6 ms·

Kinda unrelated, but I have come across this "vote with your dollars" thing way too many times, always by USians. I ask this out of genuine curiosity - no criti

by ghoul2 12y ago

Kinda unrelated, but I have come across this "vote with your dollars" thing way too many times, always by USians. I ask this out of genuine curiosity - no criticism intended: In a democracy, the most disproportionate power a regular citizen has is the vote. Bill Gates (as an example) has exactly one, and so do you. Dollars, on the other hand - Bill G has quite a few orders of magnitude more than you. So many infact, that your "dollar votes" end up being a rounding error either way - with him or against him. You cannot hope AT ALL to win based on "voting with your dollars". But voting with your votes, you just may stand a chance. What the US govt is doing, NSA is doing - in the end it will have to be fixed in Congress, not in Courts. Not by ACLU. But by people voting with their votes. Even congressmen are used to "vote with dollars", and of course the supreme court has now made it official that "dollars are free speech". All of that can be reverted with "vote with votes" only - not with dollars. Thats my belief, not being a USian. I am trying to understand why "vote with your dollars" seems so popular and - well - believable a concept in the US? Isn't "voting with your dollars" a clear rejection of democratic power?

themodelplumber 12y ago
People are going to vote anyway, so "voting with dollars" is really kind of a bonus option. And maybe to some degree it expresses the de facto effect of dollars on many government officials and government processes. So there's a need to have some money to counterbalance that, and while my $5 won't do much, it's a cumulative result that they're after. At the same time, it's just a simple statement that wraps a "please support non-government groups that are fighting to change government" message. And there's no need to fight Bill Gates because he's not part of the situation at hand.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > People are going to vote anyway Post-WWII in the US, in Presidential general elections (generally, the highest turnout elections), the highest turnout was 62.8% in 1960, the lowest 49.0% in 1996, and most elections have been in the mid-50%s. So, "people are going to vote anyway" seems pretty far from true.
  - themodelplumber 12y ago
    Yeah, that's kind of the throwaway part. I should have said, "Voting already exists as an option". I'd be interested to know what percentage of ACLU members vote, though.
  - graeme 12y ago
    This true, but in context, I read OP's statement as meaning: > People WHO DONATE MONEY are going to vote anyway Their argument is silly otherwise.
pkinsky 12y ago
Voting with your vote, in the US, means choosing between the Democratic and Republican wings of the Capitalist Party.
- jabgrabdthrow 12y ago
  If either party was a proper "Capitalist Party" we would be much better off. I think it would be harmful if people said "capitalism doesn't work, what alternatives are there?" and switched to some system where the oligarchy is just as well off but everyone else has less freedom with their money.
mikeash 12y ago
It's not like our votes really count either. It's far more of a rounding error than your money. The electorate is full of easily-swayed morons, and they're the ones who get a voice, not us. If you want to affect policy, then you need to sway them harder than your opponents. The last Presidential election involved a bit over $2 billion in campaign spending. That's about $20 for each person who voted in the election. If you can spend more than $20, then you can get a greater voice through money than through voting. Congressional races involve less money and are thus even more easily affected. It's not a great way to run things, but there's not much use in wishing they were different. Edit: I also want to point out that voting with your money allows you to express a more precise position. In voting directly, you have few options. For the last Presidential election, the only sentiments you could really express with your vote were, "I favor half-assed health care reform and an extreme overemphasis on combating terrorism in both domestic and foreign policy", "I favor a slightly different half-assed health care reform and an extreme overemphasis on combating terrorism in both domestic and foreign policy", "I am a complete nutcase", or "I hate them all". There is rarely any vote that corresponds to the sort of thing you push for by donating to the ACLU.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  "It's far more of a rounding error than your money." For Bill Gates vs. a median networth individual, they actually seem to wind up fairly comparable on presidential elections, ignoring the electoral college. The more local the election, the more sway your individual vote has, of course (and often the more influence the decisions have on your life, day-to-day).
  - mikeash 12y ago
    How do you arrive at "wind up fairly comparable"? If you merely contributed $40 in the last Presidential election, your money counted twice as much as your vote, relatively speaking. If you're looking at actual donations versus possible donations, the point is what you could do with your money, not what the average person actually does.
    - 12y ago
davidw 12y ago
> In a democracy, the most disproportionate power a regular citizen has is the vote Actually, I would probably rank the power to work to convince others to vote one way or the other as more powerful, because it can have a lot more effect than one vote. Naturally, this is also more difficult and time consuming than going out and voting.
greglindahl 12y ago
You need to know that the ACLU can raise a lot of hell with a modest amount of money. "Vote with your money" means different things depending on the organization involved. The ACLU does not need more money than the government to win significant lawsuits.
- scarmig 12y ago
  Nevertheless, it does cost money, and not a pittance. Particularly since selecting the best cases usually means working pro bono. And teams of attorneys ain't cheap, and there's so much messed up in the United States that you've got to be able to field a bunch of those teams.
john_b 12y ago
The U.S., by many measures, is not a democracy, but more closely operates as an oligarchy [1]. If Bill Gates donates $100 million to a set of Congressional candidates who then use that money to run campaigns, the additional money will have a noticeable impact in the result. Assuming nobody is on the other side making even larger donations, a higher percentage of Bill Gates' preferred candidates will get elected than would have otherwise. If it was just Bill Gates doing this, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. But since the economic and political interests of a large percentage of America's elite are highly correlated, you end up with a large amount of money directed to candidates who support policies that benefit those elites. In theory, your critique is correct. If every non-elite voted against the elites, all of this money would be wasted. But in practice a lot of that money gets used to convince the non-elites that their own interests will be served by the same candidates who are receiving the money from the elites. It would be called propaganda if it was done by the government, but since it's done by private economic entities it's just considered a form of marketing. The average American voter is not very informed beyond a few specific issues (and often not even that). The result is that they can be easily overwhelmed with information related to issues they are unfamiliar with. Political campaigns in the U.S. like to portray these issues in dire terms. "My opponnent is soft on crime! Why? Because he voted for this obscure bill, HR834109241027308, that you've never heard of and couldn't interpret if you tried!" The implication is straighforward, but never directly said: "You and your family will be safer by choosing me!" You don't have time to research all of these claims and debunk them, even if you have a good intuition for which ones are bogus and which are reasonable. The fact that both major parties bullshit equally means that even if you did, you'd still be trying to pick the most truthful liar out of the group. Some people recognize this and give up on the process entirely. A lot of money is spent trying to convince these people that this candidate is different and is worth your money, vote, and trust. So you are correct that trying to out-money the monied interests is not a very promising strategy for political reform in the U.S. But simply trying to out-number them won't work since the average vote is so uninformed, subject to pathos, and fundamentally cheap. Over a large population, the average vote is all that matters. For this reason, small local elections in the U.S. tend to function in a much more democratic and intelligent fashion than state or national elections. The issues are less numerous, the stakes are lower (implying lower ROI for political "investors"), and the voters are more informed about what is happening in their own area. Democracy, as discovered by the Greeks, is a fantastic political system for local governance. But it doesn't scale. From a certain perspective, it is impressive that the U.S. has scaled it as far as it has, given such a numerous, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed population. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
noonespecial 12y ago
The ACLU can focus a small amount of donor money like a political laser and make real progress on the issues its donors care about. Its less like "voting" with your money and more like raising your own taxes a smidge to get the results you want.

