[Election-Methods] Challenge: Elect the compromise when there'reonly 2 factions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 04:19 PM 8/31/2007, Howard Swerdfeger wrote:
I believe we have made an abrupt left hand turn with this analogy.
>buy "destroying the eggs", I intended that would happen if you voted 
>in a manner (on any bill) that you did not approve of.


I think that instead of "you voted" he meant "your representative voted"

Let's assume that we are talking about the Asset Voting with direct 
elector voting allowed proposal. If you don't trust that your proxy 
will vote in a trustworthy manner, then why not serve, yourself, as 
an elector, and vote for yourself?

Any system where we have representatives who vote on issues will 
allow our representatives to vote contrary to our desires. What proxy 
systems allow is for some of us (the public voters, the electors) to 
vote directly, *and* to have someone to vote for us when we cannot 
vote ourselves.

>Not, that my first proxy got hit by the #96 bus going out to Kanata, 
>or some such thing, and I needed a fall back proxy.

If your proxy has named a proxy, you have one. Your proxy's proxy. 
Now, your proxy assignment to the first proxy might, indeed, have a 
provision that upon the incapacity of your proxy, a different proxy 
would serve. I don't recommend it, for various practical reasons that 
I don't care to describe at this point, and I'm not sure I would set 
up a functioning proxy system that would recognize such, because it 
*vastly* complicates it. What delegable proxy does is to essentially 
allow participation by *everyone* through a very simple system of 
collecting voting power. Make it complicated and .... well, 
complicated systems become more vulnerable to various problems. Other 
things being equal, KISS.

You can name a new proxy at any time. With delegable proxy, your 
proxy has a stand-in, ready to go, at all times, unless your proxy 
has not named a proxy. Generally, your proxy's proxy will be higher 
in proxy rank than your proxy, but, at the top, obviously, there 
comes to be a proxy whose proxy is of lower rank.

I would not name a proxy who does not maintain a proxy.... this is 
the backup in case of that wayward bus event. And if I don't like 
that substitution, why, I change my proxy.

With Asset Voting / Direct Electors, the members with seats represent 
you in deliberation, but that is actually not a crucial function; 
i.e., you are not greatly harmed if something goes awry, for others 
can represent you in deliberation as well, there are parallel paths. 
Your member, the seat holding your default votes, will be relatively 
open to you.

>>However, if we look at DP, which is *very* similar, we can see that 
>>voting for the big famous influential person would generally be a mistake.
>
>How sure are you of that voting for "famous influential person" 
>would be a mistake in a liquid/proxy/asset voting system?
>What factors do you believe would lead to this being the best 
>strategy for most voters?

You mean "not the best."

What delegable proxy does is to set up a bidirectional communications 
network that centralizes intelligence and distributes advice. It also 
centralizes advice and distributes intelligence!

If you choose the "FIP," by definition you are choosing -- unless you 
are one of a few -- someone who *cannot* personally communicate with 
you. Thus you lose access. Now, as I've mentioned in the past, what 
the FIP will probably do is to assign you to someone, whether you 
know it or not. The FIP will have staff to handle communications with 
constituents, if they are accepting lots of proxies. So it might not 
work so badly, but this is the difference: if you choose your own 
proxy as someone closer to you in level, someone who only is 
collecting a relatively small number of proxies, not thousands or 
millions, you will have access, and through this proxy, access to 
higher levels as well. If you directly choose the FIP, you don't 
choose the access path, it is chosen for you. If it works, fine! My 
suggestion: if there is someone you can call, and they answer the 
phone or get back to you quickly, and you can talk, and you feel 
heard, and you can understand what they tell you, it's working. And, 
of course, you either like the results, or, when it is explained to 
you (you can call up and ask!), you agree that the vote was 
reasonable, then it is truly working.

I just think that all of this is more likely if the proxy is *not* 
the FIP. Unless you are an almost-FIP yourself.


>>Your vote can and will get there eventually, but it's far more 
>>effective to have someone you can talk to. What most people have is 
>>a model of a very isolating process, and they think of election 
>>methods in this context. They don't think about, "Can I call up and 
>>talk to my representative? Once a month if I want to?" "Who do I 
>>tallk to if I have a idea that I think worth considering?"
>
>Did you want me to answer that in context of liquid/proxy/asset 
>voting, or my current democratic system (Westminster system, Canada) or yours?

