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

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#321

Post by pdonis » Sat, May 04, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #311

pdonis wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't negotiate with terrorists. So you think the slaveowners were terrorists? You think the British in Colonial times were terrorists? On what basis? > do you think we should have paid the British? I answered this in another part of this subthread: yes, if the British would have accepted payment in exchange for our independence, and we could have afforded the payment, we should have paid them.

> On what basis?... Uh... on the basis of them beating, torturing and even killing slaves maybe? Or again, are we not counting any terrorism against slaves? I mean, what would you call slavery but terrorism? Violence to achieve and maintain a political objective. What is war but terrorism really? When you're dealing with a terrorist, you use their tactics and prove to them you're willing to go further. But coming to…

> what would you call slavery but terrorism? Violence to achieve and maintain a political objective. What is war but terrorism really?

So by your definition, the Union fighting a war to free the slaves was terrorism. So your argument is basically to fight terrorism with more terrorism.

> paying southerners to free slaves, is tantamount to paying a kidnapper to release their hostages. If you're smart, you just don't do that. The only thing it does is embolden other kidnappers.

This claim is obviously false when applied to paying slaveowners to free slaves. Great Britain and other countries paying slaveowners to free slaves did not embolden other slaveowners. In fact it did the opposite.

> paying someone for land you live on, you farm, and you make valuable, but they take the profit off of it with no input from you at all?

Huh? We're not talking about the slaves buying their freedom. (Although that did happen in the South--it wasn't common, but it happened.) We're talking about the United States Government paying the slaveowners to buy the freedom of the slaves, in exchange for the slaveowners' agreement to outlaw slavery. Just like Great Britain did with its slaveowners. Do you even understand what actually happened in the latter case?

> you and I just think differently about these things

As far as I can tell, you are thinking not about what I actually proposed, but about straw man versions that you have made up.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#322

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, May 04, 2019, 9:05 PM UTC

marricks wrote: post #267

fiestaman wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/BG-defense-sp...

The Heritage foundation sure knows how to frame things! Overall the military budget has increased steeply since the 90s https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Defense_spending.p...

You could say the same thing about you only posting the constant dollars graph, instead of also including a percentage of GDP chart, which is in many senses a better assessment of federal spending: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Defense_Spending_as_a_P...

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#323

Post by creato » Sat, May 04, 2019, 11:19 PM UTC

SubiculumCode wrote: post #320

creato wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of examples of more local politics leading to worse outcomes. For example: balkanized cities zoning for too many offices and not enough housing, and jurisdictions racing to the bottom of tax policy to entice business.

There are plenty of examples where Federal law created worse outcomes in a particular locality, but is much harder to change the law because its Federal.

I'm not claiming the federal government is better. Only that it isn't obvious that more local = automatically better. Both approaches have drawbacks and advantages.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#324

Post by burgerzzz » Sat, May 04, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #296

mc32 wrote: post #2

Looks like this would favor highly coordinated groups to have outsized influence over poorly coordinated groups. So people who vote in isolation have less influence than people who organize and vote as a bloc. I think it also means that places where one party predominates would require the minority party to be highly coordinated in order to have any chance with one single silver “bullet” whereas the dominant party ca…

This is democracy though. The idea of a majority having more power than a minority is, as another user puts it "a feature, not a bug". If your goal is to best represent your population, then you want a system that counts people's opinions equally, regardless of what group/s they belong to. The problem here isn't the voting system so much as the structure. The way to "better represent" minority groups is to have diffe…

Some people are more equal than others? Umm... no.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#325

Post by godelski » Sun, May 05, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

jakeogh wrote: post #309

godelski wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is democracy though. The idea of a majority having more power than a minority is, as another user puts it "a feature, not a bug". If your goal is to best represent your population, then you want a system that counts people's opinions equally, regardless of what group/s they belong to. The problem here isn't the voting system so much as the structure. The way to "better represent" minority groups is to have diffe…

Hence the US is a republic.

The second sentence of Wikipedia for "Republic"

> The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy.

