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SBF
@SBF_FTX
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
5) (a) how much does the US president matter? I don't know! But let's ballpark it. The federal budget is something like $5T/year. That's $20T/presidency.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
6) Maybe the president has 10% impact on it (the rest being congress, courts, electorate, advisors, etc.) Also maybe that's 50% of what the president does (?) So $4T impact. Are those right? IDK! But it seems like probably impact is between $1T and $50T.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
7) (b) How much does your vote influence the election? Naively, there will be ~150m votes, and so each person has 1/(150m) impact. But in fact we think the election will be within a 20m vote band or so of 50/50; so each person is maybe 1/(20m).
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
8) We're not done yet! But actually we're pretty close. 1/20m is not a terrible estimate. Of course, it depends on your state. If you live in CA or WY, your vote will not swing the 2020 US presidential election. If you live in FL or OH, it might.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
9) Florida will have ~10m voters, and will be within a ~6% band around 50/50; so your odds are ~1/600k. Florida has 29 electoral votes; overall total will be in a ~200 vote band. So maybe Florida has a ~15% chance of swinging the election. So a Floridian has a 15%/600k ~ 1/4m
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
10) This was really quick and dirty. How does it compare to 538? They have Florida as 13.8% to decide the election--pretty close! There could easily be a factor of ~2 error in this calculation, but seems like: --avg vote: 1/20m --vote in swing state: 1/4m
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
11) (c) ok, how much does it cost to vote? IDK, maybe an hour of your time? Median US household income ~$70k; say 2,000 hours/week of work. So that's something like $35 of opportunity cost to vote.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
12) (a) * (b) ~ $4T * 1/4m ~ $1m in a swing state (and ~0 elsewhere) So that's $1m of gov't impact for $35 of your time.
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SBF
@SBF_FTX
13) Now you might think you can spend $ better than the government (and in particular better than the difference between Trump and Biden). How much better? Because if you live in a swing state, it's impacting something like $30,000 of gov't spending per $1 of your time.
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฿akamoto
@bakamoto20
Replying to
@SBF_FTX
and
@SBF_Alameda
What about the things which are harder to value than spending though, that have a tangible impact on lives worldwide? This seems to me like a very narrow way to assess the value of a vote, and whether it's worth your while to vote.
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