. These donations are effectively free. A company or wealthy individual can either pay taxes or donate the money to a "non-political" think tank to promote policies they'd like to see. Convincing someone to influence elections is easy if they'd pay it in taxes anyways. I'm guessing it's difficult to convince someone that their post tax money is most efficiently spent influencing the political system. One last note, there's also many other types of interactions companies have with the government. There's state level, regulatory bodies, local and county influences. Companies interact highly with the government at the local levels because they're easier to manipulate than the federal government.
- wcarss 7y ago
  It sounds like you're suggesting that every dollar donated to a non-profit entity results in a dollar less of payable taxes -- I'm not aware of a country with a tax/donation trade-off like that, but would be interested to hear about it if you do. The best deal that I'm aware of is a reduction in your reported taxable income equal to the donation, resulting in a savings of the affected tax bracket rates * the dollars donated per bracket, but even that kind of thing is somewhat limited as far as I'm aware (eg up to x% of income is allowed per year). I might have just misunderstood you -- either way, curious if you know something about donations I don't or had a different idea in mind!
  - ipython 7y ago
    You can get close by purchasing tax credits in some states - see for example https://www.capfin.net/blog/a-powerful-charitable-donation-option-for-virginians https://www.capfin.net/blog/a-powerful-charitable-donation-o...
- andyjsong 7y ago
  Not sure about companies, but as an individual, political contributions are NOT tax-deductible.[1] On a personal note, I like Andrew Yang's approach to wash out special interest groups and lobbyist with "democracy dollars" [2] of $100 for every citizen. Apparently it's been working in Seattle, but would love to hear from any Seattlites on the progress of the program. [1] https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-2/are-your-political-campaign-contributions-tax-deductible-11380/ https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-... [2] https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/
dr_dshiv 7y ago
This article was one sided. It never seriously considered the relative value of almonds, particularly when roasted and salted. Sad.
- andrewflnr 7y ago
  I think he just assumed they were more valuable than politicians, regardless of preparation.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Roasted and salted politicians, don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
baddox 7y ago
Isn't this just a way of saying that effective governance in a representative democracy is a public good, and that thus we should expect it to be underproduced?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
buboard 7y ago
Thats very un-democratic, it implies that people with more money should have more votes. This would quickly dissolve a democracy
nitwit005 7y ago
> First, we should expect ordinary people to donate more to politics. My mother donated once to some Democratic volunteer who came to her door. They hounded her for more donations. She got mailings, phone calls, multiple people at her door. She vowed never to give them another cent. Perhaps an unusually bad experience, but generally you do get punished this way for donating. I emptied my grandmother's mailbox when she became ill, and due to her charitable giving, it was absolutely crammed with political and charity mailings.
- shameshame 7y ago
  I have experienced similar with charity giving and donating to my alma mater. It was shocking.
- mmanfrin 7y ago
  Honestly, unfortunately: same. Nearly every time I've donated to something political, it's come to bite me in the ass. Donate to a candidate? They sell/give my info to related PACs and groups (and there's no stopping it, because it's considered political speech to solicit for donations). Last time I gave money to one of the fundraisers with vests that hang around downtown, my credit card got charged at an eastern European online retailer. I feel the only real way to avoid this is to donate through an anonymous vehicle, but I believe anonymous political donation vehicles and everything that came with the Citizens United decision to be at the core of the rot in our system.
  - ALittleLight 7y ago
    I wonder if there is a service that could handle the donation and subsequent trashing of incoming correspondence for you. Although, I also wonder about giving money to annoying people.
  - vkou 7y ago
    The core of the rot is not anonymous donations. At the end of the day, nobody actually cares that Candidate X is receiving money from Puppykillers Inc. The problem is that Candidate X owes her success to donated money. She is now beholden to her donors, not her constituents. Democracy, for sale by the dollar isn't democracy, it's a slide into oligarchy. The only solution to this problem is public-only funding of campaigns.
psvj 7y ago
More money would not generate better outcomes. period.
psvj 7y ago
more money would not generate "better" outcomes. period.
SubiculumCode 7y ago
This why I like Democracy Dollar proposal, giving each voter $100 to give to candidates.
whiddershins 7y ago
I posted something similar on the author’s site, but I wonder if this is just “revealed preference.” Perhaps people don’t really care nearly as much about the outcome of elections as they say they do. I think most people suspect the outcome of an election won’t affect their lives nearly as dramatically as people claim, there’s too much inertia in the system. Also, maybe, just maybe, people are subconsciously more intellectually humble than they let on, and realize that predictions about the impact of policy and elections are notoriously unreliable. Taking a political position can serve to identify yourself with a certain social group, or as part of your personal identity, or if you are feeling somewhat metaphysical it can indicate the structure of your ethical system. In all of those cases there is no need to actually spend money to achieve the goal. If I am an “Apple person” I need to spend $1,000 on a phone to demonstrate this. But if I’m a Sanders supporter I can do all this signaling by expressing outrage on Facebook and at dinner parties without spending a dime. If this theory is correct, a political movement that could somehow get people to feel they have to contribute money to be a “real” supporter with associated social status would be drowning in contributions.
jamisteven 7y ago
This has seriously got to be the dumbest, most uneducated piece of writing I have ever read. Yes, lets all just throw money at a broken problem, that'll make it better. "Politics" as the author refers to it as, needs the opposite of funding, it needs to be cut off entirely from donors to see who still stands. The US Government, will have a fund where it gives a set number to each candidate for campaigning purposes and that is ALL that can be used. Already own a private jet? Tough shit, cant use it for campaigning! Already a millionaire with lots of millionaire friends? Sorry charlie! That is the only way we will get back to grass roots form of electing. Simply throwing money at something rarely fixes a problem.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  Maybe you missed this statement: > I don’t want more money in politics. But the same factors that keep money out of politics keep it out of charity too. And if "throwing money at something rarely fixes a problem" then what is a better way? Relying on volunteers? What are you donating all your time to day after day for no money? How do you think you incentivize people to spend the majority of their waking hours on something you think is important? I don't think we should necessarily put more money into politics. I know that will only further consolidate power in a given country. But I'm not sure that was the point of the article either. It points out that it _seems_ like the rational thing to do would be for those with money, especially corporations with vast sums of it, to spend more on their candidate of choice. Yet they don't, at least not as much as the author expects, or expects us to expect. I didn't get the feeling it was saying the only way to save things is to throw more money at it, I think it's asking what is the underlying force that's keeping everyone from doing that? If we can figure that out, maybe we can understand some latent properties of the system we're in with regards to the charity parts.
gnodar 7y ago
> Most research (plus the 2016 results) confirms that money has little effect on victory Maybe money in the form of "contributions", okay. But having money is still the largest predictor for policy direction. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence"[0] [0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

