[EM] Trees by Proxy

[Dave Ketchum]

Abd has good ideas under the labels Assets and Delegable Proxy, but they
are buried in so many books of words that extracting useful value is
difficult.

Here Juho offers a useful framework to build on, so I will try some building.

Guidelines:
       Tailor numbers as further thought dictates - I am just trying for 
ideas.
       Juho's village, town, etc. are nominal goals for sizes - given 350
people they should be around 3 or 4 "villages".
       Borrow proxies fresh from corporate stockholder usage.  Their
effectiveness starts at midnight 10 days after filing; ends 10 days after
a replacement is filed or signer dies.
       Representatives, such as Juho's 5 from a village in a town
government,  have power according to how many effective voter proxies they
hold, directly or indirectly:
            Must hold 1% of a legislature's proxies to be able to vote there.
            Must hold 2% of a legislature's proxies to have full
capabilities of being a legislator - offering bills, debating, etc.
            Limit on voting power is 40% of proxies voted in any vote - no
czars allowed.
            Sideways proxy - possible for representatives to be too weak
above.  Such can pass what they hold to others for legislature
participation.  This does not release anyone from the above limit, nor
does it affect what anyone passes up to others via proxies.

Thoughts:
       This is a different way to assign legislative power - no elections.
   Still, this could be implemented first at village, or village+town
levels, without involving higher levels of government until/unless it was
accepted.
       Citizens can be 2 years old.  Need to fit them in.
       Given 70 czar votes and 30 non-czar votes, a 40% limit would mean
counting 20 czar votes for 50 total votes counted.
       Given a 2000 voter town 2% would be 40.  Assuming 40 voters thinking
alike, but scattered around the town, gave 40 proxies to 3 reps, the reps
would not each have power to participate in town government, but could use
sideways proxies to give one of them power of a full rep.  When you get to
region you both keep size of legislature manageable and give small groups
some chance to be heard.
       Voting power is based on effective proxies held.  Takes computers
but, with them, such vote counting is practical.  Could make sense for
each rep to have one vote for such as whether it is time for lunch.
       That a proxy becoming effective is heard instantly all the way to
the top - region or country - means that it does not take long for a rep's
power to reflect quality.
       Given that it takes time for a proxy change to become effective
means both:
            Voters and reps had best consider carefully who they give
proxies to.
            There is time to do the accounting so that a change takes
effect when promised.

On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:16:45 +0200 Juho wrote:
Subject: Re: [EM] Trees and single-winner methods
 > On Mar 17, 2007, at 8:02 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
 >
 >> Asset Voting simply uses this; it assumes that if we would vote for
 >> someone for the office, we would trust that person to choose
 >> reasonably well a replacement for himself or herself if he or she  is
 >> unable to serve for whatever reason. If actually elected, this  is
 >> really what is going to happen with respect to much that is  covered
 >> under the duties of high office.
 >>
 >> And given that voting under Asset becomes totally free of the need
 >> for strategic considerations: just vote for the candidate you most
 >> trust! -- I should be able to focus entirely on candidate  qualifications.
 >
 >
 > One could also say that Asset voting is not free of the need for
 > strategic considerations but that the strategic considerations get so
 > complex that the the votes could as well forget them. I mean that as  a
 > voter I might be thinking that I know candidate A quite well and he
 > would probably behave in a certain way when participating the further
 > negotiations and elections, and therefore it would be strategically
 > optimal to vote for him. But as said, this may be too complex to manage.
 >
 >> Given, again, that there is no need that the "candidate" actually  be
 >> elected or electable, I can choose a candidate whom I personally
 >> know. I expect the numbers of candidates to blossom if Asset is
 >> adopted. And the result will be much closer to what a hiring search
 >> would produce.
 >
 >
 > Many points in your mail dealt with knowing the candidates  personally.
 > If we want this property, the basic model in my mind is  to arrange more
 > levels in the representational system.
 >
 > Let's start from a village of 100 inhabitants. Everyone knows most of
 > the other inhabitants quite well. The village elects 5 of the
 > inhabitants to represent the village in communication towards he
 > external world.
 >
 > Then 20 villages send all their 5 representatives to a town meeting.
 > All 100 meeting participants know each others reasonably well since
 > this group has made decisions together many times before. The meeting
 > elects 5 of the participants to represent the town in communication
 > towards the external world.
 >
 > Then 20 towns form a region. Now we already cover a population of
 > 40'000. The next level covers population of 800'000. Then 16'000'000,
 > 320'000'000 and 6'400'000'000. And finally we have 5 persons that  could
 > represent the earth in communication with other civilizations,  if needed.
 >
 > One key positive thing in this scenario is that the representatives  are
 > always in direct contact with the people who elected them and  therefore
 > need to be able to explain to them at personal level the  rationale
 > behind whatever decisions or negotiations they work with.  One key
 > negative thing in this scenario is that the direct  responsibility may
 > fade away when the distance from the village  people to the top level
 > decision makers increases. It is e.g.  possible that the people at the
 > top consider themselves to be more  clever and more important than the
 > people that elected them, they may  consider their closest colleagues
 > and direct electors more important  than those at the lower levels.
 >
 > Clearly there is a tradeoff between knowing your nearest
 > representatives at personal level, and electing your top level
 > representatives directly but knowing them only via TV. To me the
 > additional layer of representatives and negotiations that you  discussed
 > represents in some sense adding one step in this hierarchy.
 >
 > Direct democracy has some benefits and the model above has some. Same
 > with weaknesses.
 >
 > Juho
-- 
   davek at clarityconnect.com    people.clarityconnect.com/webpages3/davek
   Dave Ketchum   108 Halstead Ave, Owego, NY  13827-1708   607-687-5026
             Do to no one what you would not want done to you.
                   If you want peace, work for justice.