3 ms·

> If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people

by ori_b 15y ago

> If you don't establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you get a pile of people just in it for the money, as well as a pile of people just in it for the lulz. If you do establish viability standards for who gets a tax-funded campaign, you entrench the established political parties, because previous funded campaigns help ensure future viability and future funding. How is this different from donation-funded campaigns? Visibility always increases your shot at future visibility. Public funding prevents the visibility from compounding. If you manage to get enough endorsements to be funded at all (for example), your voice is just as well funded as the incumbent who, under the private funding model, is in a position to attract all the funding.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Publically funded campaigns force people to pay for political campaigns they disagree with. Many people participate in Kickstarter to fund ideas they want to support; imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding, regardless of usefulness, viability, or the number of people who want the result. The whole thing falls apart.
- ori_b 15y ago
  > Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. > imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding Bad analogy. Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. Imagine if the old, established kickstarter projects didn't have the ability to browbeat me because they have more money for ads.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    >> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. >Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. New candidates will fundamentally always have a problem drawing attention, and in fairness they ought to have to work at drawing attention. An awesome candidate shouldn't have any trouble building up grassroots support at a reasonable pace. What happens if every random person who has ever said "if I were President" could run without putting much effort into it? We already get a barrage of advertisements around election time with just the candidates we have right now; how exactly do you expect to provide an equal footing for a thousand, or ten thousand? Running should require a lot of work. I want to remove the biases against new, independent, and third-party candidates, but that doesn't mean it needs to become trivial to get a pile of "free money" and run. > Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. No sensible system exists for that to happen. Too many Kickstarter projects exist for equal advertising to have any useful impact. If you want to get noticed, get yourself noticed. Yes, that makes Kickstarter as much about publicity as about awesome tech; the same problem happens with startups to an even greater degree. Great ideas will always generate noise, but they still need help from people who know more than just how to have great ideas. Kickstarter, to me, seems as fair as anyone could hope for. No entrenched candidates, no political parties, no free funding, just a pile of projects trying to look the most awesome and draw the most attention.

by ori_b 15y ago

JoshTriplett 15y ago

Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Publically funded campaigns force people to pay for political campaigns they disagree with. Many people participate in Kickstarter to fund ideas they want to support; imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding, regardless of usefulness, viability, or the number of people who want the result. The whole thing falls apart.

ori_b 15y ago
> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. > imagine if all projects on Kickstarter received mandatory funding Bad analogy. Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. Imagine if the old, established kickstarter projects didn't have the ability to browbeat me because they have more money for ads.
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  >> Donation-funded campaigns get funded by people who agree with them. >Donation funded campaigns make it extremely difficult for new candidates from being judged on their merits. New candidates will fundamentally always have a problem drawing attention, and in fairness they ought to have to work at drawing attention. An awesome candidate shouldn't have any trouble building up grassroots support at a reasonable pace. What happens if every random person who has ever said "if I were President" could run without putting much effort into it? We already get a barrage of advertisements around election time with just the candidates we have right now; how exactly do you expect to provide an equal footing for a thousand, or ten thousand? Running should require a lot of work. I want to remove the biases against new, independent, and third-party candidates, but that doesn't mean it needs to become trivial to get a pile of "free money" and run. > Imagine if they all got equal opportunity advertising in order for people to decide their viability for themselves. Imagine if I had a way of hearing about all the great, viable, useful kickstarter projects that would get swept under the rug because they didn't have the right connections to promotion. No sensible system exists for that to happen. Too many Kickstarter projects exist for equal advertising to have any useful impact. If you want to get noticed, get yourself noticed. Yes, that makes Kickstarter as much about publicity as about awesome tech; the same problem happens with startups to an even greater degree. Great ideas will always generate noise, but they still need help from people who know more than just how to have great ideas. Kickstarter, to me, seems as fair as anyone could hope for. No entrenched candidates, no political parties, no free funding, just a pile of projects trying to look the most awesome and draw the most attention.