There are two basic types of vote markets: 1)
votes of the legislator, and 2)
votes of the electorate. To help reduce inefficiencies
we have made some things illegal. However, inefficiencies still
exist, so it would seem that these laws against certain actions
are not enough. Members of the collective would oppose the buying
and selling of legislator's votes, because at times they might
benefit from vote buying, but other times they would be harmed
by it. To further understand why people would want to outlaw vote
buying, one must put themselves in the shoes of those who lose
out. If you were the person who was to be part of the tax-paying
group, in order to defend yourself against having your wealth
taken away, your group would have to bid a higher price for the
legislators' votes than others. There are an infinite amount of
bills that would benefit one group more than another (at the expense
of another group), and if vote-buying were allowed, many people
would want to buy votes to support such bills. Yet, one should
be able to clearly visualize a bidding war going on for these
votes (competitive voting). However the result would really only
be one of unnecessary waste of resources during the bidding process
and substantial benefits mostly to the legislators themselves.
The overall effect is that the harm exceeds the benefits from
these wars and the legislators get rich at the expense of the
members of the collective. This would all be very inefficient.
If it is illegal why do I mention it? I mention it because:
1) vote buying may occur illegally
and 2) because (this is sort
of funny) "in some countries, vote-buying is not actually
outlawed in the constitution by any type of ordinary legislation.
However, even though the legislators would seem to benefit and
prefer vote-buying, they have passed legislation outlawing it.
The apparent reason for this paradox is that it they did not pass
such legislation, voters would vote them out of office."
In the market for Electorate's votes we use secret ballots
to help to deter people in power from paying people to vote a
certain way because they can't be sure that they will actually
vote in the way that they promised. However, in some countries
motivated by moral values, customs, and tradition, they may be
influenced to vote a certain way if they feel an obligation due
to an act of kindness bestowed upon them. Thus inefficiencies
still remain to some extent.