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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

#41

Post by tialaramex »

Muximize wrote: post #34
cabalamat wrote: post #13

Let's say Alice only cares about proposition A. And Bob only cares about B. Alice can spend all her 100 tokens on A, and she gets 10 votes on A. Ditto Bob can spend all his 100 tokens on B, and he gets 10 votes on B. But if each of them spends 50 on A and 50 on B, then A and B both get 2*sqrt(50) ~= 14 votes, so both Alice and Bob win by colluding. What's to stop them doing this?

Because it is a Prisoner's Dilemma. Bob can convince Alice to spend half her tokens on proposition B but then betray her and spend all his tokens on B, resulting in 17 votes for B and only 7 for A. When voting is anonymous there is no way to detect if voters keep their pledge or not, so this should deter them from voting in any other way than in their own interest.

Is the voting in their legislature anonymous? Why?

Unlike ordinary people, the legislators are working for their voters, who deserve to know if they got what they paid for. If I send Bob to the legislature, understanding that he plans to get rid of all the bloody clowns, I certainly want to know if he supported the Bill that gives every Clown $5000 of the city's tax revenue to buy more ludicrous shoes and lapel flowers. If Bob can promise he's anti-clown, then arrive in the legislature and vote a straight pro-clown slate knowing he'll face no consequences, that's no way to run a representative democracy!

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#42

Post by marricks »

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.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#43

Post by overthemoon »

crazygringo wrote: post #9

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

Polarization isn't in itself a problem unless you believe the truth is somewhere near the center, which is itself an ideological position. On top of that, our choices have always been the options from C to E. Sanders is the farthest left serious candidate for president we've had in decades, and he's not very far left relative to many center-left European parties. Trump has farther right tendencies but policy-wise he's more or less in lock step with the center of the GOP. I would love to hear an explanation for why I'm wrong. We've rarely had a president or even candidates on either extreme.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#44

Post by SubiculumCode »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #4

In the US where the parties cling to stupid and outdated viewpoints and agendas in order to differentiate themselves from the other party. Legislators have to vote with the party if they don't want to find the party funding an opponent in the next election cycle. This is an improvement insofar as it allows legislators to nominally vote with the party while voting more strongly in favor of things they actually care ab…

The more that politics become local the more this all goes away. States need to be at the foreront again

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#45

Post by Allower »

crazygringo wrote: post #9

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

its not a two party problem, its a problem of intelligence, literally the american congress (and most of the uneleceted public servants) are literally ignoramuses who are incapable of thinking about more than 2 options.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#46

Post by hannasanarion »

jimhefferon wrote: post #21
crazygringo wrote: post #9

It's clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. Because the problem isn't with strong preferences -- it's with extreme preferences. If there were 7 versions of a bill (A,B,C,D,E,F,G) ranging from ultra-conservative (a "A") to ultra-liberal (a "G"), in a polarized community people could still be spending the minimum 1 point each on the A's or G's and none on B-F. The problem with politics today isn't that people are si…

> 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…

1860 was also the first year of a brand new two-party system. The previous decade was unilateral Democrat rule while the Whigs died and Constitutionalists, Know-Nothings, and Republicans fought over the scraps. It was an unusual time.

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#47

Post by ben509 »

lhopki01 wrote: post #15
cabalamat wrote: post #13

Let's say Alice only cares about proposition A. And Bob only cares about B. Alice can spend all her 100 tokens on A, and she gets 10 votes on A. Ditto Bob can spend all his 100 tokens on B, and he gets 10 votes on B. But if each of them spends 50 on A and 50 on B, then A and B both get 2*sqrt(50) ~= 14 votes, so both Alice and Bob win by colluding. What's to stop them doing this?

Oh no lawmakers actually cooperating to achieve their goals. What a tragedy!

It usually does result in tragedy, though. It's just reported as "bad luck."

Re: A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive

#49

Post by C1sc0cat »

tialaramex wrote: post #37
C1sc0cat wrote: post #26

This is just deciding the order of business - not voting in the sense a civilian understands it. The other way this can be done in parliamentary systems is to have a lay member body sort through and produce a draft order of business. This body also decides which motions are in order which are duplicates and which need to be composited (ie a merge in tech speak) and also works out any conseqensionals (eg if Motion A p…

Yes the usual situation we're familiar with is picking a candidate in an election (which is what millions of Brits were doing yesterday) but it's the same for all these decisions. The key ingredients are more than two options (if there are only exactly two options we can solve this nicely and if there's only one option it's trivial) and wanting to incorporate preferences from many different people (ie let's not have…

They are normally elected and yes it is like the Speaker of the HOC though normally a bit more crunchy that the old softy that's currently in the position.
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