> Under various sets of conditions, quadratic voting has been shown to be much more efficient than one-person-one-vote in aligning collective decisions with doi

> Under various sets of conditions, quadratic voting has been shown to be much more efficient than one-person-one-vote in aligning collective decisions with doing the most good for the most people. That's a severe misunderstanding. We don't have elections to make collective decisions that yield "the most good for the most people". We have elections because the alternatives to not having elections are worse. Moreover, "the most good for the most people" is subjective -- any objective measures of that that you come up with will be subjectively chosen. Some will say that maximizing the health of the environment does the most good for the most people, while others will say that maximizing GDP per-capita does -- if those two are in conflict, who's right? Elections sidestep the matter: it's not about being right, but about what people want. Sometimes people want things they really really shouldn't, and they may try to get their way via elections. For that we have institutions (e.g., constitutions, courts, separation of powers, etc.) that keep them from getting those things for some time. The alternative to all that is absolute monarchy, caudillos, dictatorship, war, anarchy (for a while until you get a strongman) -- all bad things. If you manage to impose a technocracy not headed by a strongman, soon it will be, and either way may well lead to revolt, possibly civil war. I too would like a better system, because "democracy is the worst system of governance, except for all the others", but like Churchill, I'm skeptical that there is something better than a constitutional, democratic republican form of government. Utopia peddling seems very commonplace nowadays. That's a bit worrisome.