[EM] Delegable proxy/cascade and killer apps

[Raph Frank]

On 9/16/08, Michael Allan <mike at zelea.com> wrote:
> Like you said about Napster, "even with a small number of people, it
>  was worth using".  But I'm mistaken to claim that Napster was
>  therefore "free of scale dependencies".  It's not either/or.  A
>  start-up threshold can be orthogonal to a network effect.

Exactly.  A network effect allows the system to expand faster.

A system could have a strong network effect combined with a large
critical mass.  However, they are normally related.  A stong network
effect would mean that the start-up requirement shouldn't be that
massive.

> The lowest
>  network value (at size 1) might nevertheless be a high value.  So the
>  seedling network can be viable, despite a strong network effect.

I think there would need to be at least 2 people for your system to
have value :).

>  Or maybe the lowest value is truly low, but there is little "friction"
>  in the system.  So it can nevertheless function, attract more
>  participants, and grow.  So again, the network would be viable at size 1.

Something like a blog could have value just to the owner.

>  Sure, when it comes to recruiting seed members, a smaller number is
>  easier to recruit.  But the same argument applies to the city.  We can
>  start a network at size T, where T is the absolute start-up threshold
>  (hopefully not much larger than 2 or 3 people).  It does not matter
>  how big the overall population is.  It could be 50, or 50 thousand.  I
>  am hoping that T is the same regardless.

I think T might be larger for larger organisations.  Assuming the plan
is to influence election results by having voters vote a certain way,
then you need a bigger number of people to have the same influence if
the electorate is bigger.

OTOH, if the objective is to create a proposal, then T would be
reasonably constant.  A cross section of the electorate is enough as
it means all views are represented.

> That's my current approach.  I'm starting with activists, lobbyists
>  and fringe party members.

Ok, but they aren't very representative people :).

> Creating the illusion of participation?  Like decoys on a pond?  If we
>  need to prime the network, if T is large...  I'm still hoping the
>  ducks will land on an empty pond. (?)

It's not an illusion, it is to rebalance the voting strengths, so that
groups are represented in proportion to their actual fraction of the
electorate.  The result would probably say % turnout (say <1%) and
rescaled result.

If you wanted to be really 'evil', then you could rescale the strata
in proportion to the turnout of that strata in the last election.

Young people would be derated due to their low turnout.  This would
act as an encouragement for people to actually vote.

> What's a militia without artillery?  ;)

Yeah, maybe allow militia to have artillary, but it must be under a
proper command structure.  For example, the milita unit must have at
least 100 people in it.

>  (Still, it's a creative compromise.  I saw your proposal to assign 50%
>  of all corporate stock as "liability shares".  I'll come back and read
>  more, when I can. :)

Yeah, it attempts to address the problem of companies taking risks
when they have little to lose.  Another addition might be to require a
double majority to issue bonds and the like.

> That's the thing, to somehow put a lid on divergence, and encourage
>  convergence.  It led me to cascade voting.
>
>  Fortunately it does no such thing.  There's no force to it.  It's
>  purely neutral.  It only *reveals* the current state of dissensus and
>  consensus (without encouraging either) so people can coordinate their
>  actions - shifting text content, and shifting votes - with a
>  collective sense of purpose.  If people want consensus, they will
>  probably get it.  Otherwise not.

Yeah, no matter how you cut it, someone has to do the work of sifting
through the 'noise' and finding the signal.

>
>  I don't know if delegable proxy permits that.  I wonder if its proxies
>  instead *alienate* votes from the original casters?  That's what I
>  find in Abd's references to "asset voting" [1], and to Lewis Carrol's
>  original 1884 pamphlet [2].  The same with Rodriguez and Steinbock's
>  "dynamically distributed democracy" [3-5].  In all of these, the
>  original casters are excluded from any consensus that emerges among
>  the delegates, because they have lost the ability to dissent from it.
>  They cannot shift their votes.

