A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive • Hacker News Board

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#161

Post by tlholaday » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #106

tlholaday wrote: post #93

Earlier 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…

You write ...

> So in other words, still slavery. Right?

.., which suggests you overlooked the first leg of the OR clause:

> Compensated emancipation was typically enacted as part of an act that outlawed slavery outright

But maybe I am not understanding you. If an act outlaws slavery outright, is it your view that there are still slaves?

You also write ...

> ... and doesn't really get rid of slavery.

.., but the historical record shows that compensated emancipation did get rid of lawful slavery.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#162

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:41 PM UTC

BurningFrog wrote: post #114

jimhefferon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the natural evolution of the two-party system The US has a long history, almost all of it with a two-party system. Only sometimes is there extremity. To my mind, 1860 is even more extreme than today. (My opinion is that an important common thread between then and today is a class of people with a great deal of money who are deliberately driving the political atmosphere. But in any event a claim that it is a natural…

A big difference between the past and now is that in the past, politics was a very minor part in American life. Outside of wartime, the federal government was something you mainly interacted with when going to the post office. If the national politicians hated each other, it made for good gossip, but didn't affect daily life much Today, it is involved with and regulating most aspects of our lives, and federal governm…

[deleted]

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#163

Post by mbostleman » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

ivanbakel wrote: post #160

mbostleman wrote: post #155

>>The purpose...is to determine “whether the intense preferences of the minority outweigh the weak preferences of the majority”>> Given this, apparently the problem is that strong minority preferences are being snuffed out by majority preferences? Of course, this is the inherent flaw in democracy. In the US we have two guards against that - the first is the Electoral College and the second is the Constitution. The fo…

>Given this, apparently the problem is that strong minority preferences are being snuffed out by majority preferences? Of course, this is the inherent flaw in democracy. That's not the problem Quadratic Voting tries to solve at all. The increased cost of additional votes actually reduces the voting power of certain minority groups, such as one-issue voters. The system tries to fix the opposite - a strong minority pre…

Ah yes, got it. I missed that, thanks.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#164

Post by jsnider3 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

ummwhat wrote: post #107

weberc2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> great exchange of the white people What is this referring to?

It's a way to relabel normal immigration by upstanding people into nefarious "white genocide".

I agree with you, but you should have expressed this in a way that didn't assume bad faith.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#165

Post by dhimes » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:44 PM UTC

breuleux wrote: post #102

vanderZwan wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Greeks who entered the lottery weren't chosen by a (meta) lottery. Greek democracy wasn't nearly as democratic as you may think.

Oh, I'm aware. I'm arguing for universal lottery, and I think it would work.

Would you volunteer for it, or would you be conscripted like jury duty?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#166

Post by lurquer » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #81

weberc2 wrote: post #69

Earlier 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/…

The end of the Cold War should not be dismissed. The West had a common-enemy. This served to unify things somewhat.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#167

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #42

I 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.

I find this kind of thinking dangerous, because it falls into the "they're just 2 sides of the same coin" mindset. Not to mention, it is also false. The DoD budget for 2019 is below the budget for 2008, and much lower as a percentage of total expenditures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

Yes, there are things the parties agree on, but that minimizes the huge, material differences between their platforms, e.g.:

- appropriate levels of taxation, and especially types of taxation (e.g. capital gains, inheritance taxes, etc.)

- mix of spending on social programs

- the huge gap on social issues, such as abortion, gay rights, gun control, etc.

"They're just the same, they don't care about the little guy, etc." are tactics the Russian trolls used to convince people not to vote.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#168

Post by yourbandsucks » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:48 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #31

yourbandsucks wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Hannity or Maddow will explain why tonight... There is something very sad, yet true, about that statement.

Downvoted pretty heavily, though. Guess it's a threatening message :)

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#169

Post by breuleux » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:51 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #154

forinti wrote: post #66

The 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.

Imagine Google or Facebook hiring 5% of their developers by lottery. Take all applicants, no questions asked, pick randomly. I can't fathom why people think "managing a country" requires less skills than managing servers. The consequences of hiring someone unqualified is certainly not less severe.

Consider that the system would be rethought accordingly, though.

Representatives picked by lottery would not "manage" the country: they would hire qualified people to do so, and they would supervise their work according to their values. The point of the lottery, at least the way I see it, is to have an unbiased random sample of the population oversee the government, but not to actually run it.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#170

Post by breuleux » Fri, May 03, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

rolleiflex wrote: post #150

breuleux wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very good point. I currently lean towards requiring every citizen to register for the lottery once every ten or so years (for one year of service). If they are picked, they have to go, except for serious unforeseen circumstances, but at least they would be able to plan for it to some extent. This might also require a cultural shift for people to accept it, but maybe not a radical one.

For someone who doesn’t want to do it, a year is a very long time to come up with ‘serious unforeseen circumstances’. There is no point in trying to force people to do things - the best way is to change the job in such a way that people will want to take it. Pay them well, in other words, in money, in prestige, or otherwise.

By serious unforeseen circumstances I mean things like getting cancer or being crippled in a freak car accident. Nobody's going to do either of these things just to get out of government duty.

Also, what's important is for the sample to be representative, so it's fine if a very motivated minority gets out of it, as long as it doesn't create a significative bias in the lottery.

But yes, they should be paid handsomely. And as I mentioned in another comment, their debts should be paid in full to make them less vulnerable to bribes.