In today's New York Times, the article "Go Ahead, Try to Stop K Street," an argument is quoted from Newt Gingrich that you have to shrink government to curb lobbyists. "There is $2.6 trillion spent in Washington, with the authority to regulate everything in your life," he said. "Guess what? People will spend unheard-of amounts of money to influence that. The underlying problems are big government and big money."

Curbing the budget will only reduce the acceleration of lobbying, not reduce lobbying. It is a bargain. The Indian tribes are just smart to get in on it (if not in their choice of representation). In my joint paper with Livingston and Jurist, we say the following:

National lobbying of Congress and the President in 2004 totaled $1 billion. That may seem like a lot, but it is a pittance compared to the $2.3 trillion in Federal outlays. Congress and the President also pass laws and make executive orders that implicitly subsidize through loan guarantees, forbid activities altogether, impose work and investment rules that implicitly tax certain activities, and establish through the courts and federal agencies how property rights are defined. Thus, it is possible that Congress and the President influence perhaps twice as much of the economy as the Federal Government spends. Given that, $1 billion to buy influence on Capitol Hill is surely a bargain. With 589 bills passing both houses of Congress (enrolled) in the 108th Congress, that works out to about $3.3 million of lobbying per enrolled bill. Adding in campaign contributions per enrolled bill (about $400 million per session for the President—contributed to both parties—and $900 million in Congressional campaign contributions) the total is $7.5 million per enrolled bill....

One concern is that lobbying and contributions are like an “all-pay” auction where the contribution is non-refundable even if someone else contributes more and seeks the opposite policy outcome. A more equitable system would give refunds to contributors who do not get their policies adopted (otherwise known as honest bribes). We wonder what would happen if people posted prizes that they would pay directly to the Federal Government if they adopted certain policies.

We wonder what would happen if people posted prizes that they would pay directly to the Federal Government if they adopted certain policies.

Emphasis mine. What does this mean? You mean a contribution to the general fund? Why would a Congressman care about that? The money has to directly benefit the person who's taking the bribe, otherwise there's no point.

If I posted a $1000 prize if the Gorvernment adopted my policy and made the prize public and satisfactorily bonded it, the Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget would have to include the prize in their budget calculation. In this way, an auction could ensue that would result in spending only by the organization whose prize has been won. E.g., instead of spending $4,000 on campaign contributions to influential legislators, I could set aside $4,000 as a prize and add $4,000 to it every year. This would have the most application where one expects to have a significant probability of lobbying expense being wasted.

With all of the accounting gimmicks they use to balance the budget, it might be sufficient to post an annuity that has a single payment ten years from now.

All-pay auctions (dollar auctions are a similar concept, right?) is the model I proposed for selling space media rights in a paper presented at the 2005 ISDC.

Suppose media rights for lunar return are pegged at an aggregate of $5 billion, for example. These are non-exclusive rights, ande anyone and everyone can join in and pay a pro rata share of that $5 billion, and be given access to the media feeds.

But if you don't join you are blacked out of providing coverage.

Once two or more networks join the consortium, the networks own economic interest requires that they grow public interest in the moon landings to the highest possible level, using the PR and marketing tools they are the experts at.

Sell exclusive rights to ABC and then NBC benefits by spreading the meme "moon landings are dumb or dorky" - - get ABC and NBC into a non-exclusive consortium and they will spend their own money and talent building public support.

There is only two dominant strategies in a dollar auction: don't compete or bid on forever. An all-pay auction can be sealed. This is the way some sports tickets were auctioned by a charity. In a sealed bid all pay auction with private values, there is no pure strategy equilibrium. The sum of all bids on average should equal the value of the prize to the winner. Depending on what you know about others' value and so on, the random bidding may have a different distribution.

I disagree with your recommendation Bill based on what you have told me so far. The media rights could be worth $4 billion and you get no bids or $6 billion as an exclusive, but you would only get $5 billion.

Sam, the goal of this strategy is not to maximize revenue from a single event but rather to harness the media into promoting space exploration within the culture.

If you want to buy media time in the future to promote your activities, have them bid media time in the future in a normal English auction. If you want to get them to like you, giving them below market price media rights does not seem to me to be the way to do it. NASA gives away its stuff free and the press still doesn't like it.

No sale seems like a bad outcome.

If you can state precisely what it is you want from the auction, I can design you one that will achieve that as well as possible. Usually, maximizing revenue and buying what you need with the proceeds works best, but there are other considerations.

You are the latest in a long series of people who think their auction will somehow evade the rules that for an auction to be "efficient" and put the goods in the hands of the folks that value them the most, they have to pay at least the minimum market clearing price. It's like me trying to teach people how to design rockets. Subsidies, set asides, hiding info, sealed bids, negotiation and others work in some circumstances, but those circumstances are not yours. If you have many bidders, price discovery is important, and you know what you are selling, there is a very strong presumption in favor of an English auction. If you don't know how many to sell, hold a simultaneous auction for 1 of 1, 2 x 1 of 2, 3 x 1 of 3 and so on and award only the group that is valued the highest. This has some market power problems, but should get you what you need.