[Election-Methods] Challenge: Elect the compromise when there're only 2 factions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 09:05 AM 8/23/2007, Jobst Heitzig wrote:
> > (And, contrary to the assumptions, most people will *change* their
> > preference if they understand that others have strong preferences
> > compared to their own weak ones. We are social animals. So, again, if
> > the utilities given were accurate, and the electorate now knows this,
> > there is even more force toward C winning. A voters will change their
> > vote, and B voters will not, plus many A voters will abstain whereas
> > B voters will be highly motivated to turn out and vote. If I lived in
> > this society, I certainly would not be betting on A. If I were, I
> > would also be buying a ticket out with my winnings. This society
> > would be headed for major disaster, on the Ruanda scale. -- and if I
> > lost the bet, I'd breathe a huge sigh of relief.)
>
>That would be so wonderful if you were right here. My experience is 
>different, however.

Let me suggest the possibility that Jobst's experience can be viewed 
in two ways:

(1) It is narrow.

(2) It is broader than that, but he is overlooking the implications 
of some of his experience.

It is *routine* for people to give up a small benefit (or endure a 
small inconvenience, same thing) in order to generate a larger 
benefit for someone else. If you don't think this is routine, you 
have been leading a very sad life! The world must seem a cruel and 
mean place to you!

Sure, there are plenty of occasions where some people refuse to do 
this. In some places it can get pretty bad. An example is that you 
are waiting to make a turn onto a road with lots of traffic. The cars 
just zoom on by, never leaving you enough space to turn. Eventually, 
though, someone notices you and, in addition, decides to slow down 
and let you in.

There are places where you could practically bet that nobody would 
let you in for a long time, and other places where it would be the 
most common occurrence, and it would happen immediately, quite likely 
the first car that comes along. Which place would you choose to live 
in? More accurately, perhaps, how much would they have to pay you to 
induce you to live there? And if you *do* live there, do you realize 
how much you are losing?

Where is it particularly bad? Places where the social fabric has 
broken down, people are not connected with each other, they are all 
isolated. They will never see you again, nor you them, or at least it 
seems that way. The scale is such that everyone is a stranger, 
always, unless you retreat to very specific small-scale environments. 
Sometimes all your neighbors are strangers.

We lived in a house in California at the corner where a short street, 
a cul-de-sac, began. Everyone living there drove by our house, coming 
and going, every time. We lived there for three years. I think that 
in the three years, I was in a neighbors house *once*. They were 
having a yard sale. And only one of the neighbors, the woman across 
the street, ever talked to us. But she never invited us to come 
inside her house. Did we invite her? I'm not sure, I think she did 
come in once or twice.

People would drive by, and we would look up and smile and wave. They 
would look away and drive on. It happened again and again.

We moved to Cummington, a small Town Meeting town in western 
Massachusetts, population on the order of 1000. *Everybody* waved as 
we drove by. People smiled at strangers and friends. We moved onto a 
short section of street with about ten houses on it. Within a few 
months, we had been in all of them, eaten meals in all of them. We 
were invited to participate in the Town government.

In the California town, a really nice town in many ways, famously so, 
we would go to the grocery store. After three years, we would 
occasionally see someone we knew there. In Cummington, within weeks, 
we would go into the local grocery-store/deli and almost always we 
knew someone there, and people we would know came in and out while we 
sat there eating lunch.

I was born in California. But you'd have to pay me a lot to get me to 
move back there. There may be some places where people still have a 
stronger sense of connection. But it's increasingly rare, I think.