January 24, 2004

One-click  

Amazon now allows you to make campaign contributions through their website:

The Seattle, Washington-based retailer, which claims 37 million active accounts, said on its Web site that it is "trying to take the friction out of grassroots contributions to presidential candidates." For that reason, Amazon said it is not endorsing any candidates and is charging each campaign its usual processing fees for the payments, which it will donate to a non-profit, non-partisan civil group.

"For us, we think this is an interesting but natural extension of what we do every day," said Amazon spokesman Chris Bruzzo. "Our goal here was to make it as easy for people to make contributions to presidential campaigns as it is to buy the latest Harry Potter book."

I'm ambivalent about it. It's great in a lot of obvious ways. It puts the political process front and center for Amazon shoppers, which is a huge population. It probably creates a more coherent internet constituency, which has been lacking. It's brilliantly limited to $200, on the one hand helping to democratize the campaign contribution system, and on the other hand limiting the complexity of the system.

I want to point out how good this is for Amazon, which for me isn't necessarily a strike against it (although I know it will be for some). Their tabulation of contributions to Amazon will most likely become a key political indicator, which is a huge advertisement for them. They've demonstrated their willingness to mix commerce and technology with politics, which puts them in a revolutionary and progressive spot, but without all the fuss about whether votes can be hacked, bought, etc. And they're on the leading edge of something that could expand exponentially: is there any doubt that in two years they'll be managing contributions for US senators, and state senators after that? It's a natural extension of their one-stop shopping business model, but it has a huge potential and scores big with people all over the political spectrum.

I said I was ambivalent; what bothers me most is the way money is equated with political power, and the message that sends. Commodifying political contribtutions has all kinds of consequences - politics will be (even more than it already is) about marketing and advertising, about building a brand. The vote that's at the center of our democratic political system is suddenly abstracted - now political power is localized even more around the political dollar, and it's right in your face. This may be a good thing, but in the long run it will change our perception (and by our, I mean ordinary Americans) of the politcal system, and what motivates it.

The whole campaign finance reform battle is really about the central problem for our system, namely that democracy is about votes, while capitalism is about dollars. The wall we set up between them, even with its holes, has about the same moral force as our separation between church and state, and yet we see every election cycle how much energy even the sitting president is expending on gathering a campaign warchest. I see this as a fundamental flaw in our political system, and (cynically) one that's only greased by this country's high standard of living.

I'm not (at this point, anyway) advocating throwing the whole system out, but any commodification of campaign financing concenrns me, even if it has a democratizing effect. What we really need to be looking at is how disproportionate our political contributions are with the power of our individual votes, and what that means in a so-called democracy.

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