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A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

bloomberg.com

11–20 of 343 posts

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#13
Let's say Alice only cares about proposition A. And Bob only cares about B.

Alice can spend all her 100 tokens on A, and she gets 10 votes on A. Ditto Bob can spend all his 100 tokens on B, and he gets 10 votes on B.

But if each of them spends 50 on A and 50 on B, then A and B both get 2*sqrt(50) ~= 14 votes, so both Alice and Bob win by colluding.

What's to stop them doing this?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#14
Since the link to the paper, at the end of the article, is subtly broken (at least for me), here are the links to the abstract and directly to the PDF:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3092895_cod...

Doi:

https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2003531

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#15

Let's say Alice only cares about proposition A. And Bob only cares about B. Alice can spend all her 100 tokens on A, and she gets 10 votes on A. Ditto Bob can spend all his 100 tokens on B, and he gets 10 votes on B. But if each of them spends 50 on A and 50 on B, then A and B both get 2*sqrt(50) ~= 14 votes, so both Alice and Bob win by colluding. What's to stop them doing this?

Oh no lawmakers actually cooperating to achieve their goals. What a tragedy!

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#16

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

Additionally, it's got almost nothing to do with ideas anymore. It's about tribes.

If you're in tribe A, your media tells you tribe B are literally devils. There's no understanding a devil, or compromise with one. If they say something that sounds reasonable? It's probably a trick. Hannity or Maddow will explain why tonight.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#17
"intense preferences of the minority" are enshrined in the constitution. The senate, the electoral college, and the states themselves are designed to protect the minority of property onwers. It's designed to slow progress. Read Madison.

Also, I'm sure Bloomberg writers LOVE attempts to replace Democracy with some weird economic neo-market model.

Coins...get a grip, man. EDIT: Sorry. "Tokens". Whatever.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#18

Let's say Alice only cares about proposition A. And Bob only cares about B. Alice can spend all her 100 tokens on A, and she gets 10 votes on A. Ditto Bob can spend all his 100 tokens on B, and he gets 10 votes on B. But if each of them spends 50 on A and 50 on B, then A and B both get 2*sqrt(50) ~= 14 votes, so both Alice and Bob win by colluding. What's to stop them doing this?

I think what would stop it from being effective is that an opposing team could do the same, so they’d have to guard against that. It’s just not a silver bullet I mean.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#19

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

There are literally millions of single issue voters who vote for conservatives because of abortion in the US. Literally millions of people.
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