8 ms·

> An individual who felt strongly about a single issue could hoard their credits until its moment arrives, then blow all of their saved credits on it. That woul

> An individual who felt strongly about a single issue could hoard their credits until its moment arrives, then blow all of their saved credits on it. That would allow passionate minorities occasionally to outvote indifferent majorities. In other words, hoarders and impulsive spenders would decide policy? Ultimately political systems are judged by the quality of their policies. Why would passionate minorities produce better policy than median voters?

bedobi 5y ago
> Ultimately political systems are judged by the quality of their policies thanks for putting into words exactly what I thought without really being able to explain it "fair" voting systems feel good but from what I've seen they seem to kind of end up amplifying extremism and bad policy
- cycomanic 5y ago
  It's really the other way around, our current systems (to different degrees) give extreme positions disproportionate influence. Just look at the republican party in the US, which has moved considerably to the extreme right over the last 20 years due to the influence of extreme single issue minorities (tea party/fundamentalist christian).
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Do you have some examples where there is a clear causative link between the "fair" voting system and the amplified extremism / bad policy? Alternatively, can you point to examples where an "unfair" voting system has prevented such bad outcomes that were otherwise unavoidable? It's actually very hard to predict what sorts of government would emerge, or constitutional crises would occur, under a counterfactual voting system, and countries can fail for any number of reasons, regardless of their voting system. Ideally we'd need a dataset covering dozens of countries and multiple decades, with some sort of measure of "extremism" and "bad policy", which a political scientist might be reluctant to try quantifying.
  - bedobi 5y ago
    Yeah, I posted one elsewhere in the thread > It also makes it easier for people to vote for trash parties like One Nation. In other countries people would think twice before voting for small, extremist parties like that lest they waste their vote if the party doesn't make it past the threshold for getting a seat. (this is just one of the many problems I see with the Australian system)
    - vidarh 5y ago
      So you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented, in other words. I love in the UK, which uses FPTP, and personally I don't consider countries which uses this system to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised.
      - bedobi 5y ago
        > you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented as I said elsewhere, I think the cost for voting for minority extremist parties and policies should be higher, not lower, yes, and frankly, I don't have a problem with disenfranchising extremism, no. > I don't consider countries which uses FPTP to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised I think that's great. More "fair" voting systems to me are bad because it seems to me all they do is just to cater to people's extremism. On a side note, probably the fundamental reason why we disagree is because you and people like you seem to think democracy should mean the will of the people and the voting system should serve to cater to and express the will of the people as closely as possible, including the ugly stuff, while I and people like me think in liberal democracies there are a lot of things which are not and should not be subject to the will of the people, no matter how popular, and the voting system should not cater to peoples extremisms, no matter how popular. Your side will make a point out of that, saying you're more democratic. Maybe that's true! But I don't want to live in a society where eg fundamental human rights are subject to the whims of popular opinion. (which is often ugly, misinformed etc etc)
    - dane-pgp 5y ago
bee_rider 5y ago
Is it just me, or was this idea of a lifetime number of votes rather than tying them to a given election kinda slipped in at the end? And kind of a big deal? Two outcomes that I find pretty undesirable: 1) A small group of super intense extremists save up their votes their whole life and use them to jam through their wackiest idea. 2) A group tries that trick, fails, and now we have a population of dejected, permanently disenfranchised hardcore extremists.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I had a similar reaction about the way the article was written. I was confused about the benefits of this over a much simpler rating system, until they started talking about tying credits to external resources of some kind. Holding credits over seems to have similar issues.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Ar-Curunir 5y ago
The point is that generally hoarders and impulsive spenders can’t have a big impact in QV. Your influence scales as the sqrt of the number of votes you cast. It’s much more effective to have many “small” voters than a few big voters.
amznbad 5y ago
> Why would passionate minorities produce better policy than median voters? Maybe they are better informed - I think there are plenty of issues that have passionate insiders and median failures. Climate change policy, for instance, has vocal scientific minorities but the median opinion seems to be "we'll deal with this later...." Maybe they are disproportionately impacted - transgender folks probably know more about what policies would have a huge positive impact for them at basically no cost to society. But the median opinion probably doesn't know anything about trans healthcare. Maybe the right thing to do is unpopular. Some taxes are necessary, but the median opinion on any given tax is "no". Maybe the "prevailing wisdom" is just wrong. The median voter might be holding on to ideas that they learned growing up, rather than understanding what they are voting for. Maybe the median opinion is discriminatory. If 65% of voters are, eg, Christian, what implications does that have for our Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, and Pagan friends? For example, maybe we should consider what days are national holidays and listen to some passionate minorities. The median and average opinion is not always the right answer. It's very often a reasonable answer, but it's not always.
nwiswell 5y ago
I've long thought that every economic policy should be required to include an objective measure of its success, and that rather than explicitly voting, citizens could wager "vote credits" on the success or failure of that policy. This would produce a market-implied success rate, and whether or not the policy passed would depend on whether there was a positive expectation outcome (i.e., whether the risk-adjusted rewards of success outweighed the risk-adjusted cost of failure). Those who exceeded a certain amount of credits would receive a stipend, which adds financial incentive to participate. The hard part of this is ensuring that the objective measure of success is a fair one. There'd be tremendous incentive to pervert the metrics. You'd need a social class of incorruptible and cloistered "oracles" or something. Or just cut out the middleman and go straight to AI overlords :)
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  What you're describing is basically Futarchy[0]. Its catchphrase is "vote on values, bet on beliefs". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy
  - nwiswell 5y ago
    Thanks. Figured it wasn't an original idea but never had a word for it before.
- amznbad 5y ago
  How would you handle changes that produced no net winners or losers, but fundamentally shifted capital around? (Absurd example: "Every year, one randomly selected billionaire will have their assets seized and passed to one person in the bottom 5% of wage earners".)
- diordiderot 5y ago
  Oh this is great! America is now The handmaids tale, with more solar panels

