Fair-Share
Spending Uses

There is a great opportunity for fair-share spending in the Omnibus Transportation Bill of the U.S. Congress. Each year it allocates funds to hundreds of projects. Critics often find, hidden in the huge bill, projects designed to benefit only 1 business in 1 rep's district -- hardly a federal matter. Fair-share spending would require each item to win substantial funding from a substantial number of reps; then it would let constituents see and judge their rep's choices.

Districts with powerful reps get much more money than other districts. Fair-share spending would be evenhanded to all.

Voting could control a cooperative journal, video or Internet channel, called perhaps The Subscriber-Democrat. A board of directors, elected by an ensemble rule, hires and directs the management. The subscriber-voters directly allocate most of the funds for features and columnists, supplements and cartoons. This is an incentive to join because part of the subscription fee is allocated by the subscriber and only subscribers may vote. Thus it satisfies our innate desire for "strong reciprocity". (The Boston Review had a special issue on strong reciprocity, December/January 1998.)

Under FS, each subscriber's "voting weight" is a fixed portion of the subscription fee.

For one week the journal shows an expanded comics section with new cartoons. On Friday that section includes a ballot. Ballots received by the following Friday count in the results, published the next week. Such surveys maintain readers' interest and strengthen their sense of involvement.

Neighborhood associations could use fair-share spending to speed and improve decisions for local improvements. Civic clubs might use FS to improve their selection of service projects. Buyers' clubs and environmental groups might use FS in much the same way. If a club's limiting resource is volunteer labor, budgets for labor can replace money on the ballots.

Highly-responsive democratic clubs for neighborhoods, consumers and other groups may grow more popular if members know it is impossible for one interest group to dominate and control all funding. Such clubs are a form of economic organization somewhere between individual consumers and the government in terms of size, choices, and negotiating power relative to corporations.

There will always be public problems and opportunities that need area-wide, government regulation. But if clubs flourish, the balance of economic power would tilt a bit less toward the competitive cultures of big corporations, politics, or individualism, and more toward cooperative, voluntary associations.

Fair-share tallies can be a market research tool. For example, interview subjects might be asked to rate several computers or cars with various option packages. FS would coalesce the votes into a few models of computers or cars which the company could efficiently manufacture. Respondents can be weighted by their probability of buying in the next product cycle.

Investment fund managers might use Condorcet and fair-share rules to consolidate experts' opinions on stocks. The voting weight of each expert could depend on his or her past performance.

Venture capital groups might give each member a number of ballots equal to his or her investment shares. The tally finds which proposals score high on enough ballots to win funding and how much funding.

Grant givers in foundations and government could use fair-share spending to spread grants well in the community of interest. This works best when the grant committee accurately reflects that community.

The Evolution of FS in One Community

Their problem is complicated because: 1) They want minority groups, say ten people, to own the power to fund some of their wants/needs. 2) But they don't want any individual to use this public fund for private desires. 3) Yet some items, for example, a $15 music disk, cost much less than one person's $1,000 share of the overall fund.

• In 1976 voters were given cards to place in jars for the ongoing departments and some project proposals. Predictably, one voter gave all his cards to his own work group. He contributed nothing to building maintenance, transportation and other essentials. It was an advisory vote and the management team tried to ignore such obvious manipulations.

• In the 1980s voters marked paper ballots for ongoing departments and for One-Time Resource Allocations or "OTRAs". Each voter wrote how much he would give each project if the discretionary fund were his to spend. Funding went to the projects with the most supporters. The amount given to a project was the average that supporters voted for it. (Each project had a minimum funding level so it could not win based on the "support" of $1 votes nor have its funding pulled down by such votes.)

  This is the bloc-vote election rule adapted to funding projects. Occasionally a project to help a minority won by persuading a majority, but some small groups clearly felt they were unable to fund their desires.

  (Bloc vote usually elects three or five reps from a district. It lets a voter cast as many votes as there are seats to fill; but he may give only one vote to a candidate; three seats, three votes to three candidates. This usually elects three reps for the majority and none for minority groups. But if the majority divides their votes among more than three candidates, they could all lose.)

• In 1993 a form of limited vote was proposed: each voter could write how much he would give each project if half of the discretionary fund were his to spend. This rule gives minority interests a better chance to win their share of funds. It also shows voters they might influence only a small share of the community's spending power.

  (The proposal mentioned the possibility of letting voters rank their choices. The item with fewest supporters would be eliminated and money voted for it could move to items ranked lower on its supporters' ballots. But this adaptation of the existing rule did not transfer surplus votes from winners. For that reason, this rule has been superceded by Movable Money Votes. )

• Movable Money Voting was also mentioned. It used a fixed utility curve to let a voter simply rank or grade the proposals. These earlier rules for FS are given in a little more detail on the page Other Rules for Fair-Share Spending

  (Later, a 1997 proposal for Movable Money Votes let each voter set his own utility curve by scoring each proposal. This is more satisfying to some economists but too complicated for most voters.)