[Election-Methods] Partisan Politics

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 05:03 PM 5/11/2008, Fred Gohlke wrote:
>Good Afternoon, Abd ul-Rahman Lomax
>
>re: "Mr. Gohlke, do you care to look at this?"
>
>OK.  Absent a specific definition of the group of voters to which 
>you've assigned a ratio of 'p', 'p' can be taken to represent any 
>group of people who have an identifiable political orientation, and 
>'x' is the balance of the electorate.  Therefore, as you say, "With 
>many layers, as is necessary for this system to represent a large 
>population the proportion of p rapidly approaches zero ...", which 
>shows that ideologues ... of any stripe ... will be eliminated, 
>leaving the non-ideological majority of the people to select the 
>best among themselves as their representatives.
>
>That is the purpose of the process.

Nope, you misunderstood. p is the proportion of a *minority*. Not of 
"ideologues."

Now, if we take p as the proportion of ideologues in the general 
population, the analysis given would show that if p > 0.5, the 
proportion of ideologues in the output will increase with level. If p 
< 0, then the proportion of ideologues will decrease.

But "ideologues" had nothing to do with the objection. Having some 
position or prejudice is not being an "ideologue," it is not 
necessary that the person be attached, as an ideologue is. It simply 
means that, other things being equal, that person will tend toward a 
certain kind of decision or position. This is totally normal. And 
thus we can expect that if affinity, i.e., willingness to vote for a 
representative, is related to prejudices and positions, (and would 
you, with the random assignment system you have proposed, expect 
otherwise?), we can expect that any majority view or opinion or 
position will be amplified in the set of continuing representatives, 
increasing with level.

 From certain points of view, Mr. Gohlke, it's a brilliant idea. But 
from a metaperspective, from the point of view of others who have 
been considering ideas like this for a long time (for me it is more 
than thirty years), it is seriously flawed, and implemenation 
impracticality is only the start of this.

Delegable proxy systems, based on voluntary free and unconstrained 
choice, address this. They can be implemented *today*, and it is 
starting to happen. They do not suffer from majority bias 
amplification, any bias remains at its natural level. Plus, I would 
argue, when people become familiar with others, they can make much 
better decisions about whom to trust and exactly how to trust, and so 
general trustworthiness can be expected to increase with level.

A long time ago, I wrote before, when your idea was first presented 
here, I came up with something similar in certain ways. Certain 
problems with it were apparent. You addressed *one* of those problems 
with your solution, but missed the others, apparently. I abandoned 
fixed group size and went to entirely voluntary group *formation*, 
which then allows groups to be *unanimous*, effectively, in choosing 
ongoing representation. Thus there is no loss of representation with 
increasing level. The structure becomes a fractal, quite complex, but 
self-similar at each level (according to the natural patterns of 
affinity), and to each individual, it is not complex, it is, rather, 
extraordinarily simple. People get headaches trying to understand 
what the whole system would look like, but to an individual, there is 
only the proxy, and the proxy's proxy, and the proxy's proxy's proxy, 
etc., up to the top level, which would be a virtual commitee that 
represents everyone, as far as voting is concerned, but which 
probably self-restricts, through voting in which everyone may 
participate who chooses to do so, to a certain defined set of 
participating members who have the right to address the whole. 
Complex input from people below that level of access right would be 
through similar virtual committees set up by the proxies for their clients.

And none of it is coercive. None of it is imposed from the top. There 
is only voluntary choice and cooperation, and yet ... TANSTAAFL. If 
people can't find sufficient support for there ideas, there is no 
collective strength to implement them. The organization is fail-safe, 
as long as it does not collect power.

And how *government* is structured is an entirely different question. 
A delegable proxy system can be used to create a parliamentary 
assembly that is proportionally representative, but that's a question 
that I'd leave to those in a position to implement it. I'm trying to 
create the institutions that would facilitate the voluntary 
cooperation of people in the exercise of their *individual* power. 
This is, in fact, a solution to the problem of government, for that 
is what government legitimately is, but Montesquieu quite wisely, a 
long time ago, noted that separation of judgement (the faculty of 
intelligence, really) and the executive (the exercise of power) 
should be rigorously separated. And a lot of people listened, and 
some of what is good about the American system was a result. But the 
implications are broader than we realized.

And that all this seems to sail right by you is tragic. For you.