h a l f b a k e r yNot so much a thought experiment as a single neuron misfire.
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My idea is a social experiment involving the lottery. It works like your standard state lottery. Tickets cost between $2 and $10. At the end of a certain period, a number is drawn, and the matching ticket wins a few million dollars.
Here's where it's a little bit different. Every ticket buys you
a vote, as well as eligibility to win the final prize. There is no draw. Instead, all the votes are counted up, and the person with the most votes wins the prize.
Campaigning is allowed. Corporations can participate in the campaign, but a corporation can't be awarded the prize. It has to be a flesh and blood human being.
This will do a couple of things. It will serve as an experiment about elections where the stakes are clear-cut: only money is at stake. So it serves as a kind of control for studies about how elections work. This will also serve as a testing ground for voting machines and related technology, as well as a test ground for anti-cheating mechanisms.
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Lottery escalation - with rich gamblers ready to try and grab %50+1 of the voting power... |
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So, I pay 5$ to buy a vote, knowing that my 5$ will go to
someone else who has the charisma and financial resources
to campaign and secure the most votes? |
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What I'm missing here is why I would do this. |
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//What I'm missing here is why I would do this.// Logic?
Logic!? You think the decision's based on LOGIC? If the
purchase of lottery tickets were the act of a rational
agent, would anyone buy even ordinary lottery
tickets? |
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I think it would be interesting from a game theory perspective. Let's say there is a garaunteed jackpot of 1 million dollars. What would be a rational/optimal number of people to syndicate together and nominate a particular individual? If you got together 900,000 people (assuming $1 per entry) you would be pretty certain of winning (and making a 10% net profit), but then there is a possibility that another syndicate with 900,001 people would 'gazump' you (and you'd lose the lot). |
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[xaviergisz] Thinking about this, I've about convinced myself
that the question is only interesting if one individual can buy
into more than one syndicate -- in which case it seems so
complicated I wonder if there's a closed-form solution at all.
A Monte Carlo simulation might be fun, though. |
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There are lots of interesting possibilities in this game, e.g. individuals lying to the syndicate organiser about who they will vote for, lottery espionage etc (although these are difficult to model). |
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If I were to play this game, I would crush the opposition by buying slightly more (or perhaps less) than $1 million worth of tickets in the first game (and maybe a few games after that). Then once the opposition was completely demoralised, I'd start buying less and less tickets; $900,000 then $800,000 etc. . At some point I would lose, but hopefully I would come out ahead overall. |
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In essence, isn't this exactly how ordinary shares work? Loads of schmucks buy into a company and receive a small dividend in return for their vote, meanwhile the chief executive and the board members walk away with the big prizes. |
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DrBob has it right. But if you called share-holders "schmucks," that might be bad for business. |
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Doesn't parliament already work like this ? |
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It's often said that "British MPs are the best that money can buy". |
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Widely known to exist, at so many levels. |
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What would the ballot paper look like? |
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