[EM] Rob Brown's "repair" of range voting

[rob brown]

On 12/7/05, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax <abd at lomaxdesign.com> wrote:
>
> If everyone votes Range in a balanced way, sincerely after thoughtful
> consideration, not exaggerating, you end up with an optimal election
> method, actually.
>

In other words, if everyone just cooperates toward a collective common goal,
rather than each individual independently pursuing his or her self interest.

There is a HUGE amount of literature on why systems designed with this sort
of approach will simply break down, while systems designed with the latter
tend to reach stable equilibriums.  Try searching such things as "tragedy of
the commons", "prisoners dilemma", "adam smith invisible hand".  Wouldn't
hurt to search "Nash equilibrium" and "vickrey auction" as well.

What disturbs me most is that Range Voting, while it allows you to vote in
ways that be easily determined to be counter to your interests....it doesn't
make this clear to people.  It sells itself on the notion that you are fully
expressing your preferences, without making it fully clear that anything
other than voting at the extremes is always against your interests.  I find
that deceptive.

Just imagine if the stock market was designed this way, such as if they
assumed that a significant number of people would choose to pay "what they
thought a stock was worth", rather than always wanting to pay "the least
amount that they can get it for".  The whole system would fall apart.
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