[EM] Student government - what voting system to recommend?

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 10:28 AM 4/25/2007, Howard Swerdfeger wrote:


>Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
>>At 03:56 PM 4/24/2007, Juho wrote:
>>>On Apr 24, 2007, at 1:51 , Howard Swerdfeger wrote:
>>>>4) The ultimate form of democracy is one that
>>>>  * maximizes voter knowledge of issues
>>>>  * seeks to Involve the voters at every stage of decision making
>>>>process   (direction, Discussion/deliberation, Vote)
>>>Agreed. These are some very key principles that make a democratic
>>>system work well.
>>Actually, while this is a common opinion, it is utterly impossible 
>>on a large scale. It doesn't even work that way in fairly small 
>>direct democracies.
>
>I agree it doesn't work that way currently, at least not entirely. I 
>however, disagree with your assertion that it is impossible.

Ever participate in a direct democracy? *I have.*

It's impossible. Essentially, we don't have the time. It is not a 
matter of ability, which is what Swerdfeger seems to assume:

>I think it is possible for the vast majority of people to reason 
>through arguments and choose the best action (according to some 
>optimization function) when presented with all the evidence.

Yes. Now, how are we to be "presented with all the evidence." Who 
presents it to us? If you can control the presentation of evidence, 
you can drive the conclusions. No, for direct democracy to work, the 
voters must have the time and resources to directly research the 
evidence. And, as well, to sort through the blizzard of analysis. Or 
do they need to do all the analysis as well?

Legitimately, *it's a full-time job."

Look, as has been pointed out by one of the inventors of DP, most 
wealthy people do *not* sort through all the details of their 
business themselves. They hire people to do it, specialists, people 
they trust. DP provides that option to everyone.

>I also think with mass media (TV, radio, etc) and direct voter to 
>voter communication (email, web, message boards, etc) it is possible 
>to disseminate information to the vast majority of the population.

It's been possible for a long time. And do we have time to read it 
all? Hardly. Not even close. Many of us have little time at all. The 
internet has made things *worse*, by vastly increasing the amount of 
information available. Yes, *for those who have time*, it's better. 
But it takes a lot of time. One person, generally, can only become 
well-informed on a narrow range of issues, and *that* has become easier.

But governments make decisions on a broad range of issues. It is 
*already* too much for most elected representatives for large 
jurisdictions. They survive, as well as they do, which is sometimes 
not well, by chosing staff they trust and listening to them. Once 
again, the reality of what works is delegation. One who hasn't seen 
this is, quite simply, unaware of how society actually works.

It is certainly how business works! Which is where the bulk of 
decisions are made, in democracies. Indeed, centralized bureaucracies 
failed largely because of the information problem, democracies work 
by distributing decision-making broadly, and this is a topic worthy 
of attention on its own. Suffice it to say that DP is a method of 
harnessing this, of allowing expert opinion to filter to the top without bias.

>Neither do we need to jump from our current state to a fully 
>informed population. But rather make modest system changes that will 
>move the population in that direction.

Indeed. And what I'd suggest is that we start with DP! Now.

>>To me, the key element in democracy is consent. Ideally, informed 
>>consent, but that isn't always possible.
>>Think about it. I'm tired of repeating this stuff over and over, 
>>besides, it's late and I have jury duty tomorrow. Somebody else can 
>>explain it, if necessary.
>
>Jury Duty: an example of a sample of the population being trusted to 
>make decisions after being informed of all the facts, evidence, and 
>expert opinion involved.

It's actually a poor system, but, again, that's another story. It's 
certainly better than some others!

The jury example shows the (relative) trustworthiness of the average 
person. Swerdfeger is assuming that my objection is to the capacity 
of the general population or their intelligence or something like 
that. Far from it! The average person is quite capable of doing what 
Swerdfeger asserts, except for one thing: time.

(Inclination is another aspect which I'll neglect at the moment. What 
is essential is that, after priorities rae considered, the average 
person, not to mention "everyone," which is what Swerdfeger is 
pointing to, does not have enough time left to "become fully 
informed." And it is not just a matter of information. It takes time, 
as well, to analyze information, to realize the implications.)

No, the solution is not to involve everyone in making all decisions! 
It is, rather, to allow everyone to participate freely where they 
have the time, and to allow the rest to make one choice: whom to 
trust. By amplifying the decision-making power of those who *do* 
participate according to how widely they are trusted, and by doing 
all this openly, so that there is feedback and response (people must 
know how their proxies are acting, though they need not know it all 
the time, and they will probably focus only on topics of specific 
interest), what we do is to create, essentially, a mass intelligence, 
quite analogous to how the brain functions.

And it works even if not everyone participates. It works, we think, 
even on a fairly small scale. It's efficient, by design, and it's 
trustworthy, by design.

Where was it invented? *All over the place.* Most of the aspects have 
actually been in long use, but simply not applied in the way we see. 
The specific concept of delegable proxy, which is a very important 
new element, existed in theory already, from long ago, because 
proxies were always able, in general, to delegate aspects of their 
duties, unless prohibited by the proxy assignment. However, the 
formalization of it in a communications structure is a new invention, 
taking place over the last decade or so. (My own work on it predates 
this, but I didn't write it down and did not communicate it to many 
people, if any.)

We are using it now, but only in very small ways. I have named a 
proxy to a number of organizations. It works for me! Whether those 
organizations recognize the proxy or not is not really important. 
What is important is that, if they don't recognize the proxy, I can 
act directly as recommended. It merely takes a little more time, so, 
when possible, I want to see recognition of proxies take place. Many 
organizations prohibit proxy voting.

And why they do so is important to understand. There are two basic reasons:

(1) The existing central structure does not want to release power to 
the general membership. Even if the form of the organization is 
theoretically democratic, by the location of the annual meeting, the 
existing powers insure that they are overrepresented at that meeting.

(2) Where proxy voting is allowed, but is not generally used, someone 
can surreptitiously gather proxies and show up at the annual meeting 
with a bucket full of votes. This happened to one state Libertarian 
Party, which promptly outlawed proxy voting. (It was close, but 
obviously the interloper didn't have enough proxies to manage a total 
takeover!) That was a quick response, but probably not the optimal 
one. A much better response would have been to set up a system where 
members *routinely* named a proxy. And there is at least one 
Libertarian working on this, and some others who are aware of it and 
who have made friendly noises. It's actually a libertarian solution, 
so one would think that Libertarians would be critically interested 
in it! But old ideas die hard.