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The election of the doge

generalist.academy

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Re: The election of the doge

#71

Post by brandmeyer »

ajb wrote: post #38

Like a lot of commentors I think that sortition could be a useful part of the democratic process. However I think it's better as a component than the whole thing, which is also shown in the Doge election. It's worth remembering that voting is already only the last step of a process: 1 Candidates self-select 2 party selection panel (or primary election) 3 election In my opinion a good process would be: 1 voters form i…

Your proposal just optimizes for personal charisma, because that's the only feature visible to the group doing the choosing in the time allotted.

Re: The election of the doge

#72

Post by zeveb »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

This is fascinating. One thing that would be awesome to try would be doing this with the House of Representatives in the US. Basically, one registered voter would be randomly chosen from each congressional district. They would be obligated to serve for the 2 year term and paid the current salary of a member of Congress ($174,000/year). They would never be part of the lottery again after 1 term. I think this could hav…

I think it would be interesting to have three Houses: Senate, with individual senators appointed by the state legislatures; Representatives, with individuals elected by popular vote; and Citizens, selected by sortition. Legislation could originate in either the Senate or the House of Representatives, but would have to be ratified by the House of Citizens, unless their veto were overridden by super-majorities. The number of citizens per state would be the sum of the state's senators & representatives.

This would take the veto away from the President, and give it to a random selection of people.

Maybe combine it with an amendment stating that all regulations must be passed by the Congress, or at least be ratified by the House of Citizens …

Re: The election of the doge

#73

Post by 0x445442 »

florencebuzz wrote: post #69
specialist wrote: post #62

[Late to the party, sorry.] Anyone curious about modern sortition: Citizen juries are chosen by lottery. They review policy and make recommendations. Non binding, but impactful. https://healthydemocracy.org https://xraypod.com/show/democracy-nerd/exporting-oregon-sty... -- IMHO: Treat representation and policy making as distinct and separate activities. I'm very political. Over time, I've become increasingly disinter…

I highly recommend a short book, Hatred of Democracy by Jacques Ranciere.

I haven't read that reference but I have read some stuff by Hans Hoppe and he raises some very interesting points on the subject.

One of the more interesting points he brings up is that Democracy was not really looked on favorably by serious thinkers throughout history. He also asserts that because, it's implementation coincided with the great leaps forward in science, technology and industrialization, the champions of Democracy are making the classic correlation vs. causation error.

Re: The election of the doge

#74

Post by thechao »

notahacker wrote: post #53
thechao wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sibling mentioned this is called sortition. The main drawback another sibling mentioned is lack experience. I think a good combination is 'sortition & incumbency'. Elections occur in two phases: 1. If an incumbent wants to keep their seat, they keep their seat with a K% chance, say 50/50; and, 2. All remaining seats are chosen at random from the eligible (see below) that apply for the position. An additional tweak…

> The sortition mechanism is a robust anti-gerrymandering, anti-corruption, anti-just-about-everything-we-don't-like-in-government mechanism. I'd argue that the worst aspect of the US political system is the fine margins between two fiercely partisan factions which random members of the public tend to strongly identify with. Making which faction with ~45% hardcore supporters [in swing states] has control a matter of…

A significant source for enabling corrupt behavior is the fact that the party (usually) controls the seat, and highly noncompetitive races where incumbents are almost guaranteed their seat. If a statesperson doesn’t “own” their seat, and they don’t have a party to cover them, they have to worry about the next person asking questions.

Re: The election of the doge

#75

Post by 0x445442 »

blululu wrote: post #23

For a more mathematical analysis of how this process plays out in terms of representation, I found this article to be very helpful: https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf *It is also worth noting that the main article simplifies the process a little, since a certain threshold approval is required

Thanks for the link. My first thought when reading the article was there had to be a more simplistic mathematical equivalent.

Re: The election of the doge

#76

Post by synctext »

blululu wrote: post #23

For a more mathematical analysis of how this process plays out in terms of representation, I found this article to be very helpful: https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf *It is also worth noting that the main article simplifies the process a little, since a certain threshold approval is required

"Electing the Doge of Venice: Analysis of a 13th Century Protocol", https://doi.org/10.1109/CSF.2007.21

"This paper discusses the protocol used for electing the Doge of Venice between 1268 and the end of the Republic in 1797. We will show that it has some useful properties that in addition to being interesting in themselves, also suggest that its fundamental design principle is worth investigating for application to leader election protocols in computer science."

Re: The election of the doge

#77

Post by specialist »

0x445442 wrote: post #73
florencebuzz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend a short book, Hatred of Democracy by Jacques Ranciere.