238 points by gbear605 7y ago

The writer is very quick to assume Exxon Mobil's own figure for political spending is disingenuously low, but very quick to countenance the idea that the total amount of spend on political influence is publicly available. Maybe more money is being spent nontransparently? For example, it's a common practice in the UK to hire former (or current!) politicians for sinecure positions at greatly inflated salaries. I doubt anyone admits to these quasi-bribes as being political spending.

opportune 7y ago
Yeah, there is tons of money spent on politics outside the above the board lobbying industry. If I run a commercial saying to vote for Pedro I’m not going to be counted in these metrics.
- tdcbfdct3 7y ago
  Yes you will be. https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/ https://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Unlikely. Most small time stuff won’t ever be reported properly like that.
  - opportune 7y ago
    What if I don’t tell the FEC? What if I run an ad that’s not directly affiliated with a political campaign like via PragerU?
    - sb057 7y ago
      Then you've broken the law by failing to register under the appropriate channels and are subject to prosecution.
aetherson 7y ago
I'm sure they don't report such things as political spending. But it also seems hard to me to imagine that adding up to very much. There are what, each year maybe a few hundred politicians who leave office and might be up for such patronage? If all of them get a million dollars, that's a few hundred million dollars a year. The movers and shakers of Washington DC are also... I mean, a lot of them become lobbyists or media people, and while they probably get good deals in doing that, it's hard to argue that a former congressional committee chairperson is going to be a bad lobbyist or whatever. I think that actually, the people who become movers and shakers in government tend to not have a ton of trouble getting enough money to live solidly upper-class lifestyles, and they have self-selected as people who value having influence more than money.
- YawningAngel 7y ago
  The specific mechanism is quite limited in scope, but others aren't. Offering contracts, loans, or investment to companies owned by politicians allows the transfer of considerably more money, for example. I'm not staking a claim as to how much this happens or what mechanisms are used, merely pointing out that it isn't clear that the public figure is accurate.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  I mean, Netflix effectively tripled Obama's net worth with one deal. I'm not saying it's quid pro quo, but ex-politicians can command quite a lot of money in exchange for their influence.
  - wyxuan 7y ago
    That’s arguably more for the name he provided rather than influence
  - gwern 7y ago
    That Netflix could so casually triple Obama's net worth kind of emphasizes OP's point. (Note that quite aside from being the most recent two-term US president, who is considerably more popular than the current office-holder, Obama was a best-selling author & Nobel Laureate.)
pessimizer 7y ago
> it's a common practice in the UK to hire former (or current!) politicians ...or their consulting firms, or the companies they run, sit on the boards of, or simply own a large piece of.
loeg 7y ago
The Exxon thing is an off-the-cuff joke, not a serious statement of malfeasance.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Politicians and big business in their district don't have to collude. They already have the same interests. If the Big Company does badly, voters will lose their jobs, and it will be a tough reelection. The politicians don't need to be bribed.

