Alicorn comments on Politics as Charity - Less Wrong

29 Post author: CarlShulman 23 September 2010 05:33AM

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Comment author: Alicorn 23 September 2010 06:24:31PM 15 points [-]

Perhaps the matched donors have to agree on a charity and an amount: you pay into the system, and if you get matched, then the non-political charity gets your money, and if you don't (after some waiting period), then the political charity does. This means you have to at least not mind the money going to the political charity, or be willing to gamble.

Comment author: Alicorn 23 September 2010 11:46:36PM *  5 points [-]

A thought: Charity popularity probably isn't evenly distributed between political parties. This could limit the ability of some charities to be matched, but it would allow (for example) a Republican who supports Planned Parenthood to have little or no risk of their donation defaulting to the GOP. A Republican who didn't want to donate to the Republican Party and did want to donate to Planned Parenthood would take very little risk, while one who wanted to donate to the NRA might have more trouble.

Comment author: [deleted] 24 September 2010 12:24:40PM 3 points [-]

Charity itself isn't evenly distributed: Republicans give more dollars to charity, period. If everyone in the US signed up for this site, it would guarantee a Republican win. But, of course, not everyone will, so it may not be that bad.

Comment author: JGWeissman 23 September 2010 06:27:20PM 2 points [-]

Yes, that should reduce the gaming of the system. It involves more secrecy that in my original conception of the website (which would display graphs of the matching money available for different charities), but I don't think that can be helped.