[EM] Simulations with social welfare functions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 07:13 AM 5/26/2006, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
>Perhaps, but I must say that I never thought about multi-winner methods
>thoroughly. My impression is that for electing a multi-seat
>representative body, something like Delegable Proxy would be my choice.

Asset Voting, properly implemented, is quite equivalent in some ways 
to Delegable Proxy, except that it produces a peer assembly, through 
secret-ballot elections.

DP, in a sense, is a standing Asset Voting election. To create a peer 
assembly would be simple with a DP network in place, if it were 
considered appropriate.

A peer assembly is one in which all members have equal voting power. 
Supposedly, legislatures and parliaments are peer assemblies, as 
designed, through the device of having districts of roughly equal 
population. But this, unfortunately, leaves minorities [and sometimes 
even majorities] unrepresented or represented out of proportion to 
population. Further, the actual procedures may give effective 
enhanced voting power to some members, for some questions, when 
control of the agenda is vested in limited hands. Asset Voting would 
create a nearly perfect PR assembly, with members having equal voting 
power, it can reasonably be expected. DP could do that, while, at the 
same time, having an independent structure that could bypass the 
restrictions of assembly rules, where a clique or oligarchy attempts 
to control the assembly through them.

I.e., DP is far more than a voting method.... it creates a 
bidirectional communications structure that is formed fully with 
freedom of choice, from the bottom. At least this is the theory. We 
won't know the truth of the matter, really, until it is tried. There 
are active projects, but none of them have reached a size where DP 
becomes truly significant.

It is my view that DP would help even small organizations, but few 
see the need at that level. Were DP complicated or expensive, I'd 
agree. But it isn't. It's really just a glorified, bidirectional 
phone tree. It doesn't have to add work or traffic, until it is needed.

But if it is not there from the beginning, and as an organization 
grows, it can be *extremely* difficult to introduce it later, due to 
the persistence of inequities effect that I have described so many 
times that it has been called the "Lomax effect." I'd rather there be 
a briefer, but impersonal, name.... This is an effect that I've seen 
in nearly all organizations, even small ones; it is weak at the 
beginning, but it increases with the age of the organization and the 
development of an effective oligarchy, which can appear to be quite 
benign and natural. Indeed, it *is* natural, that is why it is so 
ubiquitous. But it is not benign, it, in my view, ultimately and 
slowly strangles what would otherwise be the natural evolution of the 
association; and people scratch their heads and wonder why things 
aren't like they were in the good ol' days, when every member was 
enthusiastic and people worked together spontaneously and with 
general consensus. I've seen it in volunteer organizations of all 
kinds, in private schools founded by groups of parents who wanted 
that kind of education for their children, in political action groups 
and parties, practically everwhere. Not to mention, of course, 
oppressive oligarchical political regimes, which is the extreme case.