Sure, this is unfeasible. But also, this might be the greatest idea of all time.
Let’s work it out together on the page because I’m not sure yet.
So politicians raise insane amounts of money during their campaign efforts. I mean, insane. Did you know that 2.4 billion dollars was raised in the 2008 presidential campaign? I didn’t either but I did one google search and was like whoa.
So, the argument for campaign finances is that they are necessary for politicians to get their message out to the people. Now to that I have two questions:
- Are billions of dollars needed to accomplish this goal?
- In 2019, is this necessary at all?
First, even if this is something that is absolutely necessary to secure victory for a politician, it can’t possibly cost this much money. You can make the argument that the transportation, rallies, and ads cost a lot but I think you’d be hard pressed to say that all together this process should cost more than a billion dollars. That’s legit insanity. I’m going to need to see receipts And guess what? If it does indeed cost that much then maybe we should all agree that’s too much and figure something else out. We cannot be spending billions of dollars every four years so that the fourth runner up for president can get photographed eating at one of your local restaurants.
But let’s address the second question. How can this process honestly be as necessary as it was in the past. When television came around it fundamentally changed our election process. With TV, people from all over the country could watch politicians debate without leaving their homes. The internet has caused an even greater shift except no one is acting any different. People aren’t going to rallies to be swayed. People who go to rallies have already made their minds up. The election is won and lost on the internet. Opinions, rhetoric, debate. It’s all happening on the internet. So now not only do you not need to leave your house, you don’t need to leave your bathroom to know who to vote for. We’re not too far away from giving people the ability to vote by flushing their toilet.
I understand that some of the traditional means are still necessary but you have to admit that the cost of elections should have gone way down and not increased with the invention of the internet. The most effective way to reach people with your message is now free.
So with all this in mind, why has a politician not made an ungodly donation to charity yet? Every politician is championing something. It always felt so weird to me that politicians are preaching these Utopian goals while raising so much money for personal gain. Now I know that a huge donation will not “fix” whatever problem that politician is championing but it would be a show of good faith and would actually get more press than anything else they could do on the campaign trail.
The name of the game seems to be spending millions of dollars to get good PR. In my plan, they still do all of that except a good cause gets to benefit.
Not so crazy after all.
