Voting VS Spending

[Xerographica]

You continue to fail to address the problem of resources.  A billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no meaningful personal expense, while it would be difficult for me to spare $100 -- you keep talking about 'cost' but the costs are absolutely not the same, relative to the donor.  That $100 costs me a lot more than those thousands cost a billionaire, but your system does not account for that.

I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value? 

It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.  But will this happen?  How many billionaires do you think care about how prominent atheists are ranked? 

I think billionaires certainly make big donations to churches.  So this forum and the atheist movement would benefit by preventing billionaires from making big donations? 

Also, if you're concerned about wealth inequality, isn't it strange to argue against a billionaire making a big donation to this forum?  Would you argue against Bill Gates giving his money away to poor people? 

You're not measuring how people value things, you're only measuring who has the most money to play with -- I can't explain it any more clearly than that.  You aren't measuring anything meaningful.  You're certainly not measuring anything that has to do with actual public preference.
I don't know where this comes from.  I am talking about giving everyone an equal voice regardless of their resources.  There is no rational way you can twist that into saying I'm "disregarding their preferences/priorities", especially since I've already shown how preferences can be measured without making them dependent on personal resources.

If I make a donation to this forum to help rank prominent atheists, how would my donation not measure the intensity of my preferences?  Your argument is that, since Bill Gates can make a much bigger donation than I can, that my own donation won't communicate what's important to me.  That's categorical untrue.  You can ask me how much I donated and for who and my answer will reflect my preferences and priorities. 

You have this idea that it's beneficial for my input to have just as much weight as Bill Gates' input.  I strongly disagree... and so would the millions and millions of people who decided to give their money to him rather than to me.  You want to diminish his input, but you really haven't addressed or acknowledged the fact that doing so would essentially diminish the input of the millions of consumers who prefer his products to mine. 

I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? - Michael Moore

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit. 

And you still haven't refuted any of the points I have made.  You completely ignore the problem of relative cost, you completely ignore the alternatives that allow preferential ranking without making it contingent on personal resources, you completely ignore the already available evidence that this is not a way to truly judge public opinion.

I haven't ignored the fact that cost is relative, but I don't see it as a problem.  It is the natural consequence of consumer choice and the fact that producers aren't equally beneficial. 

I haven't ignored the alternatives either.  I explained that none of them involve any personal sacrifice.

I'm going to quote myself here, because I have to think that the point is lost on you so far:
You yourself have already admitted that this is a perfectly plausible outcome under your system and that it undermines your point completely.  You don't seem to understand that because this is a perfectly plausible situation, it means that your system cannot be a reliable measure.

Bluntly put, your premise is fatally flawed and therefore your "experiment" is meaningless.

How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story? 

On the one hand, you argue about how and why voting is so obviously superior to spending.  But on the other hand, you also argue that a direct comparison of voting and spending would be meaningless.  Your arguments are mutually exclusive.  They contradict each other... one of them must be false. 

[Poison Tree]

Having a different way of ranking subjective preference does not show that it is an Objectively better way.

and the best case scenario is epic.  We will actually figure out the truth about voting versus spending.

How? You seem to have just skipped over the thrust of my objection.
The first comment of yours I objected to in this thread was

In theory, the voters would elevate the trash while the spenders would elevate the treasure.

without having some Objective standard of trash/treasure--for books, pudding and atheists--how could we ever even pretend to determine if your assertion is true? That is the big flaw in your proposed experiment.

Pretend we've run all three experiments (books, pudding and atheists), giving us three sets of lists (voting books vs spending books; voting pudding vs spending pudding and voting atheists vs spending atheists). We could look at how the sets of lists differ, but how would we determine which rankings was better. You could choose your favorite set of lists, as could trdsf and I, but who would be right? How would we be any closer to resolving the issue than we are now?

