eBay The Vote 228
Internet Voting writes "Voters in Argentina's upcoming presidential election have found an interesting solution to their political apathy: eBay. 'New and unused' votes are being posted from $0.30 to $95. Electoral authorities say they're powerless to stop it. 'Argentine electoral authorities say they can do little to stop the practice because it falls into a legal vacuum. One of the voters, Martin Minue, a doctor from the northern province of Rioja, told a newspaper it was his way to protest against useless politicians. Mr Minue, 33, told the Clarin paper he felt powerless to change the country's situation. The doctor, who works in the city of Chilecito, posted his vote on an auction website with a price tag of 20 pesos (US$6).'"
USA Not So Different... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing (Score:3, Insightful)
This belief is dangerous because people gamble with it, they figure they can gain an advantage against the others by pushing their own views on the political scene. In the end, only the political class wins and everyone is fooled into perpuating a system that strive at their own expense by they believing they can game it. In a country like Argentina, where presidents are often openly kleptocrats, it is easy to shake the belief... some countries have more subtle leaders and the myth is harder to shake.
Re:none of the above (Score:1, Insightful)
Therefore I typically vote for the evil of two lessors. Or the Cowboy Neal option if both of those $uck.
Re:none of the above (Score:3, Insightful)
Receiptless Voting (Score:3, Insightful)
Since (in the US) there's currently no way to verify a voter voted a certain way, Ebaying of votes can't hard democracy because someone can "sell" their vote and still anonymously vote any way they like.
Note this is not the same thing as disallowing a paper trail. You do want a paper trail of votes and voters separately, just not a paper trail of who voted what.
Re:none of the above (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
FYP.
Re:Forbidding this is not part of a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
But in a republic, we DON'T have the right to democratically select a dictatorship. We've got a political abstraction layer known as the system of "checks and balances," and one of its functions is to protect the system (not the government, mind you, but the system) from the citizens. After all, we don't just have our own generation to think about; we can fail ourselves, but the heirs to our mistakes at least need some chance to recover.
Re:this happens a lot in the philippines (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree.
If, for instance, you live in a region where the vast majority of the citizens continually vote for some corrupt politician, then there really is nothing you can do to fix it. You're in a minority, and the majority wants the corrupt politician in power. So what harm is there in selling your vote, or not voting? Of course, this is a hypothetical scenario, but I believe it's valid.
Not voting at all is a bad idea, however, if the overall voter turn-out is low, because then you have far more chance to make a difference. But if the turn-out is very high, and it's all against you, then there's really very little point to voting, other than trying to show support for an unpopular choice. Your best course of action is to either ignore politics and learn to live with it somehow, or pack up and move to greener pastures, where the fellow citizens aren't so stupid.
You're right when you say that "a government is no better than its citizens". When a country like, for instance, Mexico, has utterly corrupt politicians and everyone is dirt poor while a few people are extremely wealthy, and the country's rich resources go unexploited, the fault ultimately lies at the feet of the people. One way or another, they have the power to change things, and they're too lazy or fearful to do so.
so what do you prefer? (Score:2, Insightful)
you? you start off conveniently forgetting the small issue of the need to pick one (imperfect) governmental style. propaganda, like blowhard cynics like yourself, is another form of speech that traffics in half-truths: things that sound smart and wise... except for the point about forgetting a massively important concept in the formation of your opinions: you need a government (unless your next step is to champion anarchy... pffft, enjoy somalia friend)
the idea of your lack of belief in democracy is that there is some governmental system superior to it. so please, point it out to me, we have plenty of options avaiable to us: theocracy, as in iran? technocracy, as in china? authoertarianism, as in russia? despotism, as in north korea?
oh great swami who has shown us why democracy sucks: please, by all means, show us the superior system. you tell me friend, you're the "smart" cynical one
according to you, democracy perpetuates rule by some self-appointed aristocratic minority whose agenda runs counter to the mases who elect them. this concept of course, is complete and utter bullshit. but of course EVERY OTHER system before us EXPLICITLY AUTHORIZES the existence of a self-anointed minority to rule a country. fancy that, oh great genius
you're a typical empty nihilistic asshole. happy to corrupt the belief in anything, but not offering belief in anything superior. the world, and history, is full of people like you. very loud, very superior sounding, and very empty
"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." - Winston Churchill
http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2007/02/20/the-problem-with-democracy/ [wordpress.com]
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because the promises are worthless.