foobar_ 7y ago

One of the ideas that I cherish is radical transparency. It would be better to see exactly what each company wants to donate to and how money is being spent. Money is a form of voting.

aetherson 7y ago
You basically do get that, but it's hard to work around indirections. If I'm in company A and I give money to an industry lobbying group X (and so do companies B, C, D, and E), and then industry lobbying group X gives money to super-PAC alpha, and then super-PAC alpha donates to politicians Bob and Fred, then... how does that become digestible to the public? Some amount of "Company A's" money went to Fred, but it's gone through several fungible buckets since then, and you can't necessarily draw a clean link. Informally, it may (or may not!) be that Fred was told by someone that his continuing to get these kinds of checks was dependent on him doing a specific favor for company A, but probably not everyone who receives some money that was originally sourced at company A did.
- foobar_ 7y ago
  Makes sense. How about git log for money?
  - setzer22 7y ago
    This looks like a perfect use case for blockchain... oh wait
- munk-a 7y ago
  I'd be fine[1] if every time this money changed hands it was fully taxed at the pre-trump corporation book rates... so somewhere upwards of 30%. 1. Well, finer - it'd be nice just to not have lobbying and switch over to public funding.
cwyers 7y ago
There is such a thing as too much transparency in government. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-case-for-corruption/357568/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/the-cas... TL;DR: It's hard to build consensus out in the open. Consensus requires the ability to apply positive and negative pressure to get followers to agree to things that are in the general interest but aren't in their interests. Radical transparency cuts down on the levers to build that consensus and makes it harder to pass budgets and other necessary laws.

hondo77 7y ago

> The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year. How much of that is actually from sales in the US vs. exports? In 2018, California produced 80% of the worldwide almond crop and exported 70% of it. Americans aren't quite as hungry for almonds as the author assumes. Ref: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/07/09/record-crop-for-california-almonds-as-growers-uncertain-about-tariffs/ http://www.capradio.org/articles/2018/07/09/record-crop-for-...

bduerst 7y ago
I was curious, so I looked into it - apparently the US exported $4.5 billion worth of almonds 2017, with Spain being the largest consumer ($0.5 B). Also learned that the US imports almost exactly as many pecans as it exports. Seems like they may have included it based on export percentages.

koboll 7y ago

>If everyone who cared about homelessness donated $100 to the problem, homelessness would be solved. Nobody does this, because they know that nobody else is going to do it, and their $100 is just going to feel like a tiny drop in the ocean that doesn’t change anything. People know that a single person can’t make a difference, so they don’t want to spend any money, so no money gets spent. I wonder if something like the National Popular Vote compact could work here. It works like this: state legislatures pass a law that says if enough states sign onto the compact to pass 270 electoral votes, their electors are automatically assigned to the winner of the popular vote. In this way, nothing changes and no one has to sacrifice anything until enough states agree to actually effect a change, and then they act together to effectively obviate the Electoral College. Sure, if I donate $100 to a homelessness charity, it'll feel like a drop in the bucket. But if some charity starts an initiative to take my credit card information and only charge it once enough people donate to end homelessness, I might be more inclined to do it. Either the threshold is reached and homelessness ends, or I get a feeling of altruistic pride for doing nothing. Everyone wins!

