

So Much for One Person, One Vote (How Oprah influenced the democratic primaries) - iseff
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/so-much-for-one-person-one-vote/

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gm
Is this really a surprise? If we wanted completely fair elections, there would
be no unequal campaign funding, no TV, a 6 month pre-election gag, etc...
etc... Anyone speaking to a group of people about the election gets more than
one vote, not just Oprah.

Is there a story here? Blah, maybe I'm just bored.

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sysop073
Your completely fair election seems to involve making sure the electorate
doesn't know anything about the candidates, which I suppose is fair in that
we'd have to vote at random

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byrneseyeview
I always found it annoying that campaign finance laws are so inconsistent: why
do they seriously restrict people with lots of extra money, but not those with
lots of extra time or influence?

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pg
Because money's the most liquid medium; the medium of exchange, in fact.

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byrneseyeview
Then it's a lazy hack. Every law has a message, and apparently the message of
this one is "It is perfectly okay to support a candidate as much as possible,
so long as you use the second through nth most liquid medium, and not the very
most liquid medium."

There are just so many negative externalities, here. Imagine a lawyer who can
do something society thinks is worth $500 per hour. By lunchtime, he's earned
enough money to make the maximum donation to Obama; thereafter, his next best
bet is to do the kind of volunteer work worth about $10 an hour. He's running
at 2% efficiency so we can feel like our political system is less corrupt!

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pg
Whether it's a hack is not something you can decide a priori. It depends how
much more liquid it is than other mediums.

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icey
Here's the quick summary of a totally shit article: Sometimes endorsements
work.

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nothackernews
Not hacker news.

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rit
i hate to say it, but I left reddit to get away from the constant politics.

Interesting article, but would prefer to see more coding / hacking news :)

