democratic aggregation of utility

[Forest Simmons]

Good point about the invariance of the median under monotone
transformations.  Until we are sure of the best monotone transforms for
aggregation of utility, we could do worse than using medians and other
quantiles, as in non-parametric statistical methods.

Forest

On Thu, 3 May 2001, Anthony Simmons wrote:

> >> From: Bart Ingles <bartman at netgate.net>
> >> Subject: Re: [EM] democratic aggregation of utility
> 
> >> Forest Simmons wrote:
> 
> >> > 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.
> 
> >> This seems similar to the problem of converting dollars to
> >> utilities in a risk situation -- i.e. which is worth more,
> >> a 50% chance at one million dollars, or a 100% chance at
> >> five hundred thousand?  And how much more -- would you
> >> accept a sure $400K over the 50%/$1M lottery? What if you
> >> needed surgery costing $900K -- the sure $400K would be
> >> worthless in that case.
> 
> Nice thing about median, it isn't affected by running the
> scale through a monotonic transform.  For instance, suppose
> your income is the exact median.  Then if we look at the logs
> of the incomes, yours will be the median of that too.
> 
> >> The answer is that the voters themselves should decide,
> >> not some mechanism.
> 
> That's been addressed to some extent, with such schemes as
> voter's choice, but since the decision is how to interpret
> the votes, how to make it a decision of the voters rather
> than something decided in advance?
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> > 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.
> 
> >> Various ways?  I suppose you can come up with other
> >> methods, and include "approval" in whatever you decide to
> >> name them, but that doesn't make them "approval voting".
> >> And then you can spend the next 20 years performing
> >> various logical and mathematical analyses, trying to rule
> >> out any fatal flaws.  And then try to recruit some
> >> credible organizations to demonstrate the method for a
> >> dozen years or so, before attempting to sell it as a
> >> public proposal.  With any luck, this will come about the
> >> time the public is ready to abandon IRV.
> 
> There you go.  The way to deal with Prohibition seems to have
> been to just let it kill itself.  I've been thinking more and
> more that the public may just have to live with IRV for a
> while.
> 
> [...]
> 
> >> Which gives me another idea -- why not do the same with
> >> campaign contributions?  You could rate your candidates
> >> from 0 to 10, and then donate in proportion to your
> >> rating.  So if you have a 10, 6, 4, and 0, and you have
> >> $1000 to contribute, you could donate $500, $300, and $200
> >> to the first three candidates.  Might not be the best use
> >> of a limited resource, but it would be expressive.
> 
> And it is indeed done.  Corporate contributions are often
> allocated pretty much that way.
> 
>