Would you sell your right to vote?

[Lexicus]

 

[Truthy]

Whoah whoah whoah you calling me a pedophile?

 

[amadeus]

Let’s not let meme posts ruin this. CFC is not reddit.

 

[H4run]

Slightly different question: if you had to pay poll taxes, how much would you be willing to pay to vote?

To vote? I'll not chose the option between two evil even they pay me, hah!

 

[amadeus]

Now this makes me wonder: how would the U.S. House look if we used the Prussian three-class franchise?

EDIT: wonder no more, I did it here.

It might be hard to determine based on taxes paid like the Prussian system, so I would try to calculate it through exit polls of annual income and work it out based on the percentage of population in each group.

Based on what I remember from how different income groups voted, I don’t think there would be that drastic of a change in outcomes? I suppose a more “accurate” analysis would break it down by district, but that would increase the amount of work I have to do by at least 43,000%.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd sell my second amendment rights to own guns and kill people.

It's not clear how that would be valuable in transference though. The right to vote has value because in purchasing a vote a single person can get two votes. What does a second set of second amendment rights do that having only one copy does not?

 

[Patine]

I'd sell my second amendment rights to own guns and kill people.

The Second Amendment does not have an attached "Right to Kill People," as an affixed part of the Constitutional ideal. Just because you seemed unclear on that.

 

[Hrothbern]

The going rate for vote selling here in the Philippines is P20...or 40 cents US.
In Nov., just try and get P20-notes for the bus. The politicians have bought them all up.
Yet locals are forever complaining about corruption.

40 USD cents multiplied with the roughly 110 million people in the Philippines is 44 Million USD.

Buying votes of the Philippines in the UN, WHO, etc by the US, China, Russia, etc ... goes I guess at a higher rate
In the EU veto votes in the EU are bought at higher rates by super-powers.
China "financed" recently a railway for Hungary at a total amount of 2 Billion at favorable interest conditions. The "favor" amounting for sure more than 4.4 Million USD (Hungary has roughly 10 Million people)

Perhaps my country should stop giving 0.7% of GDP to third world countries, bypass the local clique, and just buy directly votes in those countries to improve the situation.
For 0.7% of 900 Billion GDP, for 6.3 Billion USD, at 40 USD cents, my country alone could buy directly the votes of 15.7 Billion people in third world countries.

The Romans did the same.
Just some entertainment with bread for the true Roman citizens.
And the Praetorian Guard as dogs in the background.

Buying votes is really opening a box of Pandorra !

Or is it mass-democratising of bribery ?
That sounds much better... or not ?

 

[EnglishEdward]

Now this makes me wonder: how would the U.S. House look if we used the Prussian three-class franchise?

It might be hard to determine based on taxes paid like the Prussian system, so I would try to calculate it through exit polls of annual income and work it out based on the percentage of population in each group.

Based on what I remember from how different income groups voted, I don’t think there would be that drastic of a change in outcomes? I suppose a more “accurate” analysis would break it down by district, but that would increase the amount of work I have to do by at least 43,000%.

Thank you. That was a very interesting article. I was not previously aware of that system.

I would note that those of you who have invested your pension contributions through corporate intermediaries
in the stock market, you have not so much as sold your vote, but actually paid someone else to have it.

 

[Hygro]

If you want more structured rules, it's basically this: an anonymous buyer has offered a deal to you to sell your right to vote, in that you would no longer have any say in the political process whatsoever and this anonymous buyer assuming your consent now has two votes to do with as they please. You don't know what they will do with it, you don't know how many others they've contacted. The only relevant question becomes: what's your price?

In that case no sale. Originally I thought this was like a government program where you either keep your right to vote or you get cashed out at a price one discusses in the reply to your OP. That to me is an interesting question to consider.

But to give more votes to a buyer for a price, I’ll go down fighting.

 

[amadeus]

Would you do it if only one person could do it once? Suppose I get elected to Congress (yay big salary) and pass the Only Hygro Can Sell His Vote Act of 2020.

 

[Patine]

Would you do it if only one person could do it once? Suppose I get elected to Congress (yay big salary) and pass the Only Hygro Can Sell His Vote Act of 2020.

Discussing this scenario as though it were an acceptable thing to allow and tolerate, and not lead to an armed mob dragging Bezos and his corporate cronies, and the treasonous and seditious lawmakers he bribed from their mansions in their bedclothes to a people's tribunal for high treason against the People, Nation, and Constitution, followed by public execution in the Mall, is frankly morally repugnant - even hypothetically.

 

[Hrothbern]

is frankly morally repugnant

How much shared moralism do we have ?

How much of the average moralism we have today is rooted in group aspects of society (whether horizontal or from top-down)... and how much from individual principles choices ?

And how much did that average and that relative proportion change since for example WW2 or for example since 1800 ?

 

[amadeus]

Discussing this scenario as though it were an acceptable thing to allow and tolerate, and not lead to an armed mob dragging Bezos and his corporate cronies, and the treasonous and seditious lawmakers he bribed from their mansions in their bedclothes to a people's tribunal for high treason against the People, Nation, and Constitution, followed by public execution in the Mall, is frankly morally repugnant - even hypothetically.

You have made a very valiant and courageous stand against my ... topic.

I think you’re investing too much time soapboxing in my otherwise lighthearted what-if.

 

[Patine]

You have made a very valiant and courageous stand against my ... topic.

I think you’re investing too much time soapboxing in my otherwise lighthearted what-if.

In a hypothetical Beer Hall in a German City in 1926. "You know, Ludwig, since we're unemployed and have little else to do, let's speculate light-hearted what-if's if this whacko Austrian, Adolf Hitler, were actually to win an election."

 

[Naktis]

I would, for 5x minimal wage a month.For the rest of my life

 

[Patine]

I would, for 5x minimal wage a month.For the rest of my life

You deserve a tyrant, like everyone else who said they'd sell their vote. AND, to be held criminally complicant for EVERYTHING that tyrant ended up doing to EVERYONE, along with the tyrant - no fellow traveller status for any of you!

 

[Hrothbern]

You have made a very valiant and courageous stand against my ... topic.

I think you’re investing too much time soapboxing in my otherwise lighthearted what-if.

I like light-hearted approaches
We are still homo ludens despite all the worries we can have.

Here another argument against selling your birthright to vote

Genesis 25:

29 And Jacob sod pottage: and Esau came from the field, and he was faint:

30 And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

31 And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

32 And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

33 And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised his birthright.
[and lost the country Kanaan]

The twist would ofc be that later Christian translators would have added that there were 30 beans in that soup.

 

[amadeus]

In a hypothetical Beer Hall in a German City in 1926. "You know, Ludwig, since we're unemployed and have little else to do, let's speculate light-hearted what-if's if this whacko Austrian, Adolf Hitler, were actually to win an election."

I’m having a hard time making a serious connection from a video game BBS to Weimar Germany.

 

[El_Machinae]

Would you do it if only one person could do it once? Suppose I get elected to Congress (yay big salary) and pass the Only Hygro Can Sell His Vote Act of 2020.

Oh, in a heartbeat. Even if I 100% cared about politics, money is more useful than a vote.