by ghoul2 12y ago

themodelplumber 12y ago

People are going to vote anyway, so "voting with dollars" is really kind of a bonus option. And maybe to some degree it expresses the de facto effect of dollars on many government officials and government processes. So there's a need to have some money to counterbalance that, and while my $5 won't do much, it's a cumulative result that they're after. At the same time, it's just a simple statement that wraps a "please support non-government groups that are fighting to change government" message. And there's no need to fight Bill Gates because he's not part of the situation at hand.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> People are going to vote anyway Post-WWII in the US, in Presidential general elections (generally, the highest turnout elections), the highest turnout was 62.8% in 1960, the lowest 49.0% in 1996, and most elections have been in the mid-50%s. So, "people are going to vote anyway" seems pretty far from true.
- themodelplumber 12y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of the throwaway part. I should have said, "Voting already exists as an option". I'd be interested to know what percentage of ACLU members vote, though.
- graeme 12y ago
  This true, but in context, I read OP's statement as meaning: > People WHO DONATE MONEY are going to vote anyway Their argument is silly otherwise.

pkinsky 12y ago

Voting with your vote, in the US, means choosing between the Democratic and Republican wings of the Capitalist Party.

jabgrabdthrow 12y ago
If either party was a proper "Capitalist Party" we would be much better off. I think it would be harmful if people said "capitalism doesn't work, what alternatives are there?" and switched to some system where the oligarchy is just as well off but everyone else has less freedom with their money.

