4 ms·

A couple of reasons come to mind: - it would probably cost more than you think per person to get someone to pick up their life and move to a state of your choo

by harryh 7y ago

A couple of reasons come to mind: - it would probably cost more than you think per person to get someone to pick up their life and move to a state of your choosing - it's not clear ahead of time how many people you need to get to move - it's not even really clear ahead of time which places you want them to move to. How many people would have guessed that moving Democrats to Wisconsin ahead of 2016 would be the most efficient path?

meddlepal 7y ago
Some other issues: 1. How would you verify a moved person voted a particular way? 2. It cuts both ways... there are are billionaires on all points of the political spectrum. 3. If you're a billionaire, why would you even care that much? Politics has an effect on your bottom line perhaps, but there's simply nothing that's inaccessible to a billionaire. To that point, the politics common people are really not that important except when it can impact business.
- tbyehl 7y ago
  > 3. If you're a billionaire, why would you even care that much? The Koch Brothers' political network supposedly budgeted $889M for 2016 campaigns [0]. Clearly, some billionaires care quite a bit. Whether they're zealots or expected a positive ROI for their businesses, who knows. Clinton + Super PACs spent $1,184,100,000 on the 2016 campaign [1]. Divided by 77,747 = $15,230.16 per person. All other problems aside, it seems within the realm of possibility that a PAC of Billionaires could raise enough money to move enough people to sway an election. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to-spend-900-million-on-2016-campaign.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
  - rtpg 7y ago
    $15k to move to a different state (especially given job prospects are not great in places where that can go far) are not so great. Inversely that could pay for a couple of months of a staffer on the ground going around and trying to convince locals to change their vote. That feels like it could go a bit further than the 1 vote the $15k buys.
    - tbyehl 7y ago
      Plenty of struggling people out there might be pretty happy to go struggle somewhere else with $15K in their pocket. And if a group of Mega Billionaires expecting a positive ROI believed they could lock up an election by convincing ~77,747 sympathetic voters to move, how much more money do you imagine they'd be willing to deploy? A better exercise would be to look at this map [0] and figure out how many people need to be moved to traditional swing states to assure a win for either side. [0] https://www.270towin.com/maps/same-since-2000 https://www.270towin.com/maps/same-since-2000
  - pgodzin 7y ago
    The $15k per person ignores the number of votes spending that original billion influenced.
    - beerandt 7y ago
      The other major oversight is: it's almost just as easy to pay voters to leave a given state. You don't have their idealogical sympathies to exploit, but I bet $15k no-questions-asked offer to move out of ie Florida is going to get some takers.
rolltiide 7y ago
But right now you have county level voting data, many red places weren't THAT red, just a few percentage points away from blue, but far enough red to ensure the whole state would be predictably red. I am starting with this angle because the coastal elites live on the coasts which are blue, and we are assuming they want blue. The numbers probably arent that high and if you also imagine that there is some herd immunity to adding more blue ideology people in, then you might get more to flip as well. I’ve been wondering if blue people moved to those places would see different needs of the people there and begin voting red. They came for their civil rights causes that they have been assuming republicans consciously think about and choose to undermine, but notice something completely different.

by harryh 7y ago

meddlepal 7y ago

Some other issues: 1. How would you verify a moved person voted a particular way? 2. It cuts both ways... there are are billionaires on all points of the political spectrum. 3. If you're a billionaire, why would you even care that much? Politics has an effect on your bottom line perhaps, but there's simply nothing that's inaccessible to a billionaire. To that point, the politics common people are really not that important except when it can impact business.

tbyehl 7y ago
> 3. If you're a billionaire, why would you even care that much? The Koch Brothers' political network supposedly budgeted $889M for 2016 campaigns [0]. Clearly, some billionaires care quite a bit. Whether they're zealots or expected a positive ROI for their businesses, who knows. Clinton + Super PACs spent $1,184,100,000 on the 2016 campaign [1]. Divided by 77,747 = $15,230.16 per person. All other problems aside, it seems within the realm of possibility that a PAC of Billionaires could raise enough money to move enough people to sway an election. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to-spend-900-million-on-2016-campaign.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/27/us/politics/kochs-plan-to... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...
- rtpg 7y ago
  $15k to move to a different state (especially given job prospects are not great in places where that can go far) are not so great. Inversely that could pay for a couple of months of a staffer on the ground going around and trying to convince locals to change their vote. That feels like it could go a bit further than the 1 vote the $15k buys.
  - tbyehl 7y ago
    Plenty of struggling people out there might be pretty happy to go struggle somewhere else with $15K in their pocket. And if a group of Mega Billionaires expecting a positive ROI believed they could lock up an election by convincing ~77,747 sympathetic voters to move, how much more money do you imagine they'd be willing to deploy? A better exercise would be to look at this map [0] and figure out how many people need to be moved to traditional swing states to assure a win for either side. [0] https://www.270towin.com/maps/same-since-2000 https://www.270towin.com/maps/same-since-2000
- pgodzin 7y ago
  The $15k per person ignores the number of votes spending that original billion influenced.
  - beerandt 7y ago
    The other major oversight is: it's almost just as easy to pay voters to leave a given state. You don't have their idealogical sympathies to exploit, but I bet $15k no-questions-asked offer to move out of ie Florida is going to get some takers.

rolltiide 7y ago

But right now you have county level voting data, many red places weren't THAT red, just a few percentage points away from blue, but far enough red to ensure the whole state would be predictably red. I am starting with this angle because the coastal elites live on the coasts which are blue, and we are assuming they want blue. The numbers probably arent that high and if you also imagine that there is some herd immunity to adding more blue ideology people in, then you might get more to flip as well. I’ve been wondering if blue people moved to those places would see different needs of the people there and begin voting red. They came for their civil rights causes that they have been assuming republicans consciously think about and choose to undermine, but notice something completely different.