You've said that

Democracy is a major obstacle to the maximally beneficial evolution of society and its creations.

and implied that "Spending" would address that problem. That implies that you know what is, Objectively, "maximally beneficial" to society, just as you'd need to know the Objective best ranking of books, pudding and atheists.


An analogy:
I say popular vote is the maximally beneficial way of electing a president because* it would have given us president Gore and Clinton and because it values voters individual choices. My friend Leonardo says that the electoral college is the maximally beneficial way of electing a president because it gave us Bush and Trump and because it values states as units. Who is Objectively correct?

*ignoring the candidates running different campaigns and changes in voter turnout resulting from switching systems.

[Cavebear]

I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value? 

It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.  But will this happen?  How many billionaires do you think care about how prominent atheists are ranked? 

I think billionaires certainly make big donations to churches.  So this forum and the atheist movement would benefit by preventing billionaires from making big donations? 

Also, if you're concerned about wealth inequality, isn't it strange to argue against a billionaire making a big donation to this forum?  Would you argue against Bill Gates giving his money away to poor people? 
If I make a donation to this forum to help rank prominent atheists, how would my donation not measure the intensity of my preferences?  Your argument is that, since Bill Gates can make a much bigger donation than I can, that my own donation won't communicate what's important to me.  That's categorical untrue.  You can ask me how much I donated and for who and my answer will reflect my preferences and priorities. 

You have this idea that it's beneficial for my input to have just as much weight as Bill Gates' input.  I strongly disagree... and so would the millions and millions of people who decided to give their money to him rather than to me.  You want to diminish his input, but you really haven't addressed or acknowledged the fact that doing so would essentially diminish the input of the millions of consumers who prefer his products to mine. 

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit. 
I haven't ignored the fact that cost is relative, but I don't see it as a problem.  It is the natural consequence of consumer choice and the fact that producers aren't equally beneficial. 

I haven't ignored the alternatives either.  I explained that none of them involve any personal sacrifice.
How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story? 

On the one hand, you argue about how and why voting is so obviously superior to spending.  But on the other hand, you also argue that a direct comparison of voting and spending would be meaningless.  Your arguments are mutually exclusive.  They contradict each other... one of them must be false.

Perhaps money donated to politicians by an individual should be compared to percentage of owned money.  What is "nothing" to Bill Gates is "serious money (and nearly impossible)" to me.  Shouldn't that matter?

[Xerographica]

The first comment of yours I objected to in this thread was without having some Objective standard of trash/treasure--for books, pudding and atheists--how could we ever even pretend to determine if your assertion is true? That is the big flaw in your proposed experiment.

Pretend we've run all three experiments (books, pudding and atheists), giving us three sets of lists (voting books vs spending books; voting pudding vs spending pudding and voting atheists vs spending atheists). We could look at how the sets of lists differ, but how would we determine which rankings was better. You could choose your favorite set of lists, as could trdsf and I, but who would be right? How would we be any closer to resolving the issue than we are now?

You might be correct that there won't be any consensus that the voting ranking or donating ranking is superior.  But you're overlooking something seriously significant.  Even if the experiment doesn't convince everyone that spending is better than voting... it could potentially convince some people.  The only way it wouldn't convince some people is if everybody agreed that the voting ranking is superior. What are the chances that everyone will agree that voting is better than spending?  If everyone did agree that voting is better than spending, what would the implications be? 

In this thread... who is my ally?  Who fundamentally agrees with me that donating is superior to voting?  Nobody.  In this thread... who is my rival?  Who fundamentally disagrees with me that donating is superior to voting?  One person... trdsf.  What about yourself?  You are neither my ally or my rival.  The same is true of everybody else in this thread. 

Team Donating: Xero
Team Voting: trdsf
Sidelines: everyone else

The experiment would fundamentally change this.  Everyone in the sidelines would end up either in Team Donating or Team Voting.  It's hard for me to effectively articulate just how significant this is.  It would be a paradigm shift.  Instead of nearly everybody believing that voting is good for some things while spending is good for other things... everybody would believe that either voting or spending is always better for everything.  The entire country would have a big debate.  Everyone would seriously question the logic of using two very different forms of input... voting and spending... to rank things. 