mikeash 12y ago

It's not like our votes really count either. It's far more of a rounding error than your money. The electorate is full of easily-swayed morons, and they're the ones who get a voice, not us. If you want to affect policy, then you need to sway them harder than your opponents. The last Presidential election involved a bit over $2 billion in campaign spending. That's about $20 for each person who voted in the election. If you can spend more than $20, then you can get a greater voice through money than through voting. Congressional races involve less money and are thus even more easily affected. It's not a great way to run things, but there's not much use in wishing they were different. Edit: I also want to point out that voting with your money allows you to express a more precise position. In voting directly, you have few options. For the last Presidential election, the only sentiments you could really express with your vote were, "I favor half-assed health care reform and an extreme overemphasis on combating terrorism in both domestic and foreign policy", "I favor a slightly different half-assed health care reform and an extreme overemphasis on combating terrorism in both domestic and foreign policy", "I am a complete nutcase", or "I hate them all". There is rarely any vote that corresponds to the sort of thing you push for by donating to the ACLU.

dllthomas 12y ago
"It's far more of a rounding error than your money." For Bill Gates vs. a median networth individual, they actually seem to wind up fairly comparable on presidential elections, ignoring the electoral college. The more local the election, the more sway your individual vote has, of course (and often the more influence the decisions have on your life, day-to-day).
- mikeash 12y ago
  How do you arrive at "wind up fairly comparable"? If you merely contributed $40 in the last Presidential election, your money counted twice as much as your vote, relatively speaking. If you're looking at actual donations versus possible donations, the point is what you could do with your money, not what the average person actually does.
  - 12y ago

davidw 12y ago

> In a democracy, the most disproportionate power a regular citizen has is the vote Actually, I would probably rank the power to work to convince others to vote one way or the other as more powerful, because it can have a lot more effect than one vote. Naturally, this is also more difficult and time consuming than going out and voting.

greglindahl 12y ago

You need to know that the ACLU can raise a lot of hell with a modest amount of money. "Vote with your money" means different things depending on the organization involved. The ACLU does not need more money than the government to win significant lawsuits.

scarmig 12y ago
Nevertheless, it does cost money, and not a pittance. Particularly since selecting the best cases usually means working pro bono. And teams of attorneys ain't cheap, and there's so much messed up in the United States that you've got to be able to field a bunch of those teams.

john_b 12y ago

The U.S., by many measures, is not a democracy, but more closely operates as an oligarchy [1]. If Bill Gates donates $100 million to a set of Congressional candidates who then use that money to run campaigns, the additional money will have a noticeable impact in the result. Assuming nobody is on the other side making even larger donations, a higher percentage of Bill Gates' preferred candidates will get elected than would have otherwise. If it was just Bill Gates doing this, it probably wouldn't be that big of a deal. But since the economic and political interests of a large percentage of America's elite are highly correlated, you end up with a large amount of money directed to candidates who support policies that benefit those elites. In theory, your critique is correct. If every non-elite voted against the elites, all of this money would be wasted. But in practice a lot of that money gets used to convince the non-elites that their own interests will be served by the same candidates who are receiving the money from the elites. It would be called propaganda if it was done by the government, but since it's done by private economic entities it's just considered a form of marketing. The average American voter is not very informed beyond a few specific issues (and often not even that). The result is that they can be easily overwhelmed with information related to issues they are unfamiliar with. Political campaigns in the U.S. like to portray these issues in dire terms. "My opponnent is soft on crime! Why? Because he voted for this obscure bill, HR834109241027308, that you've never heard of and couldn't interpret if you tried!" The implication is straighforward, but never directly said: "You and your family will be safer by choosing me!" You don't have time to research all of these claims and debunk them, even if you have a good intuition for which ones are bogus and which are reasonable. The fact that both major parties bullshit equally means that even if you did, you'd still be trying to pick the most truthful liar out of the group. Some people recognize this and give up on the process entirely. A lot of money is spent trying to convince these people that this candidate is different and is worth your money, vote, and trust. So you are correct that trying to out-money the monied interests is not a very promising strategy for political reform in the U.S. But simply trying to out-number them won't work since the average vote is so uninformed, subject to pathos, and fundamentally cheap. Over a large population, the average vote is all that matters. For this reason, small local elections in the U.S. tend to function in a much more democratic and intelligent fashion than state or national elections. The issues are less numerous, the stakes are lower (implying lower ROI for political "investors"), and the voters are more informed about what is happening in their own area. Democracy, as discovered by the Greeks, is a fantastic political system for local governance. But it doesn't scale. From a certain perspective, it is impressive that the U.S. has scaled it as far as it has, given such a numerous, heterogeneous, and geographically distributed population. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746 http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

noonespecial 12y ago

The ACLU can focus a small amount of donor money like a political laser and make real progress on the issues its donors care about. Its less like "voting" with your money and more like raising your own taxes a smidge to get the results you want.