bedobi 5y ago

> Ultimately political systems are judged by the quality of their policies thanks for putting into words exactly what I thought without really being able to explain it "fair" voting systems feel good but from what I've seen they seem to kind of end up amplifying extremism and bad policy

cycomanic 5y ago
It's really the other way around, our current systems (to different degrees) give extreme positions disproportionate influence. Just look at the republican party in the US, which has moved considerably to the extreme right over the last 20 years due to the influence of extreme single issue minorities (tea party/fundamentalist christian).
dane-pgp 5y ago
Do you have some examples where there is a clear causative link between the "fair" voting system and the amplified extremism / bad policy? Alternatively, can you point to examples where an "unfair" voting system has prevented such bad outcomes that were otherwise unavoidable? It's actually very hard to predict what sorts of government would emerge, or constitutional crises would occur, under a counterfactual voting system, and countries can fail for any number of reasons, regardless of their voting system. Ideally we'd need a dataset covering dozens of countries and multiple decades, with some sort of measure of "extremism" and "bad policy", which a political scientist might be reluctant to try quantifying.
- bedobi 5y ago
  Yeah, I posted one elsewhere in the thread > It also makes it easier for people to vote for trash parties like One Nation. In other countries people would think twice before voting for small, extremist parties like that lest they waste their vote if the party doesn't make it past the threshold for getting a seat. (this is just one of the many problems I see with the Australian system)
  - vidarh 5y ago
    So you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented, in other words. I love in the UK, which uses FPTP, and personally I don't consider countries which uses this system to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised.
    - bedobi 5y ago
      > you're arguing for removing the ability of those whose opinions you dislike to have their opinions represented as I said elsewhere, I think the cost for voting for minority extremist parties and policies should be higher, not lower, yes, and frankly, I don't have a problem with disenfranchising extremism, no. > I don't consider countries which uses FPTP to be democratic countries at all. I'm de facto disenfranchised I think that's great. More "fair" voting systems to me are bad because it seems to me all they do is just to cater to people's extremism. On a side note, probably the fundamental reason why we disagree is because you and people like you seem to think democracy should mean the will of the people and the voting system should serve to cater to and express the will of the people as closely as possible, including the ugly stuff, while I and people like me think in liberal democracies there are a lot of things which are not and should not be subject to the will of the people, no matter how popular, and the voting system should not cater to peoples extremisms, no matter how popular. Your side will make a point out of that, saying you're more democratic. Maybe that's true! But I don't want to live in a society where eg fundamental human rights are subject to the whims of popular opinion. (which is often ugly, misinformed etc etc)
  - dane-pgp 5y ago

