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Quadratic Voting (2014)

ericposner.com

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Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#61

Post by SamReidHughes »

rosser wrote: post #58
SamReidHughes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionares are vastly outnumbered by thousandaires. For example, in an FPTP election their ability to buy 31600 votes would, nationally, let them move the 50 yard line, towards which politics converges, 0.001% to the left or right.

> Billionares are vastly outnumbered by thousandaires. While true, the billionaires' liquid and un-accounted-for dollars vastly outnumber the thousandaires'. If Joe Average has to choose between voting on something and paying his mortgage, while Jim Squillionaire is choosing between voting and buying another jet (yes, hyperbole; my point still obtains), guess whose votes you're more likely to see...

I just explained why spending $1 billion on votes won't affect the outcome of politics, in the other sentence of my post, that you didn't quote. That's part of the reason the cost of votes is nonlinear in this scheme.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#62

Post by smsm42 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #55
smsm42 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one feature of the system is that the accumulated funds are then distributed equally after the vote. With tokens, this would not be very useful, as if everybody gets the same amount tokens, there's no difference between getting one token and getting one million, tokens themselves have no value.

They have value when it's time to vote for something.

If voting tokens do not perish between votes, that leads to the similar inequalities if I abstain from voting for a number of cycles. If old tokens do expire, then it doesn't matter when everybody else gets the same - up to the limit of the quantization of tokens, how many tokens you have is less important than how much more tokens than your opponents you have . I.e. if there is a yes/no question, the important thing for you, if you favor "yes", it to have more tokens for "yes" than for "no", but how many tokens for each does not matter. In multilateral choice it's more complex but I think if you have enough tokens to not be limited to voting for one thing because you only have one token, it is again the same situation.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#63

Post by panic »

jmount wrote: post #52

With all due respect, it sounds like while it might fight flaws common to other voting systems, pay-back based voting will have its own gamesmanship. Consider 1,000 voters upwind of a factory and 1,000 more voters downwind. Suppose the factory wants to stop scrubbing its exhaust for a savings of $1,000 (to itself) and cost of $10 to each down-wind voter (in health costs). All the factory has to do is propose the same…

The paper covers this. The solution is to force a commitment of votes before you can propose a vote on an issue.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#64

Post by jmount »

glenweyl wrote: post #54
jmount wrote: post #52

With all due respect, it sounds like while it might fight flaws common to other voting systems, pay-back based voting will have its own gamesmanship. Consider 1,000 voters upwind of a factory and 1,000 more voters downwind. Suppose the factory wants to stop scrubbing its exhaust for a savings of $1,000 (to itself) and cost of $10 to each down-wind voter (in health costs). All the factory has to do is propose the same…

This is not an equilibrium; the down-winders would not vote unless they thought that vote mattered. In any case we have a nominating process to avoid this sort of manipulation; see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2321904 or http://ssrn.com/abstract=2343956 .

My point is: it is a bad situation, equilibrium or not. And some down-winders have to vote if the factory votes a little bit each time. Or even if the factory threatens to vote (and then doesn't). If all the magic is in the nominating process- then we really don't need the voting mechanism.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#65

Post by jmount »

panic wrote: post #63
jmount wrote: post #52

With all due respect, it sounds like while it might fight flaws common to other voting systems, pay-back based voting will have its own gamesmanship. Consider 1,000 voters upwind of a factory and 1,000 more voters downwind. Suppose the factory wants to stop scrubbing its exhaust for a savings of $1,000 (to itself) and cost of $10 to each down-wind voter (in health costs). All the factory has to do is propose the same…

The paper covers this. The solution is to force a commitment of votes before you can propose a vote on an issue.

So factory votes $1 each time (small commitment, forcing some fraction of the down-winders in unless they can form a coalition).

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#67

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

glenweyl wrote: post #22

The equity issues you all are raising are very important, but death with in detail here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956 . The simplest solution is just to use an artificial currency that everyone is given equal amounts of but can spread over the decisions most important to them. In this piece with Rory Sutherland we discuss this: http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9512322/humans-are-doing…

And in this moment, VoteCoin was born.

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#68

Post by smsm42 »

jacques_chester wrote: post #59
smsm42 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mandatory voting won't help as apathetic votes would be either distributed randomly or given according to preference having nothing to do with the issues, such as which candidate is better looking or which one appears more on a popular comedy shows.

You're speaking hypothetically, but the experience of countries with mandatory voting bears out that mandatory voting drives parties towards the median voter, not the fringes. It's called Hotelling's Law. America and Australia have a lot in common, including that of people of eligible to vote, those who have religious aims are in the minority. One of these countries is dominated by the politics of trying to enforce t…

USA and Australia are very different politically. I have no idea what you mean by "the laws of herders from thousands of years ago", but if I venture a guess I'd assume you refer to the Judeo-Christian principles. That ye olde "do not murder", "do not steal", "do not perjury" stuff. If so, I'm pretty sure, unless I missed some recent developments, that both USA and Australia are still on board with enforcing those. As USA is about 15 times bigger than Australia, fringes are bigger too - on bigger sample, you get more place for exceptional outcomes to manifest.

> because the median voter is more interested in Shit Just Sorta Approximately Working,

Why this is a good thing? It is known that every hard problem has easy, cheap, understandable and incorrect solution. Or, as you call it, "Shit Just Sorta Approximately Working" but not actually working because of complicated reasons that median voter wouldn't bother to comprehend. So you get a lot of voting for shit that sounds good but doesn't work. How that's good for anything?

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#69

Post by xnull2guest »

maaaats wrote: post #66
xnull2guest wrote: post #56

Quadratic, exponential, or Ackermann - it's a terrible idea to exchange votes for money.

Thanks for a thoughtful and well written comment, it opened my eyes.

Your sarcasm aside, here is a more in depth commentary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8831688

Re: Quadratic Voting (2014)

#70

Post by sukilot »

rosser wrote: post #58
SamReidHughes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billionares are vastly outnumbered by thousandaires. For example, in an FPTP election their ability to buy 31600 votes would, nationally, let them move the 50 yard line, towards which politics converges, 0.001% to the left or right.

> Billionares are vastly outnumbered by thousandaires. While true, the billionaires' liquid and un-accounted-for dollars vastly outnumber the thousandaires'. If Joe Average has to choose between voting on something and paying his mortgage, while Jim Squillionaire is choosing between voting and buying another jet (yes, hyperbole; my point still obtains), guess whose votes you're more likely to see...

That's easy to fix with a social security-like scheme that forces everyone to spend at least $1000 on voting.
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