I see now that this and a couple other points were mentioned in Repledge++. One more I would add to the list:
‘Relative advantage’ in cash vs percentage terms could be a sticking point. In the case of a $10M/$8M split, giving $2M/$0 to the respective candidates seems unfair to candidate B, because $2M is infinitely more than $0 in percentage terms. Say this money was going to ad buys, instead of running 100 vs 80 ad spots, candidate A now runs 20 spots vs zero for candidate B, and is the only candidate on the airwaves.
I would argue that a fair split would be $1.111M vs $0.889M, but I’m not sure that supporters of candidate A would agree.
Of course, if you assume that the platform is only a tiny fraction of total campaign contributions this is much less significant, but still worth a thought.
Yeah—I think it’s unlikely that Pact would become a really large player and have distortionary effects. If that happens, we’ll solve that problem when we get there :)
The broader point that the marginal dollar might be more valuable to one campaign than to another is an important one. You could try to deal with this by making an actual market, where the ratio at which people trade campaign dollars isn’t fixed at 1, but I think that will complicate the platform and end up doing more harm than good.
I see now that this and a couple other points were mentioned in Repledge++. One more I would add to the list:
‘Relative advantage’ in cash vs percentage terms could be a sticking point. In the case of a $10M/$8M split, giving $2M/$0 to the respective candidates seems unfair to candidate B, because $2M is infinitely more than $0 in percentage terms. Say this money was going to ad buys, instead of running 100 vs 80 ad spots, candidate A now runs 20 spots vs zero for candidate B, and is the only candidate on the airwaves.
I would argue that a fair split would be $1.111M vs $0.889M, but I’m not sure that supporters of candidate A would agree.
Of course, if you assume that the platform is only a tiny fraction of total campaign contributions this is much less significant, but still worth a thought.
Yeah—I think it’s unlikely that Pact would become a really large player and have distortionary effects. If that happens, we’ll solve that problem when we get there :)
The broader point that the marginal dollar might be more valuable to one campaign than to another is an important one. You could try to deal with this by making an actual market, where the ratio at which people trade campaign dollars isn’t fixed at 1, but I think that will complicate the platform and end up doing more harm than good.