[EM] why ANY pr disempowers minority voters.

Juho Laatu juho.laatu at gmail.com
Wed Feb 3 02:33:28 PST 2016


> On 25 Jan 2016, at 15:05, Fred Gohlke <fredgohlke at verizon.net> wrote:
> 
> Good Morning, Juho
> 
> re: "Parties and everyone should not make too
>     self-interested decisions."
> 
> 'Parties and everyone' make self-interested decisions.  That's the reality.  The pursuit of self-interest is a natural human trait.  The challenge, in politics, is to select the individuals whose self-interest is aligned with the interests of the community, and raise them to leadership positions.

Yes. Or to select individuals who are well mannered enough to push their self-interest related targets aside and focus on those targets that they were hired for. Or, one more way to see it, to select those whose self-interest is to serve others and the whole society.

> 
> 
> re: "... in some other systems clearly defined political
>     parties could be a benefit."
> 
> Certainly.  In oligarchies, for example.

Maybe more in some well working democracies where people want to have some clear alternatives to choose from. Note that this refers to "clearly defined political parties", not to "internally oligarchic parties".

> 
> 
> re: "... I tend to think that all organisations with some
>     power have the risk of some central individuals or
>     groupings grabbing more of that power to themselves
>     than would be beneficial to the society."
> 
> Is that not precisely the circumstance in which we find ourselves?

Yes, this is the world we live in. If we assume that in some society parties are somehow corrupt, the solution could be either to get rid of the parties or to fix the parties. The first solution is more straight forward, but the second one may be more tempting if one thinks that there will be some hierarchical management structure anyway. Starting from an existing management structure (with its positive and negative features) may be easier than trying to build the whole structure from scratch, or letting the power hungry politicians build it from scratch themselves without any agreed plans. Also bottom-up election oriented approaches do have the risk of malicious management structure, since power hungry people are guaranteed to implement some sort of centralized management structure on top of the official system anyway. It may be better to plan it rather than let those power hungry self-interested people build it themselves.

> 
> 
> re: "I see some risks also in the peer approach. There
>     will in any case be some high managers sitting on
>     top of the pyramid."
> 
> I'm not entirely clear on what a 'high manager' is, but I think you are correct.  Those who reach the top of the pyramid will have persuaded others they have the qualities necessary to advance the community's interests.  We should note that, as we approach to top of the pyramid, the competition will be intense.  Each member of a triad wants to be elevated and, therefore, will not be easy to convince.  They will seek out any flaw in their competitors, to improve their own chance of advancement.  That is not a risk, it is the purpose of the process.

In any of the proposed systems we have the problem that we may not succeed in lifting the best people to the top parts of the pyramid. Also the triads have this problem. For example it may be that the most power hungry individuals will be elected in the triads since they have the stamina to keep convincing others until others will give up and elect that person.

> 
> 
> re: "From their (the high managers) point of view a group
>     of voters discussing with their peers might be less
>     harmful form the point of view of interfering with
>     their power hungry plans, than voters that would
>     directly vote one of the competing parties in the
>     next election would have."
> 
> The voters discussing political issues with their peers are doing so to select one of the members of the triad to advance, and become a candidate for further advancement.  The 'high managers' with "power hungry plans" must first be advanced by their peers.  In other words, their peers are the people voting on their advancement, not once, but multiple times, as they move toward the top of the pyramid.  That gives the people a repeating opportunity to detect - and avoid - their 'power hungry plans'.

Yes, people do have the opportunity to detect and avoid the power hungry people. But I'm not convinced that they would do so. I mentioned one reason already above, the good stamina of the power hungry people that may lead to electing them anyway. Triads have thus both positive and negative tendencies.

I must note one positive property of the triads here. I guess they would lead to more random results than typical traditional elections do. Political leaders might therefore be elected only once and they would not have time to gain too much power. This would be both good (no permanent power positions) and bad (less experienced politicians).

> 
> 
> re: "I thus see a need to have some very direct channels that
>     make it possible for each voter (without any intermediate
>     small managers/ representatives) to influence the system."
> 
> I will be posting the complete process in a day or so.  In it, you will see that it provides a way for those who do not advance to influence those they have chosen to represent them.

I'm a bit worried about the length of the influencing paths.

> 
> 
> re: "In order to use this power, the voters should have some
>     reasonable understanding on how the system works."
> 
> It would be difficult to misunderstand a system that lets you choose one of your peers to represent your interests, or persuade your peers that you represent their interests.  Can any system be more elementary than that?  It is certainly easier to understand than casting a vote for a person you know nothing about.

Yes, that's simple and understandable. But the length of the paths can be a problem. In typical party based political systems I'm worried about the ability of the politicians to present nice stories to their voters, and at the same time make decisions that do not fully match those stories. In direct democracy people decide themselves. In a representative democracy people decide indirectly (by their representatives). In a hierarchical bottom-up system (e.g. triads) there would be multiple such layers (with potential to tell one story downwards and do other kind of actions upwards).

> 
> 
> re: "... in a democracy it makes very much sense to try
>     to make all groupings of the society interested in
>     the future of the society."
> 
> You are correct.  And the very first step in encouraging the people's interest is a process where their views have meaning.  When people are able to discuss their concerns with their neighbors and select the best advocate of their interests to represent them, most will be interested.

Yes, ability to make direct decisions in triads may be a tempting opportunity to regular voters. On the other hand the long chains of influence may reduce that interest. Ability to vote directly some top level politicians and make the decision that way is also tempting. I think both approaches are good. Current democracies often have also some forms of local decision making (this field is too complex to open it up here).

> 
> 
> re: "I want the voters have two paths to influence (bottom-up
>     vie peers and top-down via direct elections)."
> 
> As we can see by looking around us, top-down systems do not allow bottom-up influence.

There are some good existing bottom-up approaches. Autonomous democratic towns are one example. It is possible to allow those towns to have a say also in regional matters. I'm typically in favour of making decisions as locally as possible, instead of doing all of them top-down. The reasons are related to this discussion (short decision making paths, don't donate power too easily to distant power hungry cabinets).

Juho



> 
> 
> I'll be interested in your comments on Frome.
> 
> Fred Gohlke
> ----
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