snegu 7y ago
That's how kickstarter works, isn't it?
newnewpdro 7y ago
I don't get the impression that everyone who says they want to end homelessness means they want to give the homeless homes for nothing to do so. Many people just don't want to see it on the streets. It's ruining their view and social standing having such riff-raff on the streets of their expensive world-class cities. But give them homes? Sure, if they include bars and a keyless lock. That's the impression I get from many Americans. The whole empathic nuanced understanding of homelessness, substance addiction, and mental illness, is a fairly niche perspective and something I only encountered substantially in the SF bay area. And even then, it was mostly just paying lip service to the popular attitude from what I could tell, few actually did anything about the problem.
- opportune 7y ago

jessaustin 7y ago

Think tanks may be more talent-limited... Zing!

EdwardDiego 7y ago

The biggest problem with almonds is the unsustainable farming practices used to grow them.

OrgNet 7y ago
let's grow them where no water is sustainably available...
- s1artibartfast 7y ago
  That depends on your definition of sustainable. Most almonds are/were grown using sacramento river, which can provide a self replenishing source of water. It is more of a water use issue than a sustainability issue.
  - EdwardDiego 7y ago
    Was also thinking about the massive issue they have with the large monoculture meaning they can't really support self-sustaining populations of bees. Of course, it's not just almonds that have this issue, wine regions in my country (NZ) have the exact same problem which they're belatedly trying to fix.

dumbfoundded 7y ago

If I had to guess why there's so little money in politics I'd guess it's because there are more efficient ways to spend the money. Political contributions right now seem to function mostly as a tax avoidance strategy. These donations are effectively free. A company or wealthy individual can either pay taxes or donate the money to a "non-political" think tank to promote policies they'd like to see. Convincing someone to influence elections is easy if they'd pay it in taxes anyways. I'm guessing it's difficult to convince someone that their post tax money is most efficiently spent influencing the political system. One last note, there's also many other types of interactions companies have with the government. There's state level, regulatory bodies, local and county influences. Companies interact highly with the government at the local levels because they're easier to manipulate than the federal government.

wcarss 7y ago
It sounds like you're suggesting that every dollar donated to a non-profit entity results in a dollar less of payable taxes -- I'm not aware of a country with a tax/donation trade-off like that, but would be interested to hear about it if you do. The best deal that I'm aware of is a reduction in your reported taxable income equal to the donation, resulting in a savings of the affected tax bracket rates * the dollars donated per bracket, but even that kind of thing is somewhat limited as far as I'm aware (eg up to x% of income is allowed per year). I might have just misunderstood you -- either way, curious if you know something about donations I don't or had a different idea in mind!
- ipython 7y ago
  You can get close by purchasing tax credits in some states - see for example https://www.capfin.net/blog/a-powerful-charitable-donation-option-for-virginians https://www.capfin.net/blog/a-powerful-charitable-donation-o...
andyjsong 7y ago
Not sure about companies, but as an individual, political contributions are NOT tax-deductible.[1] On a personal note, I like Andrew Yang's approach to wash out special interest groups and lobbyist with "democracy dollars" [2] of $100 for every citizen. Apparently it's been working in Seattle, but would love to hear from any Seattlites on the progress of the program. [1] https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-2/are-your-political-campaign-contributions-tax-deductible-11380/ https://blog.turbotax.intuit.com/tax-deductions-and-credits-... [2] https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/ https://www.yang2020.com/policies/democracydollars/

dr_dshiv 7y ago

This article was one sided. It never seriously considered the relative value of almonds, particularly when roasted and salted. Sad.

andrewflnr 7y ago
I think he just assumed they were more valuable than politicians, regardless of preparation.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Roasted and salted politicians, don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

baddox 7y ago

Isn't this just a way of saying that effective governance in a representative democracy is a public good, and that thus we should expect it to be underproduced?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

buboard 7y ago

Thats very un-democratic, it implies that people with more money should have more votes. This would quickly dissolve a democracy

nitwit005 7y ago

> First, we should expect ordinary people to donate more to politics. My mother donated once to some Democratic volunteer who came to her door. They hounded her for more donations. She got mailings, phone calls, multiple people at her door. She vowed never to give them another cent. Perhaps an unusually bad experience, but generally you do get punished this way for donating. I emptied my grandmother's mailbox when she became ill, and due to her charitable giving, it was absolutely crammed with political and charity mailings.