To be clear... I am sort of assuming that you will consistently either prefer the voting ranking or the donating ranking for books, pudding, atheists and so on.  If this isn't the case, then you'd perceive that voting and spending were equally effective.  Except... when you were at the supermarket trying to decide whether a steak is worth $20 bucks... naturally you'd think, "Sheesh, why in the world am I trying to figure out if this steak is worth my money???  It would be just as effective to simply vote for it!"  So Team Equal is actually Team Voting. 

[trdsf]

I already acknowledged that it's a fact that people don't value money equally.  But it's also a fact that people don't value makeup equally.  Is there anything that people equally value?

No, no, no, no, NO.  You just don't get it.  What you propose can never tell us how much value an individual's donation has to that donor without asking for a whole lot more information than just "how much do you want to spend to vote for this person".  You can not tell that my $100 donation is a lot more 'meaningful' relative to my resources than a billionaire's $10,000 donation is to his without knowing ahead of time what our individual resource levels are.

Also, since all you're talking about is aggregate dollars, you can't know whether that represents the collective will of many small donors, or of a small handful of large donors unless you count the votes.

And that right there means that the vote and not the money is the important factor if you want to learn anything about public attitudes and preferences.

If you're after information, you run a properly designed poll.  If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser, but don't pretend it's got some deeper meaning than that.

How could my proposed experiment possibly be meaningless?  You clearly think that the voting ranking would be much better than the donating ranking.  Right?  So why wouldn't my proposed experiment corroborate your story?

It's meaningless because I have demonstrated that it doesn't reliably measure anything.  And your answer to that fatal flaw is "But but but run the experiment anyway!"?  No, you have severe methodological flaws to fix first.  You don't have a measure of the relative value of the donation to the donor and you don't have a safeguard against the system being gamed by a small number of high resource individuals.

Almighty Bob preserve us from economists with theories...

[Jason78]

How would this system protect against a large number of women using their money to get something like the morning after pill, and a small number of men with a large amount of money using it to introduce a huge system of convoluted rules to prevent them getting it?

[Cavebear]

One way to avoid the affect of wealth in politics would be "one person, one dollar".  Or 10.  The amount acceptable would be voted on
"one person one vote" suddenly, no campaigns. 

See?  I just solved EVERYTHING!  ;)

[Baruch]

One way to avoid the affect of wealth in politics would be "one person, one dollar".  Or 10.  The amount acceptable would be voted on
"one person one vote" suddenly, no campaigns. 

See?  I just solved EVERYTHING!  ;)

When the real crash comes, people will be made equal with a vengeance.

[Xerographica]

No, no, no, no, NO.  You just don't get it.  What you propose can never tell us how much value an individual's donation has to that donor without asking for a whole lot more information than just "how much do you want to spend to vote for this person".  You can not tell that my $100 donation is a lot more 'meaningful' relative to my resources than a billionaire's $10,000 donation is to his without knowing ahead of time what our individual resource levels are.

I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you, but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect? 

Also, since all you're talking about is aggregate dollars, you can't know whether that represents the collective will of many small donors, or of a small handful of large donors unless you count the votes.

If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.   

And that right there means that the vote and not the money is the important factor if you want to learn anything about public attitudes and preferences.

You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings? 

If you're after information, you run a properly designed poll.  If what you're after is a fundraiser, just run a fucking fundraiser, but don't pretend it's got some deeper meaning than that.

If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

It's meaningless because I have demonstrated that it doesn't reliably measure anything.

Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

And your answer to that fatal flaw is "But but but run the experiment anyway!"?  No, you have severe methodological flaws to fix first.  You don't have a measure of the relative value of the donation to the donor and you don't have a safeguard against the system being gamed by a small number of high resource individuals.

Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating. 

Almighty Bob preserve us from economists with theories...

I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings. 

[Xerographica]

How would this system protect against a large number of women using their money to get something like the morning after pill, and a small number of men with a large amount of money using it to introduce a huge system of convoluted rules to prevent them getting it?

Nothing would prevent the side with the most money from making things legal or illegal.  Right now the people who want prostitution to be illegal simply vote for it to be illegal.  They don't have to spend any money to get what they want.  Why would this be beneficial for rules but not for clothes, computers and cars?  Why do we care about the demand for these things but we don't care about the demand for rules?  Why does demand matter for some things but not others? 

There should be a rule that if you're an atheist you don't simply accept assumptions... you challenge and question them.  Right now I'm the only one who is challenging and questioning the assumption that we don't need to know the demand for rules.  That's a problem. 

[Baruch]

Nothing would prevent the side with the most money from making things legal or illegal.  Right now the people who want prostitution to be illegal simply vote for it to be illegal.  They don't have to spend any money to get what they want.  Why would this be beneficial for rules but not for clothes, computers and cars?  Why do we care about the demand for these things but we don't care about the demand for rules?  Why does demand matter for some things but not others? 

There should be a rule that if you're an atheist you don't simply accept assumptions... you challenge and question them.  Right now I'm the only one who is challenging and questioning the assumption that we don't need to know the demand for rules.  That's a problem.

The socialists have a way of dealing with your question ... banning money.  All will be equally poor, and will get according to need (based on the opinion of the local commissar).

[Cavebear]

I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you, but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect? 

If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.   

You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings? 

If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings? 

Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating. 

I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings.

Your arguments are good, but based on a false premise.  Money is not speech.

Let's say that a vote per voter is expected in a democracy.

Now I have $10 to give to candidate "A" and you have $10 million to give to candidate "B".

Does that make our votes equal?  Of course not.  Your money tips the scales.

When the Constitution was written, even the wealthy were "poor".  I mean they had lands or businesses, but they were always in debt to England.  So the idea of great wealth in politics never really occurred to them.  They had never experienced it.

Modern billionaires were beyond their understanding.

So we need to adjust to that and stop highly-monied people from taking over our politics today.  QED

[trdsf]

I can't know exactly how valuable $100 dollars is to you,

AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY YOUR SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK.  I can't make it any clearer than you just made it yourself.

but I'm pretty sure most people would be pretty happy to find a $100 dollar bill sitting on the sidewalk.  If you donate $100 dollars to help rank atheists then I'd guess you care a decent amount.  What are the chances that my guess is incorrect?

You don't know and your system doesn't have a means to find out.  Why do you even make the assumption that $100 means I care a decent amount?  What's your methodology?  If it's just that $100 sounds like a lot to you, that's not methodology.

If we conducted my proposed experiment then ideally we'd all be able to clearly see the shape of the demand.

Do you even bother reading?  You yourself admitted that there's a fatal flaw at the very heart of your system:

It's true that a billionaire can drop thousands of dollars at no personal expense.  A billionaire certainly can donate $10,000 to this forum in order to influence the donating rankings.

That completely destroys its ability to reliably measure actual demand because it can be overridden on the whim of one or two people.  It doesn't matter at all whether it will happen, it's that it can happen that destroys your "experiment".

You say this, but then you turn around and say that my proposed experiment would be meaningless.  How is that possible?  Do you not understand that you're arguing that the voting rankings will be a lot better than the donating rankings?  Or, perhaps you're assuming that nobody, except for yourself, will be able to realize that the voting rankings are a lot better than the donating rankings?

I have demonstrated that your experiment shows nothing by showing why it will show nothing.  You need to fix your methodology.

If your belief is correct that voting is clearly superior to donating... then how could my experiment not demonstrate that your belief is correct?  Again, are you assuming that nobody but you will recognize that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings?

