4 ms·

It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it's mathematically unstable and doesn't form any sort of equilibrium (Nash or otherwise). Any participant can gai

by smabie 7y ago

It sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately it's mathematically unstable and doesn't form any sort of equilibrium (Nash or otherwise). Any participant can gain an advantage by grouping up with one other participant. Once everyone has grouped up into pairs, they will then group up again and again, ultimately creating a two party system.

derefr 7y ago
Why even allow grouping (politically) into pairs? The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) Politicians could still speak politically in the form of campaigning; but they'd not be allowed to make reference to other politicians' positions on things; only to speak about their own beliefs on how things should be/how things should work. For anyone who isn't an actively-campaigning politician, the only political speech you'd be allowed would be (private-ballot) voting. Anything else would get you shunned by the community. (Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds.)
- sbuttgereit 7y ago
  Yet, here you are, a non-politician according to your HN profile, engaging in political speech. To be fair, you're not breaking the law or even a social norm... but it's not consistent with your position. All of the sorts of reasons that motivated you to have an opinion enough to post here are reasons why this wouldn't work. Moreover, where do you draw the line between "layperson" and politician? How does one make the transition? I understand the desire, and appreciate that you see the unreality of the idea... all I can really say in conclusion is... well... nice try.
- sfifs 7y ago
  If you disallow grouping openly, people will group surreptitiously and the impact will be much the same. Some form of power structure always develops in any grouping of people, whether it is open or hidden and this has been widely documented in anthropology. I think the most famous one was a write-up about power structures in women power movements in the 70s (I forget the author's name) another one more recently examining Valve software.
- aphextron 7y ago
  >The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) And who enforces that ban? Who picks the person that enforces it? How are they held accountable? Who are they held accountable to? You see everything is politics, whether we like it or not.
  - derefr 7y ago
    It’s a social norm—everyone enforces it, and everyone also punishes those who don’t enforce it. Compare/contrast: being punished for using a cellphone in an Amish community.
klysm 7y ago
Practical limits can be placed on the advantage from 'grouping up'.
seer 7y ago
The voting system does determine how many and what types of parties you end up with. FPTP as in the US will always yield a two party system in the long run as thats the only way you can “win” in it. More elaborate systems would get you an equilibrium of multiple parties, with much better overlap of what people want to their representatives. Grouping would indeed always happen, but you wouldn’t need to go to 50% of society to get what you want, so the wants and political speech can be much more varied and relevant. The best explanations of how it all works I’ve seen were from CGP Grey’s videos https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo
- throwaway41920 7y ago
  > FPTP as in the US will always yield a two party system in the long run as thats the only way you can “win” in it. I don't think that's true. If you simply removed the de facto state endorsement of parties - if you only listed candidates by name on the ballot and moved to a California type open primary instead of having partisan primaries - you probably wouldn't end up with two parties like we see today. Party primaries are a good example of this. They're also FPTP, but that hasn't lead to the emergence of two subfactions because such a thing is hard when it's not entrenched in the ballot. Instead primaries have much more loose coalitions of groups and endorsements that shift around in every election. Even in a particular election there are often more than two.
  - seer 7y ago
    Well there are of course always tweaks, but FPTP just has those incentives and you inevitably trend towards those bad outcomes and problems. I mean the video explains it way better than I ever could, and there are a bunch of other political systems and the maths behind them explained ELI5 style.
  - pasabagi 7y ago
    I think personalities would probably be a more dangerous thing to attach votes to than parties.
- pmyteh 7y ago
geewee 7y ago
I think that's a silly notion. Many countries have political systems with many political parties, e.g. Germany has 14 and Denmark has 11. Certainly these parties often pair up to form government in (reasonably) established political blocks, but it still allows for intra-block disagreements and even parties from different blocks working together on issues they care particularly much about.
- maze-le 7y ago
  We have far more than 14 active political parties. Most of them are founded for very narrow and specific issues (Tierschutzpartei -- "party for animal welfare", Die Violetten -- "party for mysticism/esotericism"). Some operate only on a regional level, like the SSV -- the party of the danish minority in Schleswig-Holstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Asso...). On the municipal level it is not uncommon to have candidates without party affiliation -- some of them organize in "loose parties" that are more a coalition of individuals than a real party (Freie Wähler). I think the tendency to form coalitions and compromises than hyperpartisan confrontations has its roots in the voting system. We have a system of proportional representational voting -- not first past the post voting. This allows for more flexibility on the stance of single members on some issues. It is not unheard of to have 2 or more blocks in the same party that have very different opinions on specific issues. While this might be true for any representational system, first-past-the-post voting tends to focus on one issue that becomes the core of identification for some.
throwaway41920 7y ago
From what I've seen, once parties are dropped from the ballot (it's common to have positions where party isn't listed) people seem to stop caring about them. I've seen hyperpartisan areas where people will never vote for party B over party A when party affiliation is listed on the ballot, but when it's not listed they end up happily vote for someone from party B over A. Removing parties from voting would make it less likely that so many issues break down among strict partisan lines, and would make compromise much more likely because not every piece of policy would be tied to a political identity. Factions would still exist, but they would be much more fluid and adaptable.
fuzzc0re 7y ago
Can you please give us a reference to this model?

