[EM] Utopian Parliament

Greg Nisbet gregory.nisbet at gmail.com
Tue Oct 21 14:27:14 PDT 2008


What is the best design for a legislature?

Parliaments come in several flavors:
1. districted single winner contests
2. party-based systems
3. mutlwinner methods
4. delegation

My friend and I were debating Largest Rem + Referendum (2) vs Delegation (4).

My argument was essentially this:

LRRef creates two entities: parliament and the public

I argued that this division of labor benefits society. Parliament
would represent society arbitrarily well. Assembling all of parliament
is trivial. Largest Rem avoids the disadvantage of the long tail of
Delegation parliament and putting legislation on the ballot allows
LRRef to access the complete representation that Delegation advocates
claim. Perhaps there is something to be said for eliminating the
distinction between the rulers and the ruled, but I'd say that the
danger of the commodification of voting is more dangerous.

So yeah, if there is some design for a legislature you consider
superior to all others, do not hesitate to list it.



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