Can I chip in?

City Councils face a few problems in assessing effective demand for Council services. Sure, lots of people will say how much they want that various amenities be provided, but everyone has incentive to overstate their true preferences. And while we have complicated Lindahl pricing mechanisms that might work in theory, I've never heard of their actually being used.

And so I was really pleased to have Citizen Investor pointed out to me.

As I drove down Brougham Street last night, I wished for an Android App where I could, at every stupid traffic snarl caused by the absence of a right-turn light and a consequently overflowing turn lane, contribute to a Kickstarter campaign where I could chip in to help fund the provision of right-turn lights.* Citizen Investor takes those projects that lag behind in the Council's approved-but-not-yet-funded queue, and lets contributors bump them up the queue. Neighbor.ly works similarly.

If Christchurch Council would let me chip in, here are the things for which I'd be willing to stump up some cash in addition to what I'm already paying in rates:

• Turn lights at Clyde & Creyke
• Turn lights on Blenheim
• Turn lights on Brougham south of downtown
• Probably a half dozen other turn lights
• Rebuilding the kid's play structure in the South New Brighton Park

Wouldn't it be great if there were an App that used GPS data to let you know about Kickstarter campaigns for proposed civic projects in the locale? Take the kids to a park that's a bit tired; the phone prompts you that somebody's proposed a nice new set of facilities; you pledge $20. Enough people do it and more cool stuff gets built. Have all the potential GapFiller projects in there too. Please make it so.

* When Council invested in traffic lights, the road rules said that the person turning across traffic had right of way against the person turning with traffic. So, in American terms, the guy turning left across traffic has the right of way over you if you're going the opposite direction and turning right. That means that the turning lanes for the difficult turns have a chance to clear without a turning light. It also meant a few accidents with confusion about the give way rule. We changed the give-way rule but didn't put in the now-required turning lights to let people make the difficult across-traffic turn.

Christchurch Kickstarters

Why not use Kickstarter to help preserve heritage buildings in Christchurch? I'd take the "Save the Cathedral" folks more seriously if they put up a Kickstarter page listing the donations already committed and the target they need to achieve to have the Anglicans onside for a rebuild.

Kickstarter, for folks who've not been watching, is an excellent mechanism for solving a very particular problem. Suppose that you have some project, like saving the Cathedral, that can only really work out if you have a set amount of money. And, suppose further that there are lots of small donors, like me, who'd be happy to chip in IF it would make the project work out, but aren't happy to throw money into the pot and not get it back if the project doesn't raise enough money. Kickstarter lets people pledge funds that are only charged against their credit cards IF enough people have pledged enough money to make the project viable. If you don't get sufficient pledged funds by the deadline, nobody pays.

For the economists: you can view this as an assurance contract. Or, if you give a few cheap perks for pledges that go through to pledged donors even if the project fails [maybe like a bumper sticker with a picture of The Wizard on it], it's a dominant assurance contract.

This really can work. For projects where folks get fired up, you can even get massive oversubscription. When a video game maker wanted to remake an old favourite, Double Fine, he raised $3.3 million when he really only needed $400k. If rebuilding the Cathedral would cost $50m, you need a million people in New Zealand each putting up $50. If you net out the large pledges the "Save the Cathedral" folks say have already been promised, it'll be less than that.

Set pledge level perks like:

• $5:          You get a Wizard Cathedral bumper sticker, even if the project doesn't go ahead.
• $10:        All prior perks PLUS Your name goes into the big book of donors.
• $50:        All prior perks PLUS Autographed copy of the Wizard's excellent "Upside Down Map of the World With NZ In The Middle"
• $100:      All prior perks PLUS You get a piece of the old cathedral that couldn't be used in the rebuild in a nice box, like the old bits of the Berlin Wall they used to sell.
• $1000:    All prior perks PLUS You get your name carved into one of the stones for the rebuilt church.
• $25,000: Your face is carved as one of the gargoyles [I have no clue what it costs to carve a gargoyle; scale this one up if needed].

They'd need to have the Cathedral's owners on-side to be able to promise some of those perks. But since Kickstarter only activates once enough money is raised to make the project viable, I don't see this being much of a problem. Surely there's some amount of pledged money that would make the Bishop change her mind. 

I know weekly protests are fun and feel like doing something. Kickstarter could actually work though. Wizard: you start the Kickstarter, I'll put in $50 to help get things going. It isn't much, but I don't have strong preferences between having a rebuilt old-style cathedral in the Square and whatever the Anglicans otherwise wind up doing with their property. 

Really, heritage fans ought to be setting up Kickstarters for all their favourite properties. Could be that there's sufficient demand out there to help fund more preservation than we'd otherwise get. There are a few places around town I'd be happy to chip in to help save, conditional on knowing that I'm only chipping in if it makes the project proceed. That's Kickstarter. I don't know whether we're not seeing Kickstarter used in the Christchurch rebuild because people don't know about it, or because they fear deep down that most people really don't have strong enough preferences to put money on the line. Here's helping to let people know about it so that we can rule out that explanation.