[EM] Clean Government Alliance

[Richard Fobes]

(For context, see message that follows.)

When looking for "overrun" or "wild swings" in politics, keep in mind 
that politics involves multiple dimensions.  This concept is conveyed in 
the "pencil metaphor" at:

http://www.votefair.org/pencil_metaphor.html

Specifically, left-to-right (or liberal-versus-conservative) shifts are 
just one dimension.  (As a further complication, different people have 
different opinions about what that one dimension refers to.)

Yet there are other dimensions too.  One is the money-fueled shift away 
from voters toward special interests (votes-versus-money).  As the 
pencil metaphor suggests, this dimension is "orthogonal" (i.e. sort of 
"perpedicular") to the left-versus-right dimension.

Also consider that a "system" (either physical or political) can 
resonate at several different frequencies.  And those oscillations (at 
different frequencies) can occur simultaneously.  If "plotted" in along 
more than one axis, the results can be "Lissajous curves" (which are 
nicely shown in the Wikipedia article by that name).  Such patterns are 
more difficult to comprehend than simple one-dimensional "waveforms" 
(such as an audio signal).

So, indeed, it can be very difficult to clearly identify examples of the 
oscillations in current-day and recent politics.

Yet some patterns become clear in an historical context.  As an example, 
the U.S. stock market has large cycles with mathematically determined 
"periods," such as a big 90-year-or-so cycle and a smaller 20-year-or-so 
cycle, both occurring "together" (along with other cycles at other 
frequencies).  Such boom-and-bust cycles have what I, and others, 
believe is the same cause: people with lots of money learn how to "game" 
the system in their favor without realizing that those changes are not 
sustainable, and then the "house of cards" collapses, and then the cycle 
starts again with a different way to game the system (and maybe with a 
new category of people gaming the system).

Kristofer asks what I suggest as a way to "dampen" such 
resonant/oscillation effects.  I recommend VoteFair ranking (including 
VoteFair representation ranking and VoteFair partial-proportional 
ranking) for electing political leaders, and I recommend VoteFair 
negotiation ranking for voting within legislatures.

By design, together they would produce laws and enforcement priorities 
that would much more closely match what voters really want.

Also they would _relatively_ _smoothly_ track changes in what voters 
want.  That contrasts with jerkily responding to voter shifts as happens 
now, and which makes oscillations more likely.

As a result, there would be no need for term limits.

Richard Fobes


On 1/20/2013 12:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
> On 01/18/2013 06:46 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
>> On 1/17/2013 10:49 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
>>>
>>> The general pattern I was trying to think of, in any case, was this: the
>>> society is too far in one direction (according to the people). Candidate
>>> X has a position solidly on the other side and brings the policies in
>>> that direction. As X pushes policies towards the center, he gains
>>> reputation for doing something well. Then as X goes past the center, the
>>> people think "we'll give him some time; he's been right in the past, why
>>> shouldn't he still know what he's doing?" And so it takes time before
>>> the people recognize how far off the other side X really wants to go.
>>>
>>> Term limits mitigate this ...
>>>
>>> I have also been reading about predictor or ensemble systems (like
>>> weighted majority voting). In that context, it's like an expert that
>>> tends to be very right, but situations change and he suddenly stops
>>> being right. It then takes some time for his weight to be reduced,
>>> because he has such a high weight already. In dynamic situations (where
>>> experts may often shift from being very good to not being good at all),
>>> sliding window versions of WMV (or UCB) do better than non-sliding
>>> versions. I can find papers for this if you're interested :-)
>>
>> Currently, in politics there is not a close correlation between voter
>> preferences and who ends up in office, so the tendency you claim does
>> tend to occur.
>>
>> However, if elections are improved so that there is a high correlation
>> between voter preferences and who ends up in office, then such
>> "over-runs" would quickly lead to a push back to center.
>>
>> Such over-runs are a component of the concept of "resonance" in Physics.
>> This over-extended "state" quickly lead to an ever-increasing push back
>> to center. Yet, overall, the result is an oscillation that averages out
>> to be centered.
>
> In my description, the problem is that the people trust the politician
> as he shifts from interests aligned with the people to interests not
> aligned with the people. They say "he's done right things in the past,
> so he knows what he's doing now, too". So the effect is one of people's
> judgement of the politician, rather than how that judgement is being
> distorted by the election method.
>
> Do you think people are actually quick to react against overrun and the
> method is the problem, rather than the people's estimates?
>
> I suppose one way to find out which is the case would be to check if
> such overruns have happened in PR countries. However, this might
> complicate the situation, because PR countries - at least parliamentary
> ones - don't have a Micawberian "50% + 1, I win, 50% - 1, I lose"
> situation, so the gradual feedback from the parts of the people that do
> change their opinions often might inform the parties currently in power
> that if they don't do something, more people will follow.
>
> (I think this is part of the reason the Labor Party here is moving to
> the right. Their coalition will most likely lose their majority in the
> next election anyway, though.)
>
> So it would look like the way to find out which is right would be to
> find a country with an advanced election method but not PR. But I don't
> know of any such countries since I don't consider IRV an advanced
> election method. One might stretch it by considering TTR advanced - it
> is certainly better than IRV in my eyes... so have there been any
> overruns in France? I'm not sure.
>
>> If, after election-method reform, there should be a need to "dampen"
>> such wild swings, there other -- and I believe wiser -- ways to do so.
>
> Which methods or ways would you suggest?
>
> My background, such as it is, regarding these problems is more a
> cybernetics and CS one rather than a Physics one - though I don't have
> any degrees in either and therefore work more on intuition than actual
> calculation.
>
> In any case, I have been thinking about methods to dampen raw populism
> in more responsive democratic systems like Liquid Democracy. Here the
> problem (if there is one; we don't know for sure since there haven't
> been any public experiments with the thing that I know of) would be that
> the people react too quickly rather than too slowly. Now, a traditional
> response would be to say that "this is the problem of too frequent
> elections". To me, that seems to be like saying that a thermostat that
> regulates temperature and oscillates too wildly around the setpoint has
> a problem because it samples temperature too often. You *could* say
> that, but you could also just slow the response of the controller. It
> seems a waste to force less information to be gathered instead of more
> just so that the system should work. In a LD case, that might take the
> shape of using a statistical method with a high breakdown point instead
> of sum or average for the power calculations, or by gradually
> adding/removing the voting power given by a subscription rather than
> just going directly to 0% or 100%.
>
> So I can definitely understand that more sophisticated methods could do
> better. I'm thus wondering which methods you had in mind.
>
>
>