Party funding, rationality and blood donations

In a comment here, Bob Piper says:

I asked in the pub yesterday lunchtime if anyone there would ever consider making a donation to a political party, and our crowd looked at me as if I was a lunatic. The most telling point made was from someone who asked, “Why would anyone make a donation… unless they were looking for something in return.”

This is an expression of instrumental rationality: why should I do anything unless there's something in it for me?
But there is, as Robert Nozick pointed out, another form of rationality - symbolic rationality. There are many things we do not because there's a material return, but rather to symbolize (to ourselves and others) who we are.
Countless activities fall at least partly into this category: giving Christmas presents; protesting;  religious observance; donating to charity; being a good parent; even dying for one's fellows.
Which raises the question. Why can political parties not rely upon symbolic utility as a motive for donations? After all, it's commonplace in other areas.
I suspect the parties have themselves to blame. In order to receive  symbolically-motivated donations,  parties have to embody some noble ideals - they have to be something we want to identify with.
But the parties have long ceased doing this. They have become mere (inefficient) offerers of consumer goods and services. People would no more  want to donate money to them than they would to Virgin Trains.
There's a parallel here with giving blood. Many freely give blood for nothing, believing this is what good people should do. However, when New Zealanders were offered payment for their blood, many stopped donating. The introduction of instrumental rationality weakened symbolic rationality.
In this sense, the parties are paying the price for abandoning ideals and becoming mere managerialists.

Comments

[Tom]

Countless activities fall at least partly into this category: giving Christmas presents; protesting; religious observance; donating to charity; being a good parent; even dying for one's fellows.

Doesn't joining a political party (which includes some financial outlay, as well as demands for other kinds of assistance) "fall at least partly into this category" too?

(Membership may be declining, of course - but there are still plenty of people who do pay to join.)

[chris]

It does - as does voting. The fact that both are in decline is, in part, a sign of the parties' declining attractiveness to the symblically motivated.

[chris strange]

In this sense, the parties are paying the price for abandoning ideals and becoming mere managerialists.

Which is a good thing as the market will then steer them back to having some kind of ideals or they will go bankrupt, unless they can use their power over the leavers of state to force us to give them money when we don't want to. A better voting system that didn't encourage the parties to try and occupy the same middle ground would be good as well.

[Phil]

There's a similar story to the NZ blood-donation example from Switzerland. "Would you be willing to have a toxic waste dump in your area if we paid you £5000 compensation?" actually got a *lower* Yes vote than "Would you be willing to have a toxic waste dump in your area?" The second example translates as "How public-spirited are you?"; the first, as "What's your price?"

[michael webster]

Nozick, I think, was trying to meet the traditional philosophical challenge made by the existence of instrinsic values. Values that are not valued for their instrumental worth.

Instrumental rationality as a theory faces a difficulty - how can I justify or rationally criticize the preferences I happen to have?

I don't think Nozick's solution works, nor do I think the introduction of second order preference helps.

[Stumblng Tumblr]

Another example is buying environmentally friendlier cars. The more common they become, the less useful it is to buy them "as a statement"

[Katherine]

To use the voting analogy, I've always used a version of rationality (I think) that I rarely see described - how much will it cost me? If something will cost me little (say, some time to go to the polling station) but will overall produce a benefit overall, not necessarily for myself, then I'll go for it.

Similarly with giving to charity - it doesn't cost me much, as a proportion of what I have, to give a certain amount of money per month to a charity or two, but overall, added up with the contributions of others, there is a chance that a greater good will come out of it.

Ditto getting an environmentally friendly care. Ditto tipping at restaurants (the tip is worth more to the waiter than it will cost me).

I surely can't be the only person to think this way?