Both. That is, do you have access now, and would you have better 
access under one of the systems we are considering.


>>>I also think if you are going to choose someone who has a small number
>>>of votes that you are best to split it up, as you are farther down the
>>>decision tree and are thus more likely to have your vote perverted away
>>>from your desires. but then again after splitting it up my votes would
>>>again merge at a higher level...."All roads lead to Rome", after all.

>>Again, I understand that people think this way. But if you really 
>>think that your own opinions are sufficiently researched that them 
>>being followed up to a high level is important (to you!), then you 
>>really should register as an elector and vote for yourself. Then, 
>>you might well cast your vote for that important influential 
>>fellow. But you might consider, it might be better to vote for 
>>someone who has *access* to that fellow, whereas you, with one vote, won't.
>
>er.. perhaps you did not understand me.
>In the above paragraph I never mentioned that I thought my own 
>opinion would be "sufficiently researched", on the contrary I would 
>fully take advantage of the proxy nature of voting.

Of course, if you don't do the research, you have no sound judgement 
on the voting.

>I was stating that if I did choose to split my vote that both my 
>proxies might choose not to vote and give there vote to the same 
>person. thus It would have the same effect as if I did not split my 
>vote and instead voted for  that super proxy instead. Thus I would 
>come back to the original problem I had or a single point of failure 
>in my personal proxy chain.

TAANSTAAFL. If a particular vote is important to you, follow the 
issue and vote yourself.

If you are not going to serve as an elector, then voting for the FIP 
is okay; *if* this is the person you really think is going to serve 
you best. The communications problem still exists, though. Citizens 
who are not electors will still want to communicate with their 
representatives; but you could, actually, communicate with an elector 
who is not the one you gave your vote to. The electors won't 
necessarily know, though if they checked the records, and you voted 
in Precinct 231, and the elector didn't get any votes from that 
Precinct, they'd know you were lying.... not a good way to establish 
rapport! But you could check yourself, this is all public record.

And if you want to give your vote to the FIP, and then communicate 
with the FIP using someone who won't be so busy, you can look at the 
public vote assignments and find a local elector who might be approachable....

>>When the big important fellow votes a way that you don't like, 
>>wouldn't you want to be able to talk to him about it? *Maybe he had 
>>a reason* that would convince you if the opportunity were there.* 
>>Or are you rigid in your own ideas? You have a right to be.... but 
>>it is also dangerously foolish. Now, practically by definition, you 
>>can't call the big guy up. But you can call someone who can.
>
>which is why I would probably vote for a second rung guy. or a first 
>rung guy if I found one that voted in a way that I approved of.
>I would not vote for a 3rd or 4th level guy.
>Cause calling Sue, to ask bob, to tell bill, to leave a message for 
>God that he is not voting the way  I like is not going to be effective.

You miss the point. The votes that "God" is casting come from Sue and 
Bob and Bill. If you can convince Sue, then you are not just pulling 
based on your one vote (or the votes you hold), you are now pulling 
with all the votes that Sue holds; and Sue can pull this same trick 
with Bob, and so on.

If you can't convince Sue, what chance do you have to convince Bob 
and Bill or "God?" Sue has the time to listen to you, Bob maybe, 
Bill, no, and forget about "God." Unless, of course, "God" has some 
good staff. Maybe then you'll be heard.

It's a nerve network. A signal entering at a lower level is amplified 
(if it passes the filters). In a DP system, you choose your filter.

>besides with 10 people on the first level and 100 on the second it 
>is highly likely that I would find somebody in those 2 levels who 
>vote in accordance with my wishes 95% of the time.

Sure. But not one that you can talk with. That's the problem.

I'm not suggesting that it is wrong to give your proxy to the FIP. 
However, there are two problems with it. First, you cannot know the 
character of the FIP as well as you can know the character of someone 
you can communicate with. The FIP is a high-concentration node, and 
corruption will attempt to enter the system through such nodes, it is 
efficient, and corruption needs efficiency. The FIP might vote your 
way 99% of the time, but 1% chooses the corrupt alternative, *and you 
will not know*, for recognizing that a contract award, for example, 
is corrupt, is something that is beyond the ken of the voters. 
Further if you are not fully informed, and the FIP is voting "your 
way," there is a very good chance that the FIP is deliberately voting 
to match the opinions of constituents and is *not* voting for the 
general welfare, including that of the constituents. He's pandering 
to your knee-jerk opinions, something one would not want, for 
example, from a physician or any other trusted professional. What you 
want -- or should want, I'd suggest -- is someone who will vote his 
best judgement, and, yes, you'd want this to be similar to what you'd 
do yourself *if sufficiently informed*. And when the FIP votes 
contrary to your opinion, you'd want to be able to talk to him about it.

