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A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

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Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#331

Post by Faark »

bsdetector wrote: post #327
Jolter wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Yes, the advantage of a two party system is power frequently switching between parties. Its a feedback loop that seems to keep both parties balanced and other systems should look to find ways to achieve similar effects. And certainly doesn't imply the current US system is the best possible for running a government for its people.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#332

Post by newen »

kazinator wrote: post #264
newen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think some variant of lisp along with the op function is the best way to communicate with a wide audience? For normal people, that code is printing the result of 0.8^i for i=0..9.

I think that, well, HN comments aren't a good platform for someone looking for a wide audience.

And by wide audience, I mean people who don't program in lisp 100% of the time.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#333

Post by fiestaman »

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...

Your graph shows spending in constant 2009 dollars, just as mine shows spending in constant 2015 dollars, so your comment makes no sense.

They are literally presenting the same information, just pegging inflation to different years.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#334

Post by marricks »

fiestaman wrote: post #333
marricks wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Your graph shows spending in constant 2009 dollars, just as mine shows spending in constant 2015 dollars, so your comment makes no sense. They are literally presenting the same information, just pegging inflation to different years.

Huh you’re right about that. For some reason your heritage chart makes it look a lot more reasonable, which I don’t agree that it is. I’m guessing it has something to with comparing to GDP?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#335

Post by falcor84 »

EnderViaAnsible wrote: post #306
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…

Majorities being > than minorities is an aspect of democracy in its natural state, for certain, but I would not go so far as to call it a feature. The bicameral legislature of the U.S. was designed precisely to avoid this "feature"!

Could you please elaborate?

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#336

Post by anigbrowl »

_v7gu wrote: post #8
gyaniv wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

Yeah but you're assuming people naturally line up in two camps. It's possible that you've been inadvertently trained to think this way if you inhabit a duopolistic society.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#337

Post by koube »

breuleux wrote: post #277
koube wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Junior lawmakers are also perfectly capable of hiring senior lawmakers yet the balance of power still shifts towards lobbyists, so I would assume that the same issue would exist for lottery-drawn representatives.

Perhaps. I think there are generally three ways lobbyists can exert influence: 1. By nurturing personal relationships with politicians. I may be mistaken, but I feel like this is probably the most effective method. You want to exploit the natural tendency people have to want to help their friends, even decent people. 2. By helping politicians get what they want (e.g. reelection, but also first election, or election t…

Term limits have already been evaluated, as I posted in one of my previous comments.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#339

Post by dragonwriter »

EnderViaAnsible wrote: post #306
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…

Majorities being > than minorities is an aspect of democracy in its natural state, for certain, but I would not go so far as to call it a feature. The bicameral legislature of the U.S. was designed precisely to avoid this "feature"!

> The bicameral legislature of the U.S. was designed precisely to avoid this "feature"!

Not really, it was just made to weight the scales (in both houses, by different mechanisms) so that a particular set of interests[0] would be less likely be a political minority even if they were a numeric minority. It retained the feature that political minorities were easily suppressed by the political majority, so long as it was a political minority in both houses.

[0] The slave states of the South.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#340

Post by dfischer »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #274
dfischer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the idea of voting quadratically with money. Every vote scales with cost. Instead of hiding the reality, just expose it and limit it with quadratic scaling.

And people with no disposable income get zero representation, and aren't even worth pandering lip service. Doesn't sound sustainable, but it's an interesting idea to play with. You could adjust the price-point to make it more or less price-competitive with lobbying and conventional bribery, and to serve as a sort of tax. Might make for a good cyberpunk setting.

Well one vote is $1. The economies of scale fit in really quickly with manipulation. Second $4 and so on.
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