Re:Forbidding this is not part of a democracy (Score:3, Insightful)
By that definition there are no "true democracies," and few people would want to live in one, as it wouldn't be very compatible with individual freedom.
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I gotta say, I liked getting some of MY money back. And I don't think a surplus is a good thing, it means they have too much of the citizen's money. If they have too much, they will find a way to spend it. I don't like the huge debt they have us in now, no...but, if they will bring the war down to a close, and cut some stupid spending (how about stopping a lot of the payments we make to other countries?), I think we'll start to recover financially. I'm still paying about 33% of my income....and that is ENOUGH!! The govt needs to learn to live within its means. Heck, I wish they go to a FairTax type thing...simpler to understand, and would keep a lot of tax dodges by large corps and cash under the table stuff from being lost as tax funds that happen so readily today.
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
It is government spending which is the problem. Government can't possibly direct the national output more efficiently than the free market can* because the free market is the mechanism by which the the economy relaxes into its most efficient configuration.
*There are a few areas, known as "market failures" where government is sometimes necessary. For instance, military spending does nothing for the economy other than to prevent outsiders from muscling in.
The money itself isn't actually relevant except wherein it represents a claim to someone's time. Whether government raises taxes, goes into debt, or simply demands people do certain things, the effect is the same: The efforts of the people involved are directed in ways that are not economically optimal. They won't have zero benefit to the economy, but they will have less benefit than they would if the government weren't directing their effort.
Taxes serve basically two purposes, neither of which need have anything to do with the operation of the government. The first is that they balance the books regarding the government's direction of resources. Without taxes, inflation is the mechanism by which the nation's efforts are extracted (well inflation if extra money is printed. Slavery of a specific few, otherwise).
The other is that they allow the government to engage in social meddling. Extracting the labor of certain people more than others for various reasons, but it amounts shifting around or enhancing the non-optimal direction of the economy through additional non-optimal direction of the economy.
Re:I quit voting (Score:4, Insightful)
back to the subject at hand: want to have a part in how things are running? Spend 4 hours, once every two years, at your precinct caucus. Get two friends to do the same, and you can make a difference. Heck, get four friends to show up and vote you as the precinct representative, and take your message to the county level. My mom was a state caucus representative a bunch of times, because she knew a lot of people locally, and she took her pro-abortion, pro-civil-liberties, pro-free-speech message to the state Republicans and made a lot of unwelcome noise. More power to people like that, I say. If the people running this train don't hear dissent, they push the throttle down further, and the entire country is tied to the tracks.
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, one of those. Man, I could spend an hour going off on you, but I'll just try to stick to the high points.
First of all, it's not YOUR money. Why? Because the US government, in its (lack of) infinite wisdom, has been spending far more than you've been paying it on your behalf. And I hate to burst your bubble, but that's the agreement that you sign onto by having income in this country. As a result, you have a massive debt that's getting bigger and bigger every day, and yet here you are, complaining that you want to pay less and less back.
Second of all, when you have such a massive debt, having a budget surplus is a good thing; it's what allows you to pay that debt off. If you have a credit card with a huge balance, don't you think that it's a good thing if you have a little left over each month to pay towards the balance? According to your logic, the answer is no, you should at most break even each month.
Third of all, if you're paying 33% of your income, then you must be extremely wealthy and extremely stupid. The marginal rate of 33% only applies if you make over $97,925 a year. If your total income tax is 33%, do you have any clue what that makes your income? $694,850. And the kicker? That's before any deductions are taken into account. I'm having a hard time believing that you actually make $694,850. If you do, more power to you, but I don't have any sympathy for your righteous indignation.