We're a democratic republic. Just saying the US is not a democracy but rather a republic is a woefully uninformed statement. They are not disjoint. Now let's stop parroting this phrase once and for all.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#326

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, May 05, 2019, 1:52 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #325

jakeogh wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the US is a republic.

The second sentence of Wikipedia for "Republic" > The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy. We're a democratic republic. Just saying the US is not a democracy but rather a republic is a woefully uninformed statement. They are not disjoint. Now let's stop parroting this phrase once and for all.

> We're a democratic republic

In theory, more of a federal republic whose constituent members are democratic republics than a democratic republic itself. In practice those members are more oligarchic (specifically plutocratic) than democratic, though, but most of the people saying “republic not a democracy” probably don't want to come out and say “federation of plutocracies.”

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#327

Post by bsdetector » Sun, May 05, 2019, 2:58 AM UTC

Jolter wrote: post #316

bsdetector wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is, except "first past the post" which is the system in the UK and US. ... I'm sure you can see how this is a problem? The two longest lasting, largest, most successful democracies of all time - I don't see the problem. The arguments against winner-take-all are mathematically maximizing a collective total happiness score for single elections. But governments are run by people, not math, and I've yet to see any…

"The two longest lasting, largest, most successful democracies of all time - I don't see the problem." They both have problems with large minorities of voters not being represented in their respective parliaments.

If the problems you have with UK and USA government are you don't like that people yell at each other and the representatives don't look the way you feel they should look, then you're right and they should change to a more 'civilized', proportional government.

It's hard to argue against someone's feelings.

But if you want to talk about good governance over time, does the country endure and does it make good decisions that ultimately benefit the country, that would be a more productive discussion. You have an uphill battle, with history not being kind to proportional democracies, but there's plenty of room for opinions and reasonable disagreement.

It's possible that constantly pitting constituents against each other is actually a vital component of democracy.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#328

Post by lazzlazzlazz » Sun, May 05, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

alipang wrote: post #3

mc32 wrote: post #2

Looks like this would favor highly coordinated groups to have outsized influence over poorly coordinated groups. So people who vote in isolation have less influence than people who organize and vote as a bloc. I think it also means that places where one party predominates would require the minority party to be highly coordinated in order to have any chance with one single silver “bullet” whereas the dominant party ca…

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

This is just persuading your compatriots to vote, which is normal and part of democracy. That's not "collusion" (an increasingly vacuous word these days).

There's nothing wrong with persuading people.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#329

Post by jakeogh » Sun, May 05, 2019, 8:40 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #325

jakeogh wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hence the US is a republic.

The second sentence of Wikipedia for "Republic" > The primary positions of power within a republic are not inherited, but are attained through democracy, oligarchy or autocracy. We're a democratic republic. Just saying the US is not a democracy but rather a republic is a woefully uninformed statement. They are not disjoint. Now let's stop parroting this phrase once and for all.

Wikipedia is not a source. It's a spot to see what random people wrote about something. Maybe it's useful to find something, often I find it useful to see what is not said, but citing it is pointless unless you drill down to the edit and cite the editor.

https://www.bartleby.com/73/1593.html

The important point is we protect minority positions via inalienable rights. That is not guaranteed in a pure democracy. It takes a near impossible situation to disarm a minority in the Unites States. It is what sets up apart from traditional democracies. I'm fine with the term Democratic Republic, but if you are concerned about parroting It's not the word republic that gets parroted.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#330

Post by btown » Sun, May 05, 2019, 12:42 PM UTC

gyaniv wrote: post #6

alipang wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be the obvious problem. If I only care about X, and you only about Y, we could vote individually (100 tokens -> 10 votes for X, 100 tokens -> 10 votes for Y), or we could collude and make that vote (2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes X, 2 * 50 tokens -> 2 * 7 votes Y).

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…

“Your religion, your salvation, requires that you allocate tokens as your local Party Organizer assigns. Only then can we combat the godless agenda the elites have shamelessly created this quadratic system to perpetuate. Do not let them bait you from deviating from our coordinated plan to stop them.”

Anonymous voting doesn’t help when independent thought itself is trained away from an early age.