Of course I turn around and say that, because I had just demonstrated the fatal flaw at the core of what you're proposing.  You can't refute that with "but run the experiment', you have to fix the experiment first.

Sorry guy, but I really don't think you're hearing yourself.  You're saying that the experiment will be meaningless because donating doesn't reliably measure anything.  The experiment wouldn't only show us the donating rankings... it would also show us the voting rankings so that could compare the two rankings.  If you are correct that the donating rankings will be meaningless, while the voting rankings will be meaningful, then how could the experiment itself be meaningless?  Again, are you assuming that you're the only member of this forum who will notice that the voting rankings are clearly superior to the donating rankings?

And then you're going to use the vote to measure whether or not your results mean anything, when you're asserting that the vote is inferior to your method?  Are you even looking at the screen when you're typing?

You're asserting A is superior to B.  You're going to run simultaneous trials of A and B.  And then you're going to use B to measure whether A is accurate, when one of your assumptions is that B is less accurate than A.

Do you genuinely not see the flaw here?

Why would you try and "repair" the donating when you obviously want everybody to understand just how broken it is?  With your alterations to donating... we wouldn't be comparing voting and donating... we would be comparing voting and pseudo-donating.  You would say, "Look at how clearly superior voting is to donating!!"  And I would reply, "No, if anything we see how superior voting is to pseudo-donating."  Then we'd have to repeat the experiment and use donating instead of pseudo-donating.

I don't have to do anything to repair it.  You do.  It's your assertion, you need to make it work.  I've pointed out why it can't under the circumstances you propose.  It's not my job to fix it for you too, although I have pointed out a couple ways that it might be fixed.

I don't have to take your idea seriously until you give me a good reason to.  You haven't.  You want me to, you need to address the specific problems I've pointed out, not just wail "but run the experiment anyway".

And may I point out, nothing's stopping you from wasting your time and just running it anyway.  Go ahead; I don't have any say over whether you do or not, unless you explicitly want to give me that authority.  As is, I've shown why it's a waste of time and effort, at least so far as measuring anything meaningful goes.  If it works as a fundraiser, great, just don't pretend it's anything more meaningful than that.

I think it's better for Bob to protect us from people who oppose reasonable economic experiments.  For somebody who is so certain that voting is clearly superior to donating, you sure oppose an experiment that would allow us to compare for ourselves the voting rankings to the donating rankings.

You still haven't demonstrated reasonability.  You haven't demonstrated that it will show anything other than there's money out there that people are willing to spend.  There's no controls for resources, there's no controls for relative value, and there's no way to measure validity without resorting to the system you say yours is superior to: simple voting.


I want to touch on something else here that I had earlier dismissed as being yet another of your non sequiturs, as it seemed to come out of nowhere, but now I see the deeper failure in what you think you're trying to do:

I'm a millionaire, I'm a multi-millionaire. I'm filthy rich. You know why I'm a multi-millionaire? 'Cause multi-millions like what I do. That's pretty good, isn't it? - Michael Moore

I can't stand Michael Moore, but it is really easy for me to understand that decreasing his influence is the same thing as disregarding the preferences of the millions of people who want him to have more influence.  So you just see that Moore is a millionaire... and millionaires are bad.  I see Moore and recognize that his influence is the result of doing things that have benefited millions of people.  I clearly see that he represents, protects and serves their interests.  Arbitrarily reducing his influence is the same thing as reducing all their benefit.

What you're suggesting here is that just because I pay to go see a Michael Moore movie, that somehow empowers him to speak on my behalf in some sense.

That's absolute blithering nonsense.

First of all, at no point did I ever say that millionaires are bad.  You pulled that completely out of your own ass, and I forbid you to put that shit in my mouth.  That's a pure straw man.

Second of all, whether or not his goals are broadly congruent with mine does not in any way allow him to speak for me, short of me explicitly saying, "I agree with him."  Just because I plunked down money to go see one of his movies, or buy one of his DVDs, does in no way abrogate my right to speak for myself.

