What’s next for VotingSmarter? Making Waves…
In 2020 we launched our “dating app for politics” to tackle the time costs and the emotional/psychological toll of being an informed voter. We were able to help thousands see how well they matched with candidates in their area running for President, Governor, House, and Senate all in an average time of 5 minutes and 5 seconds.
When things settled down post-election, we tried to imagine a way to turn every day into Election Day. While brainstorming this, we identified a third colossal problem with American politics that we could try and tackle; the undue influence of money on public policy.
Corporations are significant donors to parties, PACs, and politicians. And it is easy to see why, when making billions of dollars of profit, it’s a sound investment to put a few million into lobbying and donations in hopes of steering public policy in your direction. Right? This type of rent-seeking is called “the special interest effect”, where a small group hopes to make large gains via public policy by defraying the cost over a large population. As you know, most of us don’t have a few million lying around to steer public policy, and we only have a single vote to exercise our political power. But what if I told you that you too vote every day like corporations and you don’t even know it? In fact you may be voting many times per day and that hundreds if not thousands of your dollars are ending up in the hands of politicians… often contrary to your interests.
See, buying a specific good or service from a particular company creates several ripple effects in the world; some good, some bad. One of these ripples is often changes (or a lack of changes) to public policy. With every purchase, a fraction of what consumers spend makes it into lobbyists’ and politicians’ hands. What if there was a way to quantify this spending and see whether your shopping dollars are funding what you believe in? That is what rppl is all about.
Here is how we are making it happen:
Step 1:
Set up a new Instagram account (@getrppl) promoting conscious consumerism, or as we call it, “shopping your values”. This account covers companies who take different sides on various issues such as abortion, climate change, gun rights, human rights, etc. The posts are informative (and hopefully sometimes humorous). With every follower and share of @getrppl we increase the chance that the companies we shop at will align their political dollars with their customers’ values.
Step 2:
Launch a website www.rppl.shop (in progress) showing where many top companies stand on public policy issues through interactive leaderboards that allow shoppers to find the companies that match their views.
Step 3:
Deploy a Chrome browser extension similar to Honey (in progress) but instead of helping users find better values, it will match users with the companies that share their values. The best thing about this approach is that once it is downloaded it works passively to help shoppers redirect their spending to the companies that match their public policy goals.
rppl is all about helping shoppers find the companies that share their values to maximize the ripple effect of each dollar they spend.
A note on fairness: We believe that each of us is entitled to our own values and beliefs. Much like VotingSmarter, our parent nonprofit, we don’t take sides on these issues and pledge to help people with varied beliefs shop their values so they may turn their ripples into waves. Follow us, use our site, download our browser extension, and become a change agent for your values.