shameshame 7y ago
I have experienced similar with charity giving and donating to my alma mater. It was shocking.
mmanfrin 7y ago
Honestly, unfortunately: same. Nearly every time I've donated to something political, it's come to bite me in the ass. Donate to a candidate? They sell/give my info to related PACs and groups (and there's no stopping it, because it's considered political speech to solicit for donations). Last time I gave money to one of the fundraisers with vests that hang around downtown, my credit card got charged at an eastern European online retailer. I feel the only real way to avoid this is to donate through an anonymous vehicle, but I believe anonymous political donation vehicles and everything that came with the Citizens United decision to be at the core of the rot in our system.
- ALittleLight 7y ago
  I wonder if there is a service that could handle the donation and subsequent trashing of incoming correspondence for you. Although, I also wonder about giving money to annoying people.
- vkou 7y ago
  The core of the rot is not anonymous donations. At the end of the day, nobody actually cares that Candidate X is receiving money from Puppykillers Inc. The problem is that Candidate X owes her success to donated money. She is now beholden to her donors, not her constituents. Democracy, for sale by the dollar isn't democracy, it's a slide into oligarchy. The only solution to this problem is public-only funding of campaigns.

psvj 7y ago

More money would not generate better outcomes. period.

psvj 7y ago

more money would not generate "better" outcomes. period.

SubiculumCode 7y ago

This why I like Democracy Dollar proposal, giving each voter $100 to give to candidates.

whiddershins 7y ago

I posted something similar on the author’s site, but I wonder if this is just “revealed preference.” Perhaps people don’t really care nearly as much about the outcome of elections as they say they do. I think most people suspect the outcome of an election won’t affect their lives nearly as dramatically as people claim, there’s too much inertia in the system. Also, maybe, just maybe, people are subconsciously more intellectually humble than they let on, and realize that predictions about the impact of policy and elections are notoriously unreliable. Taking a political position can serve to identify yourself with a certain social group, or as part of your personal identity, or if you are feeling somewhat metaphysical it can indicate the structure of your ethical system. In all of those cases there is no need to actually spend money to achieve the goal. If I am an “Apple person” I need to spend $1,000 on a phone to demonstrate this. But if I’m a Sanders supporter I can do all this signaling by expressing outrage on Facebook and at dinner parties without spending a dime. If this theory is correct, a political movement that could somehow get people to feel they have to contribute money to be a “real” supporter with associated social status would be drowning in contributions.

jamisteven 7y ago

This has seriously got to be the dumbest, most uneducated piece of writing I have ever read. Yes, lets all just throw money at a broken problem, that'll make it better. "Politics" as the author refers to it as, needs the opposite of funding, it needs to be cut off entirely from donors to see who still stands. The US Government, will have a fund where it gives a set number to each candidate for campaigning purposes and that is ALL that can be used. Already own a private jet? Tough shit, cant use it for campaigning! Already a millionaire with lots of millionaire friends? Sorry charlie! That is the only way we will get back to grass roots form of electing. Simply throwing money at something rarely fixes a problem.

sixstringtheory 7y ago
Maybe you missed this statement: > I don’t want more money in politics. But the same factors that keep money out of politics keep it out of charity too. And if "throwing money at something rarely fixes a problem" then what is a better way? Relying on volunteers? What are you donating all your time to day after day for no money? How do you think you incentivize people to spend the majority of their waking hours on something you think is important? I don't think we should necessarily put more money into politics. I know that will only further consolidate power in a given country. But I'm not sure that was the point of the article either. It points out that it _seems_ like the rational thing to do would be for those with money, especially corporations with vast sums of it, to spend more on their candidate of choice. Yet they don't, at least not as much as the author expects, or expects us to expect. I didn't get the feeling it was saying the only way to save things is to throw more money at it, I think it's asking what is the underlying force that's keeping everyone from doing that? If we can figure that out, maybe we can understand some latent properties of the system we're in with regards to the charity parts.

gnodar 7y ago

> Most research (plus the 2016 results) confirms that money has little effect on victory Maybe money in the form of "contributions", okay. But having money is still the largest predictor for policy direction. "The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence"[0] [0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...