Obama Donors As News

I think restricting the possible explanation to exactly one of the posed binary set is completely fatuous and very uninteresting.

It doesn’t seem implausible to posit that a large number of poorer donors each giving less might have interests more closely aligned with those of the majority of the country than a smaller number of richer donors giving more, and thus that the existing caps on donations from individuals are an effective way to make democracy better, and are proving so in this election cycle.

I can see how a selfish agent can use money to influence a weakly contested election in his favor, but I don’t see how a selfish agent can do the same in a strongly contested election, such as the presidential one, to an extent that it would matter.

You have significant leverage when your money is the deciding factor that gets someone elected, but you have much less leverage when you are only one among very many contributors.

It seems as though private interest would dominate contributions in weakly contested elections, whereas public interest would dominate contributions in strongly contested elections, such as the presidential one.

Paul, given your assumptions it seems you should take Obama’s rich donors as bad news about Obama.

denis, so you’d limit donations in “weakly” but not “strongly” contested elections? I’m not sure how we’d implement that.

Paul, given your assumptions it seems you should take Obama’s rich donors as bad news about Obama.

denis, so you’d limit donations in “weakly” but not “strongly” contested elections? I’m not sure how we’d implement that.

Robin, you said “rejecting the private interest theory is rejecting campaign finance reform.” This is fallacious in that it excludes the possibility that one can be both for campaign finance reform AND perfectly willing to use the system as is to help ensure that one’s desire comes about.

Brian, the companies donating to both sides are presumably implicitly bribing or being extorted by politicians. Status theory would probably make more sense in the context of individual donors.

Tool theory sounds like a variation on public interest to me.

Roger: Robin, you said “rejecting the private interest theory is rejecting campaign finance reform.” This is fallacious in that it excludes the possibility that one can be both for campaign finance reform AND perfectly willing to use the system as is to help ensure that one’s desire comes about.

It sounds like you are taking option 2.A – accepting the private interest theory while simultaneously believing it does not apply to Obama donors.

Robin, I’m with Brian in thinking that what he calls the “tool theory” is a rather startling omission from your post; for my part, I have trouble imagining myself donating to a political campaign for any other (consciously held) reason. The “public interest” theory you propose seems very implausible to me. (I have no evidence, but then you also offered none.)

Simon, what in Roger’s comment suggests that he thinks the private interest theory doesn’t apply to Obama donors? And: “Tool theory” seems quite different from Robin’s public interest theory to me; could you explain why you think it’s a variation thereupon?

An article in Newsweek a couple of weeks ago which said that about half of Obama’s (then) $458M total came from sub-$200 donors. That’s obviously inconsistent with what the Washington Post is saying now, so someone is (or has been) lying; I wonder who. It’s also interesting that in Newsweek on 2008-10-04 it was suspicious and controversial and ominous that so much of Obama’s money comes from small donors, whereas in the Washington Post on 2008-10-22 it’s suspicious and controversial and ominous that so (unspecifiedly) much of Obama’s money comes from large donors. It’s almost as if the one constant thing is that something has to be wrong about Obama’s campaign.

Which, for some reason, prompts me to speculate on what a remarkable coincidence it is how consistently Robin’s articles about politics and about politically charged topics seem to point to conclusions more favourable to the Republican than the Democratic platform. (Yeah, I know, “politics isn’t about policy”.) There would seem to be some sort of bias there, but it’s open to debate what it is.

Insofar as I have standing to comment on the American election (I’m Canadian), I say that my option is 2B. Come on, folks! This is a pretty small bullet for Obama supporters to bite.

Robin, of course a signal can be sent without intention; but “we donate to signal” (which is what you wrote) implies intention. (There are varieties of intention — see evolutionary psychology, passim — hence the words “consciously held” in what I wrote.)

If by “public interest” you mean simply “donating to X’s campaign because you think X’s election will be in the public interest” then, sure, I expect plenty of people do that, but I am unable to see how that is the same thing as “we donate to signal private info about candidate quality”.

Similarly, “donations are in trade for favors” is prima facie quite different from “people donate to X’s campaign because they think X’s election will be in their interest”, just as when I buy a book I do so because I think having the book will be useful or pleasing rather than because I think that buying it will make the author’s subsequent books fit my tastes better.

I had a legal issue, where I was being charged with taking trade secrets and the plaintiff got to see all my hard drives (terabytes of info back to 1993) and after a couple years would specify the secrets I took, at which time I would then have to defend myself. I told the court, this is costly (no one would hire someone with stolen information because they too would be liable, and I could not prove I didn’t have such information because I had only a vague idea of what the secret could be–something related to finance). Now, many states have laws that prevent plaintiffs from doing this, because it’s pure harassment, and biased towards finding ‘something’ ex post, a classic fishing expedition, whose cost in process is the desired endgame.

I contacted my state senator and state representative. Not to affect my case, but as this was clearly a bad law in our state, and the federal courts, and many states, had explicit statutes preventing it, I wanted to argue these statutes should exist in our state too, there is no reason not to have these ‘good laws’ in our state. Both told me, in effect, this was not an issue with any chance of getting through. I have a feeling, if I had given them $2000, they would have been more amenable. After all, somehow such statutes got into other states, and it wasn’t out of some greater ‘big picture vision’ by their legislators.

If I were really rich, I’d be paying regularly, because you will find yourself in court, and you are foolish to think justice is blind.

The post is about signalling; it makes no difference to the argument of the post whether or not the signalling is the primary purpose of donation or merely a side effect.

Simon, what in Roger’s comment suggests that he thinks the private interest theory doesn’t apply to Obama donors?

I interpreted his comment incorrectly. My apologies.

Simon, this post does (at least) two things: it makes an argument based on signalling, and it makes claims about why people donate to political campaigns. Are you suggesting that the latter should be ignored because it’s … how shall I put this? … “merely a side effect”?

I expect the Powers That Be will notice for themselves, but just in case: “Missy”‘s comments above are not only content-free but also spam.

The obvious solution is that people do trade donations for favors if they can, but $2300 isn’t nearly enough to buy a favor from a President.

We could count this as a version of 2a, where the “aberration” is that Obama’s donors are required to follow campaign finance laws that cap donations at $2300. Or, we could count it as a variation on 1, where we reject the theory that most donations are attempts to buy favors, but still support limits on campaign financing because, in the absence of those limits (which are market-destroying price controls), there will be enough donations-for-favors to be a problem. The non-favor-seeking donors’ motivations aren’t essential here, but they’re probably pretty similar to the motivations of people who donate to other charities & issue groups.

Are you suggesting that the latter should be ignored because it’s … how shall I put this? … “merely a side effect”?

Well, perhaps one might not ignore it, but it should be acknowledged that it’s not relevant to the main point of the post.

Really though, I doubt Robin intended the words “to signal private info about candidate quality” to necessarily mean that the public interest theory excluded the tool theory.

Brian, I’m not sure it’s exactly a *critique* of a candidate; Robin’s post doesn’t say anything about Obama’s policies or character or competence or anything. But it does seem that an unacknowledged purpose of Robin’s post, as of several of his political posts, might be to help the Republicans’ chances and/or hurt the Democrats’. Though I’d have thought he might have more effective ways of doing that, so perhaps instead we should ask what he’s signalling to whom…