From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 17:10:10 -0700 (PDT)
To: mjmiski@execpc.com
Subject: Re: Stopping the buying of candidates
Message-ID: <199610250009.RAA08647@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 01:40 PM 10/24/96 +0000, Matthew J. Miszewski wrote:
>This is my last reply.  I guess I forgot your overarching theory. 
>Reality, nah.

"My last reply"?  Sorta the rhetorical equivalent of "I think I heard my 
mommy calling," huh?


>(snip)
>> No, I didn't say I was "cutting off all prediction of money appearing."   
>> But it would be a long shot from having particular donor's names associated 
>> with particular dollar figures.  And, the system would simply have to 
>(snip)
>
>It's not a long shot.  When Bob the Big Bad Lobbyist comes into the 
>Senator's office and leads him to believe a donation will be made and 
>magically a sizeable one does, it can be reasonable infered from 
>whence it came. 

Except that "sizeable" donations won't appear.  If you don't understand 
this, you haven't been reading the descriptions of how the system would 
work.  Individual donations won't be identified either by name of amount; 
they'll be accumulated and only approximately reported.

> In the real world, politicians have access to the 
>names and addresses of people who regularly donate to political 
>campaigns. 

I wonder how many people will still be donating if they can't get their name 
associated with the donation...

> Trust me, the probability of others, i.e. regular working 
>people, donating to campaigns is zero to none.  There is a finite 
>pool of political campaign money out there.

And it'll be even less when this system is adopted.


>> I'd prefer doing something far more...uh...permanent than to merely REPLACE 
>> officeholders.
>
>My fault.  I forget whom I was replying to.  Of course my reply above 
>was in response to your question about developing a "working" system. 
>Have fun in your politicianless world (with no physical 
>infrastructure, information infrastructure, national defense, etc.) 

Who needs "national defense"?  As for "information infrastructure, are you 
under the illusion that private industry couldn't do it?  Hell, it DOES it!  
The Internet is essentially fully privatized, NOW.

And "physical infrastructure"?  Sure they'll be physical infrastructure.  
It'll just be _privately_ owned.

>I would much rather leave it to the market.  There is, of course, no 
>corruption there. (WINK) 

The difference between private and public corruption is that in private 
corruption, individuals presumably have the right to fight that corruption 
where it impacts on their rights and assets.  In PUBLIC corruption, the 
taxpayer is rarely given the opportunity to fight the loss of his assets.

>
>> >Every candidate ever endorsed by the Firefighters Union in my town 
>> >have been absolutely elected.  Looking at the firefighters voting 
>> >records and matching with their addresses shows a distinct pattern of 
>> >voting in almost every election. 
>> 
>> "Firefighter's voting records"?  I _thought_ we had a secret ballot in this 
>> country.  Maybe you're from some  town that I don't know about!
>
>I, unlike some people, live in the real world.  It is trivial for 
>political groups to put together listings of public employee 
>addresses, their VOTING records (meaning whether they voted or not, 
>check with your city hall...hmmm...go figure, they keep track of 
>that) and public expressions of support (i.e. lawn signs, letters to 
>the editor, rally attendance).  Compile this info and you have a 
>pretty good handle on who voted for whom (Yes I know it cant show 
>absolutely that someone voted a certain way, but most of campaigning 
>is simple probability.  I dont have the time to explain this in 
>detail, look it up if you are really interested).


It appears that you've convinced yourself that ESP exists and works.  Given 
that, it isn't surprising that you would believe that donations to 
candidates can't be "blinded" sufficiently to help dramatically reduce 
political quid pro quo.


>> Besides, what you're saying can be considered a bit of self-fulfilling 
>> prophecy.  Some cities ALWAYS vote one way, or another.  Over time, public 
>> employees simply adjust their politics to match their wallets, etc.  
>> Remember, these are PUBLIC employees after all, which really just means the 
>> employeees of the thugs who get into office.  It does not serve their 
>> interests to go against the winning candidate.  If, one year, the party 
>> normally out of office appears to be winning, the Firefighters will simply 
>> adjust their politics accordingly.  Simple.
>
>What you are not getting is that, in this case, the public employees 
>are the edge that causes the win.

How do you know this?  

>  We have had some close races, the 
>winning margin is clearly less than the number of voting public 
>employees. 

The winning margin is ALSO clearly less than the number of many different 
identifiable groups.  You seem to be making assumptions in support of your 
theory.

> You don't need to control all the votes.  Only the sure 
>number that you can "deliver", the need for which can be discerned 
>fairly easily (using those nasty historical voting records).

ESP again, I see...


>> > They have sufficient numbers to win every time.
>> 
>> Whichever candidate wins, "has sufficient numbers to win."  Tell me 
>> something else I don't know.
>> 
>
>This came from a discussion of vote delivery.  X has a block Y that 
>will vote for Z (the endorsed candidate) every time.  If victory 
>margin is less than Y, X's delivery controls the race.

Except that plenty of voting blocks exist.  And there's plenty of unknowns 
that you can't figure out with any certainty:  How certain are you that 
"Block Y" ALL voted for Z?  How do you know some other group didn't?  Etc.



>> >Power currupts.  Not size of governement. 
>> 
>> Size of government is evidence of the size of the corruption.
>> 
>
>Unproven.  Apparently you don't believe that some monarchies, which 
>can be extremely small governments, have been some of the most 
>corrupt in history.  As I stated above, power corrupts.  It is an 
>easy way out of arguments for libertarians and most republicans to 
>say that big government is the root of all evil.

It's pretty close, even if not entirely the "root of all evil."

  

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com