Again, a good FIP would not only have staff, he or she would have 
media, and would explain what is being done, and why.

But, I suggest, the safest thing to do is to seek out and vote for 
the most trustworthy person you can find, and measuring 
trustworthiness is quite difficult for FIPs. Unless you have direct 
access to them, in which case the situation is different. I'm 
suggesting that selecting for trust is much easier and less likely to 
fail if you can personally know the person you are choosing.

But you would be free to vote for the FIP. It's your call.


>I may not have direct access to Level 2 guys but I can switch my 
>vote when I am not happy.

You are less likely to know when that is actually a good idea.

However, as I mention above, you can have your cake and eat it too, 
as a base-level voter. If you are an elector, though, I'd consider it 
highly advisable to have communication access to whomever you pass 
your vote to.

>>Once again, what Asset is setting up is a deliberative system, but 
>>some persist in thinking of it as an "election method." It's 
>>understandable, because if the candidate set is restricted, it 
>>looks somewhat like an election method. But it is much more -- and 
>>much less. It depends on being a public process, otherwise there 
>>would be no way to negotiate the vote transfers, and it is this 
>>negotiation and agreement that makes it work to not waste votes.
>
>Bah, it is a method of making a decision or series of decisions, no 
>more no less.

"Election method" refers to an aggregation process. It's true that 
intelligence is "a method of making a decision," but intelligence 
does not reduce to election methods. Rather, it includes information 
gathering and analysis, which is essentially communication and processing.

I'll stand with what I wrote: Asset looks like an election method, 
but it is much more -- and much less.

For the "more," it sets up communication modalities in the other 
direction, outward from the center, and it also sets up a continuous 
means of advising and monitoring those with seats; underneath every 
seat will be those who gave the seat their votes.

For the "less," it does not fix an outcome, it does not determine an 
outcome from the ballots, with a few possible exceptions. It's not 
deterministic. The "winners," i.e., those who get seats, might not 
even be on the ballot. (But that's a "more" ....)

>>The considerations about communication apply to *all* levels. I.e., 
>>each proxy would want the ability to communicate effectively with 
>>their own direct proxy.
>
>you make assumptions, I don't need to talk to him as long as he 
>votes the way I want.

You are right. I'm making an assumption that the proxy will know 
what's good and useful.

You are thinking of government as voting. That's actually a small part of it.

There are many other reasons why you might want to talk to your proxy 
than a vote you don't like.

(1) You have an idea and you want it proposed as legislation.
(2) You see a problem and you want it considered, say in committee.
(3) You have a complaint about governmental action.
(4) You have a problem you need help with.
(5) There is a vote coming up that is important to you and you want 
to encourage him to vote a certain way.

As to the latter, sure, you can cast your vote differently, but your 
vote will almost certainly not affect the outcome. His or her vote 
might. This applies, really, all the way down a proxy tree. If your 
proxy only represents 20, still, if you can convince your proxy, you 
have just multiplied your vote by 20.

And if you cannot convince your proxy, you will get an explanation 
from a low-level proxy, not from a high-level one, generally (though 
there might be explanations available, say as a position paper.)

>  I can guess that he will based on previous voting records. and if 
> he consistently (>5%) doesn't vote my way I would probably get 
> pissed and change my proxy.

My guess: you would foolishly do so. But it would be your right.

There a way of looking at this that I stumbled upon: If I found 
someone who was perfect, who was always right, I would disagree with 
her much of the time!

How much? Well, I'd be pretty surprised if it was less than 10%. It 
might be much more than that.

>But I am sorry for getting away from the point.
>So a City would have 4 point somthing levels, Canada would have 
>about 5 something levels, The USA 6 something, and the Planet 6 
>point something.
>On average that is!
>
>I can't help but think your assumption of 20 people per proxy is an 
>under estimate based on your own preference, I feel many like my 
>self would prefer to be closer to the real power at the expense of 
>personal contact, thus putting a downward pressure on decision tree, 
>causing its average length to shrink in large democracies....but who 
>knows...we need one first before we can know for sure.