by smabie 7y ago

derefr 7y ago

Why even allow grouping (politically) into pairs? The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) Politicians could still speak politically in the form of campaigning; but they'd not be allowed to make reference to other politicians' positions on things; only to speak about their own beliefs on how things should be/how things should work. For anyone who isn't an actively-campaigning politician, the only political speech you'd be allowed would be (private-ballot) voting. Anything else would get you shunned by the community. (Yes, I realize how ridiculous this sounds.)

sbuttgereit 7y ago
Yet, here you are, a non-politician according to your HN profile, engaging in political speech. To be fair, you're not breaking the law or even a social norm... but it's not consistent with your position. All of the sorts of reasons that motivated you to have an opinion enough to post here are reasons why this wouldn't work. Moreover, where do you draw the line between "layperson" and politician? How does one make the transition? I understand the desire, and appreciate that you see the unreality of the idea... all I can really say in conclusion is... well... nice try.
sfifs 7y ago
If you disallow grouping openly, people will group surreptitiously and the impact will be much the same. Some form of power structure always develops in any grouping of people, whether it is open or hidden and this has been widely documented in anthropology. I think the most famous one was a write-up about power structures in women power movements in the 70s (I forget the author's name) another one more recently examining Valve software.
aphextron 7y ago
>The town could just ban non-politicians from expressing political speech entirely (as a social norm, not a law.) And who enforces that ban? Who picks the person that enforces it? How are they held accountable? Who are they held accountable to? You see everything is politics, whether we like it or not.
- derefr 7y ago
  It’s a social norm—everyone enforces it, and everyone also punishes those who don’t enforce it. Compare/contrast: being punished for using a cellphone in an Amish community.

klysm 7y ago

Practical limits can be placed on the advantage from 'grouping up'.

seer 7y ago

The voting system does determine how many and what types of parties you end up with. FPTP as in the US will always yield a two party system in the long run as thats the only way you can “win” in it. More elaborate systems would get you an equilibrium of multiple parties, with much better overlap of what people want to their representatives. Grouping would indeed always happen, but you wouldn’t need to go to 50% of society to get what you want, so the wants and political speech can be much more varied and relevant. The best explanations of how it all works I’ve seen were from CGP Grey’s videos https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo https://youtu.be/s7tWHJfhiyo

throwaway41920 7y ago
> FPTP as in the US will always yield a two party system in the long run as thats the only way you can “win” in it. I don't think that's true. If you simply removed the de facto state endorsement of parties - if you only listed candidates by name on the ballot and moved to a California type open primary instead of having partisan primaries - you probably wouldn't end up with two parties like we see today. Party primaries are a good example of this. They're also FPTP, but that hasn't lead to the emergence of two subfactions because such a thing is hard when it's not entrenched in the ballot. Instead primaries have much more loose coalitions of groups and endorsements that shift around in every election. Even in a particular election there are often more than two.
- seer 7y ago
  Well there are of course always tweaks, but FPTP just has those incentives and you inevitably trend towards those bad outcomes and problems. I mean the video explains it way better than I ever could, and there are a bunch of other political systems and the maths behind them explained ELI5 style.
- pasabagi 7y ago
  I think personalities would probably be a more dangerous thing to attach votes to than parties.
pmyteh 7y ago

geewee 7y ago

I think that's a silly notion. Many countries have political systems with many political parties, e.g. Germany has 14 and Denmark has 11. Certainly these parties often pair up to form government in (reasonably) established political blocks, but it still allows for intra-block disagreements and even parties from different blocks working together on issues they care particularly much about.

maze-le 7y ago
We have far more than 14 active political parties. Most of them are founded for very narrow and specific issues (Tierschutzpartei -- "party for animal welfare", Die Violetten -- "party for mysticism/esotericism"). Some operate only on a regional level, like the SSV -- the party of the danish minority in Schleswig-Holstein (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Association https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Schleswig_Voters%27_Asso...). On the municipal level it is not uncommon to have candidates without party affiliation -- some of them organize in "loose parties" that are more a coalition of individuals than a real party (Freie Wähler). I think the tendency to form coalitions and compromises than hyperpartisan confrontations has its roots in the voting system. We have a system of proportional representational voting -- not first past the post voting. This allows for more flexibility on the stance of single members on some issues. It is not unheard of to have 2 or more blocks in the same party that have very different opinions on specific issues. While this might be true for any representational system, first-past-the-post voting tends to focus on one issue that becomes the core of identification for some.

throwaway41920 7y ago

From what I've seen, once parties are dropped from the ballot (it's common to have positions where party isn't listed) people seem to stop caring about them. I've seen hyperpartisan areas where people will never vote for party B over party A when party affiliation is listed on the ballot, but when it's not listed they end up happily vote for someone from party B over A. Removing parties from voting would make it less likely that so many issues break down among strict partisan lines, and would make compromise much more likely because not every piece of policy would be tied to a political identity. Factions would still exist, but they would be much more fluid and adaptable.

fuzzc0re 7y ago

Can you please give us a reference to this model?