> An alternative would be for the state to pay a salary to every proxy in proportion to how many principal-votes he casts throughout the year Seems pretty good

> An alternative would be for the state to pay a salary to every proxy in proportion to how many principal-votes he casts throughout the year Seems pretty good, I'd be interested in ideas in how you could game this system. > An even more intriguing possibility would be to allow any and all side payments and let the market determine compensation. Citizens could pay politicians directly for their services, or politicians could pay citizens to be allowed to represent them. Proxies could have a policy of negotiating a price for their votes and then distributing the proceeds to their principals This strikes me as a horrible idea, especially allowing politicians to pay citizens to be allowed to represent them. Where do they get that money besides lobbyists? It couldn't be from their proportional salary or the payment would be too tiny for anyone to care. There are way too many people who would happily sell their votes to whoever payed the most. This is unfortunate but it's precisely the problem a republic is supposed to balance. This is the same reason you wouldn't want citizens to pay politicians for their "services". Too many people wouldn't care about anything but paying nothing or as little as possible. A modern updated democracy should strive to be about giving citizens equal democratic power with no bias towards class. One issue not really addressed here is that you can't invent a system like this as if all actors are rational and self interested. You have to assume that a large percentage are completely apathetic, will act against their own self interest and the interested and powerful use every manipulative and dishonest tactic possible to game the system. Another is how you would stop political parties from dominating the landscape, which is likely closely tied to access to television airtime. You would need some system of free airtime (and no privately paid political advertising allowed) for politicians with a minimum percentage of public support (who else is singing the Bulworth rap in their head now?). You still probably wouldn't stop big political parties from emerging and using a common brand to succeed, especially with apathetic voters. And I'm fairly confident that too much proportional representation would quickly result in a tragedy of the commons effect for a lot of things. Taxation policy would get interesting really fast. Unpopular minority groups would be in constant danger without a very strong court system. You're entire society would be much much less stable. Other than that the whole idea of using proxies to implement a republic where citizens can directly vote on those issues they care about and let a representative proxy vote for those they don't (or don't understand) is fascinating. Then again, I also find systems where you elect only a local representative and those representatives elect the next level and those elect the next, etc. to also be fascinating and that's nearly the opposite of a system like this.