[EM] language/framing quibble

[Kristofer Munsterhjelm]

Fred Gohlke wrote:
> Good Morning, Kristofer
> 
> re: "Even without rigid monitoring, there should be a
>      counteracting measure. After all, the councilmembers work
>      on behalf of the people, so if they start consistently
>      diverging from what the people want, there should be a way
>      of directing them back. This way must not be too strict, or
>      we get short term interest on one hand and populism on the
>      other. It should still be there; I think that's partly the
>      point of the bidirectionality we're talking about, although
>      it's not limited to "counteraction", but also involves
>      information (to guide)."
> 
> Absolutely!!!
> 
> The other day, you mentioned the idea that those not selected at the 
> highest level should have a role in advising the person selected (You 
> may not have said it exactly that way, but that's the way I interpreted 
> it.)  I'd like to look at that a bit more carefully.
> 
> At present, in the United States, our elected officials have 'staffs', 
> including legislative assistants.  I understand many of our (so-called) 
> representatives do not even read the legislation they vote on ... they 
> let their 'legislative aides' do it.
> 
> Now, that's a travesty, if I've ever heard one.
> 
> The people who reach the highest levels have already been carefully 
> examined.  They advanced because they were considered worthy by a large 
> number of people.  We should avail ourselves of that pool of talent. 
> I've already mentioned using them as a source from which appointive 
> offices are filled.  In addition, following your thought, they can 
> function as advisors to the elected official.  The only question is the 
> level of formality we attach to the role.

I suggested that there would be little formality, so that the method 
treats people close to the top and far away from it consistently. 
Otherwise, there would have to be some cutoff point, and it's not 
obvious where that point would be. In a parliament and similar, the 
cutoff point is simply the parliament: there's the council/parliament 
and the voters (notwithstanding the external structure such as 
ministers, bureaucracy, which is supposed to be subordinate to the 
parliament in any case).

 From this I got the message passing idea. If some group is going to 
advise the members of the council, then they must have near-immediate 
feedback; that is, they have to be able to communicate with the council 
in a way that isn't drowned by other noise. From that, in turn, rises 
the weighting idea; those immediately below the selected would have a 
high weight, so when they speak or advise, their messages cut through 
the background (as it were). Still, people lower down in the pyramid can 
send messages, so there's a continuum.

I can see the limitations, however. Message passing is not presence. 
Perhaps one could have a list for each member of the body, where the 
list is ordered by the degree to which a given person on it supported 
the member, or helped him become selected in the first place. Then pick 
the upper n (for some value of n to be decided later), and that's that 
member's advisory group. The method would have to be a bit more complex 
than that, in particular if a given person should be limited to advising 
one member at most (to prevent conflict of interest type scenarios).

> Whoops!  That's exactly what you're saying, isn't it:
> 
>     "My idea was that even the unselected helped the selected
>      become selected. In one sense, they used their power (what
>      one may call that power) to reach an agreement. Therefore,
>      the selected are to some extent accountable to them; which
>      makes sense if you go all the way down, where the people
>      (except the candidates) are all ultimately unselected. As
>      you say, formal power might not be the way to do so, though."
> 
> I was wrong.  In addition to the points you've made, such an arrangement 
> would provide a training ground for candidates by exposing them to the 
> legislative process.  It would also provide an anti-corruption buffer. 
> I'm not sure how we should implement the concept, but I'm sure we should 
> do so.
> 
> We seem to be in agreement that the bidirectional capability of the 
> process affords us the means of allowing the electorate to influence 
> their representative's acts, after election.  I think we're agreed that 
> those who reach the highest levels but are not elected should have a 
> role in, at least, advising our elected officials.  We have not yet 
> precisely described the method of implementation, but that's because 
> we're still exploring the possibilities.

In short, if we already have a pyramid, why not make use of it; and if 
the point of the pyramid structure is to, when we need to discard 
something to make management simpler, discard only that which matters 
least, and we apply that to candidate selection, then why not apply the 
same ideas to feedback as well?

> The idea of matrices seems (to me) to add complexity.  It's true the 
> data can be processed by machine, and, once it's set up, it will seem 
> simple enough.  But, I think that hides the complexity and transfers the 
> decision making to the programmer that devises the algorithm.  It does 
> not encourage us to think about and justify each decision we make.  Is 
> there not a more direct way?

I don't think it would transfer decision-making to the programmer. 
Consider a (relatively) complex algorithm like the Schulze single-winner 
rule. If it's a good single-winner rule, then its output should reflect 
the input (preferences), only aggregated. It doesn't really matter, for 
the performance of the method, whether it was devised by Schulze or 
Tideman (or Kemeny or whoever).

The matrix vote is meant to be used when people have quite different 
skills, so that "good" can be differentiated into "good at one thing" 
and "good at the other". A simpler or more direct way may be to have an 
iterative procedure where one first asks, "for which position is the 
best suited to this position objectively best", then after the position 
ahs been determined, ask "which person is that". Repeat until the 
subgroup/executive/etc. has been filled. If there's a hierarchy, it 
would probably make sense to ask in direction from top down, as well 
(e.g PM before other ministers).

> I'm not sure the idea of 'weighting' the input of constituents based on 
> the level they attain is a good one.  Our interest in politics waxes and 
> wanes throughout our lives.  It's entirely possible a person will opt 
> out at the lower levels many times before experiencing a desire to 
> participate.  Indeed, that's an important aspect of Practical Democracy; 
> it allows us to participate, to the full extent of our ability, whenever 
> our interest is aroused.

Those that don't have any interest in politics could simply choose not 
to make use of this mechanism. Like direct democracy, it would be "rule 
of those who care to show up", but there's no way around that in any case.

I see your point, though, in that it may be the case that political 
interest for A has waned and B waxed, where A's weight is greater than 
B's since A happened to get higher up in the pyramid last election. If 
you want a cutoff, you could set all weights to unity a certain level 
below the top, but it's not clear where the cutoff should be, and it 
would provide an unusual discontinuity. Say the cutoff is at level p. 
Then a triad at level p-1 has much less power combined than the person 
they selected for level p.

One option is to use the proxy democracy ideas that have been discussed 
earlier on the list. That is, each person may "associate with" another. 
His weight is calculated according to the chain of associations, which 
people could update as their interest in politics change. This might 
cause problems if people become too lazy and just say "oh, Z is a good 
fellow, I'll associate with him", so that Z's weight increases, but the 
person never cares to check what Z's actually doing.