bee_rider 5y ago

Is it just me, or was this idea of a lifetime number of votes rather than tying them to a given election kinda slipped in at the end? And kind of a big deal? Two outcomes that I find pretty undesirable: 1) A small group of super intense extremists save up their votes their whole life and use them to jam through their wackiest idea. 2) A group tries that trick, fails, and now we have a population of dejected, permanently disenfranchised hardcore extremists.

derbOac 5y ago
I had a similar reaction about the way the article was written. I was confused about the benefits of this over a much simpler rating system, until they started talking about tying credits to external resources of some kind. Holding credits over seems to have similar issues.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Ar-Curunir 5y ago

The point is that generally hoarders and impulsive spenders can’t have a big impact in QV. Your influence scales as the sqrt of the number of votes you cast. It’s much more effective to have many “small” voters than a few big voters.

amznbad 5y ago

> Why would passionate minorities produce better policy than median voters? Maybe they are better informed - I think there are plenty of issues that have passionate insiders and median failures. Climate change policy, for instance, has vocal scientific minorities but the median opinion seems to be "we'll deal with this later...." Maybe they are disproportionately impacted - transgender folks probably know more about what policies would have a huge positive impact for them at basically no cost to society. But the median opinion probably doesn't know anything about trans healthcare. Maybe the right thing to do is unpopular. Some taxes are necessary, but the median opinion on any given tax is "no". Maybe the "prevailing wisdom" is just wrong. The median voter might be holding on to ideas that they learned growing up, rather than understanding what they are voting for. Maybe the median opinion is discriminatory. If 65% of voters are, eg, Christian, what implications does that have for our Hindu, Jewish, Sikh, Muslim, and Pagan friends? For example, maybe we should consider what days are national holidays and listen to some passionate minorities. The median and average opinion is not always the right answer. It's very often a reasonable answer, but it's not always.

nwiswell 5y ago

I've long thought that every economic policy should be required to include an objective measure of its success, and that rather than explicitly voting, citizens could wager "vote credits" on the success or failure of that policy. This would produce a market-implied success rate, and whether or not the policy passed would depend on whether there was a positive expectation outcome (i.e., whether the risk-adjusted rewards of success outweighed the risk-adjusted cost of failure). Those who exceeded a certain amount of credits would receive a stipend, which adds financial incentive to participate. The hard part of this is ensuring that the objective measure of success is a fair one. There'd be tremendous incentive to pervert the metrics. You'd need a social class of incorruptible and cloistered "oracles" or something. Or just cut out the middleman and go straight to AI overlords :)

dane-pgp 5y ago
What you're describing is basically Futarchy[0]. Its catchphrase is "vote on values, bet on beliefs". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futarchy
- nwiswell 5y ago
  Thanks. Figured it wasn't an original idea but never had a word for it before.
amznbad 5y ago
How would you handle changes that produced no net winners or losers, but fundamentally shifted capital around? (Absurd example: "Every year, one randomly selected billionaire will have their assets seized and passed to one person in the bottom 5% of wage earners".)
diordiderot 5y ago
Oh this is great! America is now The handmaids tale, with more solar panels