RE: The Fuzzy Criteria Problem

[Steven Johnson <stevenhjohnson@juno.com>]

Jay Oliver raises some good questions.

In an optional public funding system, with extra matching funding should the privately funded candidate raise/spend more, would even the minor party candidates get the same largesse?

Two responses: Minor candidates probably shouldn't.  But the major candidates should, not because "we the public" want huge amounts spent on campaigns, but because we want to discourage the extra leverage that wealth confers from playing a role.  The ideal outcome is a candidate with superior access to wealth deciding not to capitalize on that access, because it isn't worth it, and deciding instead to run a publicly-financed campaign, because it'll give him/her a "cleaner" image with voters. 

To obtain that outcome, though, one has to build in a deterrent. "Use your extra wealth, and your opponent will be awarded matching funds."  (Subtext - "so why bother?")

Second question regards equality among citizens as a criteria.  Jay Oliver suggests that's met by the fact that citizens have equal votes, and beyond that, equal influence is impossible, so why try?  

My counter is that grossly unequal influence is enhanced by the current system, it can be curbed, it's worth curbing, we certainly have the policy tools to curb it if we choose to use them, so why not adhere to the principle of equalizing influence? 

So many of the arguments being made in politics today, it seems to me, assume the inevitability of "gaming" the system.  This is inherently corrupting.  It's like the "mordida" in Mexico.  So many refuse to do anything unless a tip, i.e. a bribe, changes hands. "La mordida" is a cancer in any culture that practices it, and the unrepentant notion that gaming our political system is not only inevitable but acceptable is a roughly equivalent cancer in our culture.

Still, perhaps the takeaway from Jay Oliver's point should be this - instead of phrasing the criterion in terms of equalizing weight or influence, maybe the criterion should be phrased in terms of reducing the gross inequalities of influence among citizens of different means and social positions.  Thanks for your questions - they were good ones.