This can be gamed easily by running N-1 clones of any given candidate, where N is the total number of votes allotted.
For some loose definition of "easily", assuming human candidates.
A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
121–130 of 343 posts
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I'm aware. I'm arguing for universal lottery, and I think it would work.
Bribery would be more rampant than it is now. With no career aspirations to keep them in line, unethical people would take the lobbyist money and run.
Bribery doesn't seem rampant in jury service, where members are chosen by lottery. I'm sure we could find ways to keep bribery away.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#123It'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…
in a two-party election, we're often only given options A and G, or maybe B and F, but rarely C through E.
This is the exact opposite of what economic theory predicts and my (admittedly biased) personal observations. Consider for example Hoetelling's Law, which states that competitors naturally tend to become as similar as possible in order to extract as much value from the competition as possible: https://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2692.htm
The advantage of systems other than the two party system is precisely that they allow more diverse view points to be represented.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#124The greeks had two institutions we could use: ostracism and lottery. We should be able to vote on those we want out of politics and the most voted would have to seat it out. And a small portion of representatives should be chosen by lottery. Maybe 5% or 10%. These representatives, obviously, would not have to answer to their sponsors.
Actually, why not choose all representatives by lottery? I don't think representatives need to have any particular competencies beyond being representative of the interests of the population. Hired staff can take care of things that require particular abilities. I reckon that a wholly random set of representatives would act like a direct democracy where every voter is free to fully focus on the issues, is allowed an…
Would this have a similar outcome as the "lottery" for jury duty? What happens if somebody who really doesn't want to do it is chosen?
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#125I always hate the framing as “polarized”. There’s tons of things Democrats and Republicans agree on. Military spending goes up every year. Save for Dodd-Frank, deregulation has been common across presidencies for 30 years along with corporate tax cuts... The establishment gets things done, they really do, it’s just not things that help everyday people. I’m not sure how this would help that.
Almost all voting systems in use today will allow a plurality of political actors, and hence most democracies have more than two parties represented in parliament. That is, except "first past the post" which is the system in the UK and US. It inevitably and systemically always devolves into a de facto two-party system.
I'm sure you can see how this is a problem?
Granted, quadratic voting specifically was probably not designed with parliamentary elections in mind. There are other systems in use that are designed to be fair and result in decent representation of voters.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#126The greeks had two institutions we could use: ostracism and lottery. We should be able to vote on those we want out of politics and the most voted would have to seat it out. And a small portion of representatives should be chosen by lottery. Maybe 5% or 10%. These representatives, obviously, would not have to answer to their sponsors.
Those were always pretty interesting ideas to me, and I always used to wonder why the Founders did not replicate those facets of the Athenian Republic? It would solve a lot of our problems today.
In general, the founders thought Greek style democracy was a horrible system of government. Inevitably incompetent, bloody, unjust, rash, and would quickly self destruct. When the French Revolution happened - with chaos, purges, wars, and then an emperor taking over the country - the founders basically said “I told you so”.
Here’s an example.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Moderation is no solution at all when you think about it. Contrariwise: Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slavery outright or established a scheme whereby slavery would eventually be phased out. It frequently was accompanied or preceded by laws which approached gradual emancipation by granting freedom to those born to slaves after a given date. Among the European powers,…
So in other words, still slavery. Right? I mean, there's still slaves. "Your kids can be free! But only the ones born after the next Vernal Equinox falling on a Tuesday. Oh, and by the way, You can never be free." Again, a solution that's ludicrous on its face and doesn't really get rid of slavery. Kind of like the compromise we had here, where you could "technically" have slaves in the North. (Of course, occasionall…
There is an unresolvable tension between the quantitative and the qualitative, and it's hard to imagine a more extreme example than erasing ineffable human dignity in order to turn a human into a commodity.
Let's flip this around to today: imagine a hypothetical future 100 years from now, that honors the qualitative dignity of all animal life, and views factory farming with the same horror that we view slavery now. From this moral vantage point (even as a meat eater, I concede this position the high ground), a phased approach seems appalling.
We currently slaughter roughly one Holocaust's worth of animals every hour; how about reducing it to one Holocaust per two hours? Maybe a new law to give cows an hour in the sunshine before they're herded back into pens? What about voluntary buyback programs? Taxes on meat to subsidize cheaper vegetables? These are all quantitative solutions to a qualitative problem: either cows have inalienable value as conscious beings, or they don't; and if they do, shouldn't we stop at nothing to defend that sacred value and eliminate all human-caused animal suffering, rather than wishy-washy incrementalism?
The unfortunate reality then and now is that we're stuck in quantitative games, directly or indirectly. There are no shortage of highly motivated consumers and producers who benefit from factory farming, just as as there was for slavery. There was clear justification to go to war to end slavery, to forcibly grind the game entirely to a halt; but it was not without cost, not only in lives lost, but in a consequential cultural rift that persists to this day. I'm both ignorant and curious how culture played out in those societies that use phased approaches; do they have equivalents to the "Southern Strategy" and Nixon's racially-motivated War on Drugs (which is rightly, I think, compared to modern-day slavery)?
I don't claim to know the answers to any of these things; but until a given moral phase-shift takes place, it's not always obvious how to get there, and a hardline stance can run the risk that the system kicks back, opponents are strengthened and galvanized, and nothing is accomplished.
(Yes, I'm aware of the irony and offense of invoking a comparison to farm animals in a discussion of slavery, when slaves were once viewed as livestock. I'm attempting to draw the opposite point: of humanizing animals, in the same way that we now humanize all homo sapiens regardless of ethnicity.)
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the problem with that, because it would require me to convince you to vote for Y although you want X. And in addition, seeing as this is an anonymous (I'm assuming) vote, then I could lie to you and vote my way (to get more votes for Y), but then if everyone will do it, the colluding wouldn't work, so we need to be able to trust each other and work together, which is exactly what we in the end, for people…
Coordinated groups have voting power of sqrt(total money)*sqrt(number of individuals), uncoordinated ones have sqrt(money). If you are for some cause, you should just find like-minded individuals and pool your total money. They have very limited incentive for keeping the money for themselves because they also agree with you on the issue. Then the other side should also coordinate tightly in this manner, and now you h…
Money?
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I'm aware. I'm arguing for universal lottery, and I think it would work.
Bribery would be more rampant than it is now. With no career aspirations to keep them in line, unethical people would take the lobbyist money and run.
Bribery is even more rampant now with career aspirations since reelection is costly. The job of politicians is to get reelected and they do it by being available to donors.
Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it's that the natural evolution of the two-party system has forced us into choices that are more polarized than ever before in the history of the US I don't think this is supported by the evidence. Polarization in the US hasn't been unidirectional (there are many long periods during which the US became less polarized) and the recent massive spike is, well, a recent spike--it's not a natural evolution at all. Someth…
> Something happened in the last twenty years or so that increased our polarization. I'd expand the timeframe to 30 years and say the biggest contributors to this are the rise of neoliberal politics combined with globalization leaving a lot of working class people "behind" while corporations made ever more and more profits, combined with the rise of the Internet where the most outrageous content gets the most clicks/…
Looking back, it's easy to fit these large changes -- like the internet and globalization -- to any current outcome.