I don't think "the tyranny of the majority" is really the problem.
Quadratic Voting (2014)
41–50 of 156 posts
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Read to the bottom -- it looks like the general idea here is to empower direct democracy. Less institutional power in the form of representational voting and beauraucratic/constitutional checks on each other means less attack surface for corruption.
Direct democracy is a very dangerous thing and unchecked can very quickly lead to oppression of minority contingents and minority opinions. And, of course, direct democracy is vulnerable to the base form of corruption in the form of "vote for us and we'll take money from the other guys and give it to you".
The whole point of this seems to be to avoid oppression of minority opinions by weighing in how much you care.
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#43It seems important to distinguish between actually voting, where everyone votes or has a chance to vote (at near-zero cost), and lobbying for individual legislation, where only the very highly-motivated "vote", at high cost.
In the latter case (lobbying), most people seem to believe that small groups exert too much power over the process. But that's entirely because the majority have essentially zero influence. If some small industry has an intense preference for a special tax break, they would easily be defeated if everyone else expressed their mild disapproval. The problem is not that the rich get too many votes, but that the first vote is too costly.
In ordinary voting, the opposite situation is more likely. A small group of people are very passionate about some issue (gay marriage, drug liberalization, environmental protection), while the majority doesn't know or care very much, but is slightly negative on average. In that case, the weak preferences of the majority win out, giving an inefficient outcome. This is where Quadratic Voting could help.
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
And so? My $100m made me lord tyrant ruler of the universe. Is existing inequality enough that quadratic voting realistically dismantles rather than reinforces existing power structures? Has QV been used in any practical context? If so, I'd welcome replies as I didn't pick up on this.
Your $100M got you 4 years in Congress. Let's say you can pass a key bill that'll make you more than $100M. It had better not piss people off very much, because in the next election they'll buy TWO votes each and you'll have to spend $400M to keep your law in place. In the meantime, all those poor people you outvoted are $50,000 richer. The interesting thing about this is that the more votes you buy, the more you fun…
No, you miss the point.
Being $X richer is now meaningless. Whoever is in power controls the currency and the time value of money sufficiently that they can manipulate the next round of voting.
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#45I don't understand, so basically if you're homeless or don't have a bank account, or if you're not in the workforce for one of a million reasons, you don't get a say at all? Am I missing something?
Votes are cheap when you just want a few of them. Perhaps the first one is free? Then you get a windfall for being a voter, because all the money spent is redistributed per capita among the voters.
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#46If this was implemented, it seems like the best strategy for an interest group would be to spread their funds over as many voters as possible. I wonder what kind of complications that would cause?
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#47If this was implemented, it seems like the best strategy for an interest group would be to spread their funds over as many voters as possible. I wonder what kind of complications that would cause?
I deal with this in another paper: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2571012
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#48What experiments could be (or have been) run to test this?
Two sets, in very controlled laboratory settings, have turned out well:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
and
http://rangevoting.org/GoereeZhangMar2013.pdf
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#49> Majority rule based on one-person-one-vote notoriously results in tyranny of the majority–a large number of people who care only a little about an outcome prevail over a minority that cares passionately, resulting in a reduction of aggregate welfare.
Notoriously? In actual practice, U.S. democracy and many others function the exact opposite of what is described (passionate minorities such as Iowa corn farmers and F-35 plane builders and M1A1 tank builders and various intellectual property advocates routinely beat unpassionate majorities, resulting in laws that are bad for most and good for a very few, decreasing overall welfare). The idea that the masses are voting themselves loot from the treasury over the objections of the noble elites is a fantasy that exists only in some libertarian heads, and never in the real world. I can't really read any further in this article. This is basic stuff.
Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)
#50Their startup: http://collectivedecisionengines.com/ seems to give decision makers X units of currency and then refund them the average outlay.
It seems like it would have failure modes in communities w/ transient populations. As in, if you give me 100 units, I'll buy 10 votes and know that I at least voted as much as I could. But in conditions where you have a fixed community it could work well.
Clearly in the real world if you have 100 credits, a Koch brother would have ~100 million credits... Bill Gates ~200 million credits... (based on US median net worth of $44,000 vs their respective 42billion and ~80billion)
But there are plenty of decisions to be made that could be done with fake credits in a controlled environment.