In my previous post, I talked about repugnant transactions. Today I shall expand a bit more on repugnant transactions and most importantly, the basis, the underlying building block of Pressyo – trading votes.
In the initial marketing and proposal of Pressyo’s concepts to the F3 crowd (Family, Friends and Fools), one of the first questions asked is “fine, you trade information, but what exactly are you trading?”, to which I replied “the right to vote”, I often get quizzical looks, as though I’ve been injected with a huge syringe of Retard.
Of course, soon after, the “are you out of your mind?” question comes. Of course I am not mad. Even my Chinese friends (yes, as a matter of fact, Communist China has always had democracy – in a relatively different form than its western counterparts but still democracy, its just rather ignorant of people who claim China as undemocratic) find the concept of trading votes repugnant. I’ve been wondering why.
Could it be the concept of democracy has been ingrained in the hearts and minds of the peoples of the nations of the free world that it is repugnant to even think of undoing the “one man, one vote” idea?
If you think logically about it, in a true democracy, every issue that affects the public would be voted upon. Naturally, there will be some people who are not interested in the issue. They can either be forced to vote (some countries like Australia and China enforces such laws), or not vote at all. If a third option was given – for the politically indifferent to trade votes – wouldn’t everyone be better off?
Naturally, some form of mechanism needs to be designed to prevent a moral hazard from emerging, but all in all, everyone should be better off.
There’s some food for thought for you then 
. If you do want to read more about repugnant transactions and the market design (and mechanism design), I recommend reading the greatest economist of them all with regards to this topic – Al Roth. Be aware though, his blog features some markets where even I find repugnant (assisted suicide for example).
Do tell me what you think of the idea of trading votes in politics – should people be allowed to trade?