Fourth of all, your Fair Tax comment deserves its own full comment, but let's take at least a few pot shots at it:
Re:This is HIGHLY illegal in the US (Score:3, Insightful)
So? Tax deductions are extremely distortionary. Why exactly should parents and homeowners get tax breaks? Why should the government encourage people to save?
There are positive externialities that should be subsidized by the government because of spillover effects(parks, education, etc.), but tax breaks are a horrible way to do it. This is because over-funding a positive externiality is just as bad as underfunding it, and because of this, the amount of funding needs to be adjusted very often. But tax breaks are usually forgotten and neglected, used and exploited well past their use, not only that, but they tend to have rather non-linear incentive effects.
It is better to have an agency that directly doles the money for the cause in question. This is easier to monitor than tax breaks, easier to manage, and the incentive effects are highly predictable.
"It totally neglects people's current after-tax investments. All that Roth IRA money people have invested? They'll be paying tax on it twice--income tax when they earned it, and again when they purchase stuff."
So? We have a lot of distortionary effects from income taxes too, it's just that the mathematics are a lot more complicated, making the effects much harder to see. Most papers I have seen on the subject show that deadweight loss is lower with some sort of consumption tax than with income taxes.
"Speaking of collection, it turns millions of people into tax collectors. Keep in mind that the Fair Tax applies to services, too. Does your son mow lawns in the summer? He has to collect Fair Tax. Does your daughter baby-sit the neighbor's baby? She has to collect the Fair Tax. If they don't and the new Santa Claus government entity that collects Fair Tax finds out, they'll be punished for tax evasion."
Every state in the country collects sales taxes. We could just force them to tack on a federal surchange and send their share to the government. We would still need an extensive team of auditors to ensure that the stats are not ripping us off, but that seems much simpler than the IRS. But I don't really support abolishing the IRS, I think that we need some way of obtaining people's income for the purpose of benefit allocation.
"There is no provision for paying different taxes on different things. Right now, if you buy a $200,000 house for example, you don't pay that much in sales tax. Under the Fair Tax, you'll be stuck with an extra $46,000. If I'm not mistaken (I'd have to go look it up again), I think that loans are subject to the Fair Tax also as a service, which means that you'll be paying another $41,400 of Fair Tax (assuming you pay around 10% down) to your mortgage lender!"
This is a feature, not a bug. If there are different marginal taxes on different goods, that is a recipe for massive economic distortion. I don't see why buying a house is any different from buying anything else, it should be taxed, as should loans.
"The Fair Tax doesn't apply to foreign-bought goods or to used goods. Yeah, no potential for tax dodges and under-the-table dealings there, right?"
I'm not sure what you mean by that, I'm not really a Fair Tax junkie. I support a consumption tax, and have read a couple of papers on the subject, but I never really researched their specific proposal. I think every transaction should be taxed equally, without any exception.
"Now here's the $64,000 question--probably literally! If the poor people are paying the same, and rich people are paying 12% less, who will be making up the difference in that huge pile of cash? The middle class. That's the dirty little secret that the Fair Tax advocates don't like to tell people: It is a huge shift of the tax burden off the backs of the rich people in this country onto the backs o
Re: Speaking of "thinking out it" (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. Where to start?
First, you clearly can't make up your mind about whether a marginal tax rate is or is not equal to an average tax rate. You suggest the OP is foolish for saying that he's paying 33% of his income in taxes, but then you attempt to invalidate the Fair Tax by suggesting that the wealthy are going to pay less of an AVERAGE tax rate than they are right now. You're conflating the current income tax's MARGINAL rates with the Fair Tax's FLAT RATE.
Next, you gloss over the fact that the Fair Tax's rate applies to dollars SPENT, not dollars EARNED. [I'll give you three guesses as to which is the larger base, given the current scheme of deductions/evasions.] Finally, you ignore the fact that many wealthy people pay capital gains tax rates [10-15%] on significant portions of their incomes rather than ordinary income rates, further reducing their AVERAGE tax rates.
Your rhetoric seems little more than a typical attempt to stir up class warfare through straw men and deliberate falsehoods. Either that, or you truly don't get it. In either event, you might want to cut back your rants a bit until you better understand the subject.