Third, I don't know where or why you have this idea that purchases must reflect intent.  I bought a bike two years ago.  When I researched the one I wanted, I paid no attention to the political goals of the manufacturer; I was more interested in just a good, relatively inexpensive city bike I could rely on.  I couldn't begin to tell you the political leanings of Giant... and the fact that I bought one of their bikes in no way, shape or form expresses any endorsement of their corporate goals, whether or not I happen to agree with them.

Similarly, I have been renting from the same property management company for the last six years not because I support their causes but because I'm satisfied with their services.  I could probably find a cheaper apartment, but a) I don't think I'll get the same level of service, and b) I hate moving.  I couldn't begin to tell you what my landlord thinks, beyond taking a responsible attitude toward his properties.  And my remaining here reflects nothing more than satisfaction with service received.

The idea that where I spend my money has necessarily to do with who and what I support is utter and complete nonsense.

All this is, is importing all the failures of trickle-down economics into a voting system.

[Xerographica]

And may I point out, nothing's stopping you from wasting your time and just running it anyway.  Go ahead; I don't have any say over whether you do or not, unless you explicitly want to give me that authority.  As is, I've shown why it's a waste of time and effort, at least so far as measuring anything meaningful goes.  If it works as a fundraiser, great, just don't pretend it's anything more meaningful than that.

First off, this isn't my forum.  It's up to the owner to decide whether or not to conduct my experiment.  Secondly, you might be right that the experiment will not provide any insight into the difference between voting and donating.  Then again, you might be wrong. 

Second of all, whether or not his goals are broadly congruent with mine does not in any way allow him to speak for me, short of me explicitly saying, "I agree with him."  Just because I plunked down money to go see one of his movies, or buy one of his DVDs, does in no way abrogate my right to speak for myself.

It's true that giving your money to Moore doesn't eliminate your right to speak for yourself, but it does, or should, diminish your volume/influence.  You want to increase Moore's influence without sacrificing any of your own.  Well yeah, but no. 

Let's say that, before you give Moore your $20 dollars, you have him sign a contract that stipulates he won't spend any of that money to influence the rankings of skeptics.  Then that's perfectly fine.  Sure it's strange... but if both of you agree to this limitation on his influence... then so be it.  While you're at it though... why not also stipulate that he not be permitted to spend any of your money on hookers and cocaine?  Or perhaps it would be easier if you simply made a list of all the things that you would permit him to spend your money on. 

If the owner of this forum agrees to conduct my proposed experiment... and you end up donating $100... perhaps you could inform the owner that you only allow him to spend your $100 to help maintain and improve this forum.  This way, you really don't have to worry about him donating the $100 dollars to the NRA. 

[Cavebear]

First off, this isn't my forum.  It's up to the owner to decide whether or not to conduct my experiment.  Secondly, you might be right that the experiment will not provide any insight into the difference between voting and donating.  Then again, you might be wrong. 


It's true that giving your money to Moore doesn't eliminate your right to speak for yourself, but it does, or should, diminish your volume/influence.  You want to increase Moore's influence without sacrificing any of your own.  Well yeah, but no. 

Let's say that, before you give Moore your $20 dollars, you have him sign a contract that stipulates he won't spend any of that money to influence the rankings of skeptics.  Then that's perfectly fine.  Sure it's strange... but if both of you agree to this limitation on his influence... then so be it.  While you're at it though... why not also stipulate that he not be permitted to spend any of your money on hookers and cocaine?  Or perhaps it would be easier if you simply made a list of all the things that you would permit him to spend your money on. 

If the owner of this forum agrees to conduct my proposed experiment... and you end up donating $100... perhaps you could inform the owner that you only allow him to spend your $100 to help maintain and improve this forum.  This way, you really don't have to worry about him donating the $100 dollars to the NRA.

You are proposing an unenforcable contract.