[EM] democratic aggregation of utility

[Forest Simmons]

As Joe Weinstein pointed out long ago, it seems that very little thought
has gone into the subject of social utility as aggregation of individual
utility.  Everyone seems to assume that the best way to aggregate is by
adding or averaging. 

All else being equal, which is better, a candidate that can guarantee 55%
of the population fabulous riches at the expense of the other 45% of the
population living in abject poverty, or the candidate who can guarantee
that the entire population will have at least a living wage (all else
being equal)? 

I think the second candidate would get my vote as the one with the best
aggregate social utility plan. Note well that this second candidate would
be the non-majority candidate in a country with a level of altruism
slightly below our own ;-) 

So how might one measure this kind of aggregation?

Simple average won't do the job, because the riches of one billionaire
compensate for the zero income of an hundred thousand peasants in the mean
living wage calculation, without in any way guaranteeing that the actual
transfer of funds will take place. 

The median is more democratic than the mean, but one above median
billionaire still cancels one abject poverty peasant in the calculation
without any actual transfer of funds.

Among well known voting methods the Approval count is the most democratic.
In the approval count nobody's excess riches or utility is assumed to
compensate for anybody else's deficiency.

Until we find an even more democratic (yet simple) method of aggregating
individual utility into social utility, I suggest that we stick with
various ways of implementing Approval.

In particular, we can implement Approval in various ways that overcome the
"lack of expressivity" objection of its opponents, and without having to
apologize if Approval doesn't happen to pick the candidate with the
greatest mean or median rank or rate, or any other candidate that would
have won under some other inferior standard of democracy.

Use some kind of ranking or rating ballot (like my five slot grade
ballot), and allow the voter to mark the Approval cutoff (directly or by
virtual Minimum Acceptable Candidate) or allow (by check box) Cranor's
optimization to choose the Approval cutoff for that ballot.

Peace to All,

Forest