I haven't read that reference but I have read some stuff by Hans Hoppe and he raises some very interesting points on the subject. One of the more interesting points he brings up is that Democracy was not really looked on favorably by serious thinkers throughout history. He also asserts that because, it's implementation coincided with the great leaps forward in science, technology and industrialization, the champions…

Even Cornel West parrots Athenian era warnings about majoritarian tyranny, mob rule, etc.

I have near religious faith in democracy. I'm so out of step. I don't know why.

My enthusiasm for democracy originated in my workplace experiments. Ideas gleaned from Peter Drucker, Deming, and probably some others. I just needed an efficient, effective way to get my coworkers to step up and contribute their knowledge and expertise.

I really had no stake in the outcomes.

At the time, my role was often called "facilitator", which I've never liked. I now prefer Michael Lewis inspired label of "referee".

Any way. Democracy in the workplace was like magic. Consensus forming just happened. It took a while to build the trust. My job was mostly to ensure the group honored and delivered on its own decisions. I squashed snipers and saboteurs. It made me very unpopular. Until I was tasked with resurrecting the next zombie project. My team mates missed me after I was gone, belatedly realized that I had empowered them.

I think about how to replicate that success all the time. Still no clue.

Edit: Just pulled up his wiki. Hoppe wrote a book called Democracy: The God That Failed. Explains your down vote. Haha. No worries. The world needs its Eeyores (Austrian flavored libertarians). Helps keep us humanists on mission.

Re: The election of the doge

#78

Post by specialist »

florencebuzz wrote: post #69
specialist wrote: post #62

[Late to the party, sorry.] Anyone curious about modern sortition: Citizen juries are chosen by lottery. They review policy and make recommendations. Non binding, but impactful. https://healthydemocracy.org https://xraypod.com/show/democracy-nerd/exporting-oregon-sty... -- IMHO: Treat representation and policy making as distinct and separate activities. I'm very political. Over time, I've become increasingly disinter…

I highly recommend a short book, Hatred of Democracy by Jacques Ranciere.

Thanks. I'll try to read that. Skimming his wiki and some of the book reviews, I already know it'll challenge me.

My metaphor for democracy is social cognition. It's just a form of group decision making, collective action. Like an optimization algorithm. So I tend to focus on process and feedback loops.

I really struggle with Marxist frames, as I understand them. Like the phrase "democracy is a releveling of society" and "defense of the public sphere". I'm sure that I'll learn from his pushback against the enemies of civil society. Like Hoppe cited by 0xDEADBABE. What polite company now calls "neoreactionaries", but I generally use much more pointed pejoratives.

Again, thank you.

Re: The election of the doge

#79

Post by gen220 »

prionassembly wrote: post #68
jhanschoo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematicians already know that random selection is a powerful tool in fairness in electoral processes, the problem is with asking the modern democratic citizen and politician to accept a random process.

Also ensuring the legitimacy of the random process (which is not really about technical features, but about social consensus): just how much easier is to claim a PRNG (or a rabbit that chooses a box, or paper slips inside cookies) is rigged.

Yep! For a modern day example, there's a famous conspiracy [1] the Champions League draw, which involves pulling balls from a bin, that certain balls are warmed or cooled so that the ball-chooser knows to draw them in a certain round.

They could rid themselves of this conspiracy by randomly selecting the ball-drawer (instead of using a paid random ex-footballer), but they don't. :)

[1]: https://www.eurosport.com/football/champions-league/2015-201...

Re: The election of the doge

#80

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

zeveb wrote: post #70
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #48

While interesting, it's not an ideal system because it's still the elite picking one of their own.

Why is that a problem? I would rather have a doge from a good family, who has been exposed to international trade and great power politics from birth, than one who was sweeping out the stables three days ago. The non-elite are not inherently purer than the elite, and they are generally less well-educated. I am not certain how 'elite' has become a bad thing: shouldn't we all aspire to be among the elite? I thought tha…

I'm somewhat in the same camp. There is always going to be an Elite class in society. Why not let them stay there? Why do we have to play coy about the whole thing on how they are intrinsically evil when in fact they're often the ones with some of the most heavy of burdens. I do think that it's worth some concessions that they do get to have more luxuries in life due to that, but who cares, they were going to get them anyway. At least they're at the forefront for everybody to be aware of and seeing their activities.

I'm 100% also behind this because they aren't complete jaded "rags to riches" people. This is one reason why I think in the US we have such a huge issue with selfishness in general. If you worked for what you earned, it is yours. Therefore, it's in everyone's mindset to be selfish/greedy. Whereas if you had an Elite class handle things such as this, you can rest assured everything they do isn't solely for their self interest. They don't do things just for money. If their morals are somewhat sound in reasoning, I can't see why they'd overlook the cost of things much like we do in the US over literally everything.

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