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magfrump comments on Politics as Charity - Less Wrong
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If the cost of voting is $50 to $500, that is very efficient for most people. However if the value of voting is maybe an order of magnitude less (a number I chose because it "felt right" and without heavy analysis) the value of voting is potentially around $5.
So that means, voting is worthwhile if it will be fast, if it will have signalling benefits, or if you make less than $10/hour or so.
On the other hand, if there is a campaign with a huge amount of value between candidates, the value of a vote could skyrocket to $500 and make it worthwhile for everyone to vote, even if it takes over an hour.
Do people agree with this (admittedly hasty) analysis?
Yeah when I wrote the first draft I was a little confused, and the "efficient" comment is left over from that.
I guess the range of value for votes was never determined but my underlying point was that it seems to be in a range where it is likely to barely not be worthwhile much of the time, but may jump in elections with huge candidate value differences to being extremely worthwhile for anyone at all.
Right. A neat feature of cash spending is that you can save it up (with some complications from contribution limits) for close or important elections, and send it to jurisdictions more important than your own.
Sure. I don't really mean to be saying anything meaningful about politics as charity except that the actual expected value of voting should be decided as a corollary, and at this stage we have at least some idea of order of magnitude and it seems to be in the confusing range of sometimes worthwhile sometimes not.