[EM] Chicken Dilemma--To whom is it a problem? (pt 1)

[Kevin Venzke]

Hi Mike,



----- Mail original -----
> De : Michael Ossipoff <email9648742 at gmail.com>
>>  Certainly, I don't think everyone will go along with this.
> 
> That's the problem. Look at the progressives. That category, as I've
> defined it by policy-preferences, ranges from non-socialist
> progressive, to democrataic socialist, to communist.
> 
> Non-socialist progressive parties include Green Party U.S., Justice
> Party, Pirate Party, and probably Working Family.
> 
> Democratic socialist parties inlclude Greens/Green Party USA,
> Socialist Party USA, Scialist Labor Party, and California Peace &
> Freedom Party.
> 
> All or most of the other U.S. socialist parties are communist.
> 
> I'll avoid expressing preference, but the non-socialist and socialist
> progressive parties have long been strongy criticizing eachother, to a
> degree that could make it unlikely that they'd trust eachother for
> mutual support in an election. In fact, there's been strong criticism
> even among some of the socialist parties.
> 
> So I agree that preferrers of those parties, to a large extent,
> wouldn't participate in co-operation. In fact, likely their leaders
> often wouldn't call for co-operation, in a chicken-dilemma-vulnerable
> voting-system.
> 
> You continued:
> 
>>  It is not
>>  hard to imagine a Green and a Democrat, considered as representing a
>>  single large bloc, where neither candidate will drop out and neither
>>  loses all of their voting support to the other.
> 
> I just want to briefly interrupt to say that the Democrats aren't
> progressives, even by the broad behavioral and policy definition that
> I've been using.
> 
> GPUS, G/GPUSA, Justice Party, Pirate Party, Working Family, SPUSA,
> CPUSA, etc. might at some point be found to comprise a mutual
> majority. Even if many of those people condidered the Dems not as bad
> as the Repubs, the important mutual majority is the smallest,
> innermost, one.
> 
> If there's a mutual majority that includes progressives, and,
> additionally, Democrat-preferrers, I'm not a member of that mutual
> majority. As I said, the Democrats aren't progressive. I don't vote
> for them in public elections, and wouldn't vote for them even  they
> and the Repubs were the only candidates. I never include them in my
> ranking or approval-set, in polls regarding political candidates or
> parties.

I didn't mean to imply that Democrats would be considered by you to
be "progressive," just that a mutual majority including Democrats 
and Greens might be possible in some situation.

Your last paragraph is thought-provoking though. You are a voter 
who won't accept a mutual majority with Democrats. Would you consider
doing so, under Benham/Woodall? Surely even among the parties you 
deem progressive you will find find some voters with the same type 
of insistence, that some other progressive candidate is no better 
than the worst evil, and they'll never vote for him, etc.

Is it actually the case that your motivation behind Benham/Woodall
is to try to compel voters as principled as *yourself* to accept a
compromise? It's a serious question: Are principled voters the
solution or the problem?


> 
>> 
>>  Suppose in that situation that between the Greens and Democrats
>>  there is a pairwise majority over the lone Republican, but it's not
>>  a mutual majority, due to a lack of preference sharing. In that case
>>  an approach that wants to punish defections and elect the Republican,
>>  has to assume that there was actually some deliberate defection in
>>  the voters' minds. If that's not so, then the outcome is being 
> ruined
>>  for no reason. (At least, I can't imagine we would be seeking to
>>  compel voters to list compromise choices that they don't actually
>>  consider to be such.)
> 
> Wait a minute: For whom is the outcome ruined? To me, the outcome is
> ruined if a Dem or Repub wins. A Repub doesn't ruin the outcome
> anymore than does a Dem.
> 
> For people who sincerely despise the candidates of the other
> "non-mutual-majority" voters--for voters who truly don't like A 
> any
> better than C--where's the penalty? The only person who is penalized
> by the Repub winning instead of the Dem,  is someone who actually
> prefers Dem to Repub.
> 

Broadly, if it was the Greens declining to support Democrats rather
than the other way around, then the outcome is ruined for
1. The Greens, because another method (an SDSC-compliant one) would 
in fact have *elected* the Green; and
2. The Democrats, because they could at least have won a Green
victory, if they hadn't voted for the Democrat or had pressured him 
to drop out.

A fairly typical spoiler situation.


>>  I have
>>  trouble seeing why this situation is different from e.g. having
>>  several Democrats who want to run against a single Republican (say,
>>  an incumbent).
> 
> One difference is that there are genuine policy-differences. Another
> difference is that all the Democat candidates are owned by pretty much
> the same bribers, and beholden to the same party for being chosen to
> run.
> 

Interesting. So I guess one might guess that supporters of Democrats
would be more willing to form a mutual majority, than a group of 
progressives would, since the progressive policies must be more 
diverse.

I don't know. Just remembering the possible Republican presidential
nominees in 2012, it seems there's strong incentive for one candidate
to claim a contrast between themselves and the other candidates, even
similar ones.

It's easier for analysis of course, if voters and candidates of all
flavors behave essentially the same.

> Sending this part 1 now. Continuing later.
> 
> to be continued...

Kevin Venzke