REM%MIT-MC@sri-unix.UUCP (04/02/84)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM @ MIT-MC> Instead of a lottery, how about a proxy election? You send in your $10 and say who you proxy your $10 to for shuttle ride. Then the votes are counted and the vote-getters are notified of who the main contenders are. Then anyone who received votes may proxy them further, until somebody has enough votes to pay for his/her ride. Money not used, i.e. surplus money the winner gets beyond his/her ride, and money anybody else gets, would continue to be accumulated, with new money coming in all the time, until another person gets enough votes (money) for a ride. By limiting each individual contribution to $10, this is made a popularity contest (who do you want to see in space, who in space would make you turn on the TV set and watch and tell your friends to wach and generate a lot of publicity and maybe even buy the sponsor's products and the book that gets written as a result of the exciting trip to space) instead of a money contest (what random capitalist pig or worse what rich son of a capitalist pig can waste all our time and effort and then complain he didn't enjoy the ride or make a mistake and get killed and thus sabotage the space program).