Delegable proxy is like your system.  Everyone can change their vote
and proxy assignments at any time.

Asset voting is a compromise, it protects the secret ballot but means
that voters can't change their vote at will.  However, if the Asset
voting delegates represent say 100 people on average, this might not
be a major loss.

>  It introduces another "warehouse" into the supply chain.  All else
>  being equal, I vote for the simpler design.  (But I guess drafters
>  will experiment with different arrangements to see what works.  Text
>  media are largely decoupled from the core voting medium, so anything
>  goes.)

Well, if it to cut down on noise.  Effectively, the proxy is saying "I
will only read changes made by this group of people" and also "This is
my proposal".

In effect, it is like an inbox wiki and an outbox wiki.  A proxy who
isn't creating his own proposal could just point at his proxy's outbox
wiki.

This is a reasonable balance as the proxy may not have unlimited time.
 For low level proxies, they aren't likely to be professional proxies.

> There may be no "elsewheres" left to go.

Why not?  There should be a huge number of low level proxies.  If you
are a near top level proxy, then the higher level proxies should at
least listen to you, especially as you can carry your supporters to
them.  If they don't, then maybe you need a better negotiating
strategy.

> The candidate drafter must be selective to
>  some extent.  There'll be loss of information.

.. or a removal of noise.  Adb has described the proxies as 'filters'.
 They reduce noise and should hopefully not remove good ideas.

>  To prevent it being lost completely, I believe that voters must be
>  allowed to express their own texts separately.  They must be permitted
>  to have a "presence" that cannot be distorted or suppressed.  So
>  individual texts for individual people - if they wish.  The general
>  structure is therefore a population of texts, or wikis.

Right, anyone should be allowed to put up a text.  If they can
convince people to support it, then their standing increases.

>  Ultimately the candidate drafter must decide and live with the
>  political consequences.  It will be tedious work.  Endless haggling.
>  Then an immediate loss of votes, as the dissenters depart.

.. and hopefully come back when they see no other proxy can do better.

However, I was being more general.  Most people think the concept of
voting on multiple bills (or just really long ones) in Congress at
once is wrong.  However, it actually results in a much better outcome
as it allows tradeoffs.  Ofc, this is somewhat countered by the fact
that most Legislators don't actually read what they are voting for.

A proxy might negotiate a Y on his bill in exchange for voting Y on 2
other bills he doesn't really care about.

>  Big moves will be more exciting.  Like where someone (maybe a
>  disgruntled voter) proposes a synthesis of two or more texts, and
>  attempts to recruit from the separate voter pools (pole-vaulting over
>  her candidate's head).

Right.

>   alpha > beta > final

Ahh ok :).

> Sock puppets are dealt with in the voter register, separately from the
>  elections (one register, many elections).  We can discount the
>  possibility of electoral support from sock puppets.

I guess I am looking at a more wider application.

> A candidate serves her voters.  If she keeps them happy, I guess she
>  keeps their support.

True, but there is also keeping other proxies happy.

>  So A and B agree to back a third candidate (C).  Then A and B
>  consummate the deal by shifting their votes to C.  If A's voters are
>  happy with that, then everyone gets what they bargained for.
>  Otherwise, A immediately loses votes.  As a consequence, she is no
>  longer in a position to make deals at that high level.

True, but B would probably be pretty annoyed after spending time
negotiating.  A's replacement might have difficulty getting B's
cooperation for a while.  Once he showed that he actually understands
the people he represents, then he is worth talking to.

Since the system is negotiating about how to distribute the votes in
the system itself, then it is more resistant to this problem than a
system which is negotiating for actions to be taken outside the
system, i.e. real world.

Ofc, there is still the issue of actual votes.  B's supporters might
vote for candidate C in the state election, but A's supporters don't
turn up.  This could cause E to win, who is even worse.

If B had negotiated with E's supporters, he might have been able to
get D elected, who would be a compromise.