[EM] Re: IRV letter

[wclark at xoom.org]

Eric Gorr wrote:

> What do you get when you have an drop of water and a gallon of sewage?
> Sewage.
> What do you get when you have a drop of sewage and a gallon of water?
> Sewage.

Oh, okay.  I think I understand your position better now.

It still seems to me that you show a certain animosity toward IRV that you
don't show toward other flawed systems (including Plurality.)  I'd taken
that to imply different levels of sewage, and wondered why you'd consider
IRV worse sewage than Plurality.

By way of comparison, I'd consider Plurality a drop of water in a gallon
of sewage, IRV maybe a couple drops of water in a gallon of sewage -- and
even Condorcet would amount to some mixture of sewage and water.  They're
all flawed systems, if you want to get down to it.

I have some hopes for non-rank methods, hybrid methods, and other
variations -- but I still wouldn't be surprised if I just ended up with
new types of sewage.

In fact, I'm not entirely sure what pure water would even look like. 
Since some fairness criteria are mutually incompatible, it may even be
that one person's water is another's sewage.

-Bill Clark

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