That's right. I originally wanted to *limit* the number of people a 
proxy would directly serve; part of this was coming from my original 
concept of holding a U.S. Presidential election in 10 days by holding 
meetings of ten people, one per day, with each meeting selecting one 
of their number as the best candidate for President among them.

The other reason for limiting it was the idea that high concentration 
of power is dangerous.

However, I concluded that *at least for FAs,* which are pretty safe 
since they do not actually concentrate power, only intelligence, 
there was no good reason to limit the direct proxy count, that it 
would naturally limit, in a mature system, due to communication constraints.

If it works for you to have a FIP for a proxy, that's fine with me. 
It merely means for me that you don't wantto be very involved, you 
will be a relatively passive participant, and that's fine. I hope you 
choose well.


>Communication directly,
>>skipping levels, is certainly possible, as is cross-communication 
>>(you talk to your friend who is in a completely different proxy 
>>tree, if you can convince your friend of something, he or she can 
>>then inject the idea into this other tree). But the default, 
>>guaranteed available (relatively) path is with your proxy.
>>With a state of, say, 20 million people and an Asset Assembly and, 
>>say, fifty seats, each seat represents 400,000 people. It takes 
>>between four and five levels, closer to four average.
>
>fair enough.
>
>>>I expect that if an asset or proxy system was implemented on large
>>>scale, between 10^6 and 10^9 people. the ultimate and final word on all
>>>decisions would be made by 5-10 large proxies. The question becomes how
>>>many close advisers could they have, (i.e. the people who transfer the
>>>most votes to them).
>>The system is a fractal, hence one of the names is fractal 
>>democracy. It is self-similar at each level, because the same 
>>communication constraints drive the proxy count, though, perhaps, 
>>the number of clients increases toward the top. Why? Well, we 
>>haven't talked about money, but as you get high in this system, you 
>>have opportunities to collect enough to hire staff, and an actual 
>>seat holder would presumably have staff at public expense (though, 
>>in fact, one could do away with this, it's a libertarian solution 
>>that might work). If you have staff, you have, effectively, a class 
>>of proxies underneath you, so you can handle communication with 
>>more clients, without it becoming ineffective, so the count could increase.
>>
>>>I'm really just trying to think of this in terms of a tree of power.
>>>How many would make the final decision? I know you like to rant about
>>>how an individual could if they want vote on every bill, but that
>>>individual will likely not matter at all.
>>Perhaps. But that also does not necessarily matter at all. 
>>*Usually* a single vote is moot in any case! It's quite rare to see 
>>ties in public elections. But this all bears deeper thought. It's 
>>truly outside the box, and we have reflexive thinking that no 
>>longer applies. It took me years to get beyond certain assumptions 
>>that were very natural, and I see that others also hold these assumptions.
>>In an FA/DP organization, nobody makes the final decision, there is 
>>no final decision. There is merely a negotiated set of 
>>recommendations, from the whole or from any subset, that go back 
>>down to the individual electors, who *retain* the pure voting 
>>power. It's a direct democracy, *not* a pure representative 
>>democracy, representation is *only* for purposes of making 
>>deliberation efficient, it is not necessary for decision.
>
>most people will not vote on every bill (I think). therefor there is 
>a default centre of power.

There is an effective concentration, but it is continually 
supervised. Remember that below the top proxies, those with seats, 
who might indeed vote on every bill (I'd allow proxy voting in the 
Assembly! -- it is allowed in some legislatures or at least at the 
committee level), there would be a cloud of proxies with vote counts 
almost as high as it would take to hold a seat. These may vote 
frequently, and, quite likely, they, collectively, would hold most of 
the votes.

And they can specialize and cooperate, entirely outside of the 
Assembly. They can act as an extended part of the Assembly, able to 
advise the Assembly *and* to exercise power within it through voting. 
They would not be paid, generally, though some of them might be 
supported through contributions. (Obviously, that's not a part of the 
proposal and whether or not electors would receive public 
compensation is a matter for decision at the time. It would be fair 
to receive compensation, it would be small per vote but would be 
significant for those working at a high level but below the Assembly level.)