5 ms·

Which is very problematic, the minority will forever be limited to the whim of the majority. On the otherhand if you look at the super wealthy minority, allrea

by rdc12 12y ago

Which is very problematic, the minority will forever be limited to the whim of the majority. On the otherhand if you look at the super wealthy minority, allready have a disproportionate say in poltical matters, donations, lobbyists etc.

xnull2guest 12y ago
That's a great way to phrase it. The wealthy are a minority class with extreme views.
- aetherson 12y ago
  Well, the concept of QV is that it only rewards fairly large minorities who have intense preferences (not "extreme" ones). So if the top 1% want to buy enough votes to overcome the other 99%, then they have to buy 98 votes each, which costs something in the general vicinity of 10,000 times the base price of a vote. And that's assuming that the subject is so not extreme that nobody in the other 99% is willing to pay 1/10,000th of that much to get an extra vote. If you like the idea of rewarding fairly large minorities with intense preferences, but think that quadratic voting isn't sufficiently steep a curve, I don't see any really strong reason to think that the third or fourth power, or even an exponential curve, are that different in concept.
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    That's the concept. The implementation can't distinguish between 'fairly large minorities' and 'large amount of wealth', nor can it distinguish between 'intense' and 'extreme.' Or non-primitive recursive! I just invented the AV (Ackermann-Function-Voting)! Honestly I don't see how it's an improvement at all to turn votes into a commodity nor how one would balance the conceptual idea of 'giving rights to a minority with intense preferences' (picking a function that grows relatively slowly) against the threat of 'giving control to a wealthy minority with malicious aims' (picking a function that grows extremely quickly). And as far as I can tell it's pretty much impossible to do real world case studies with to get empirical data without putting some very fundamental things in jeopardy.
    - aetherson 12y ago
      Okay, first, on the intense versus extreme thing: you're just wrong. If a minority "intensely" prefers something, it means they value it a lot. If a value is "extreme," it means that it has a lot of opponents. Of course, a minority might "intensely" prefer an "extreme" position, but they aren't the same, and just like in regular voting, "extreme" causes a problem -- in fact, maybe more of a problem, because here's how it goes: Say the 5% wealthy minority intensely prefers a non-extreme position -- that is, the other 95% are against it, but don't care. So the 5% have to buy 18 votes each -- let's say that the first bought vote costs $50, so they need to pay $16,200 each. Now say that the 5% wealthy minority intensely prefers an extreme position -- so extreme that of the other 95%, 20% of them will buy one extra vote, and 10% will buy 5 extra votes. The 95% now equal the 165%, and the 5% have to buy 32 extra votes each, now costing them $51,200 each (their opponents, meanwhile, have spent $50 each for the 20% and $1,250 for the 10%). How turning votes into a commodity is an improvement: well, I don't totally buy this argument, but the argument itself is pretty straightforward. You say, "If something would massively improve the lives of 40% of the population, but would be kind of vaguely disconcerting to 60% of the population, a better society would do that thing, but democracy as it stands tends to not do it." It's not particularly difficult to design a function like this that is arbitrarily resistant to small minorities taking over the system. If you make it 2^n, then buying 20 votes costs you a million times buying one vote. There is no definition of "the wealthy" that creates a group that can buy a majority that way. But it's still pretty cheap for a population of 30 or 40% to buy 1 or 2 extra votes each and do what the system is designed to do: allow them to triumph over a majority population with only a MILD preference.
      - xnull2guest 12y ago
        I never intended 'extreme' to mean 'has a lot of opponents.' I think this is my fault, and I should have used 'intense.' It's all semantics, but I'll take the blame for being unclear. That said, I would argue that even in the case where there is an 'extreme' view by your definition the numbers you suggest both seem arbitrarily unmotivated by real example is not reassuring to me monetarily. It also still does not address questions I raised about those with no expendable income whatsoever (either as the 'aggressor' minority or as the 'defensive' majority). It does not account for the question I raised about voter mobility (which looks nothing like you've pictured in the above imagined case study). Nor does it address the issue of finding a function that balancing the political mobility of the disenfranchised and capital poor with the power and financial elite. Nor does it address example groups (given both for historical and current political groups). And there are more issues, such as enforcement (how do you prevent fronts from buying votes or families or employees from buying votes so that n becomes n/m and this f(n/m) << f(n))? The argument you give doesn't seem to defend turning votes into a commodity, but appears to be a general argument for 'this thing I'm proposing is good.' I could use the words in the exact quote as an 'advertisement' (it really isn't an argument...) for any system, take say for example a Parliamentary system. I also disagree with it on the grounds that it claims, without any substantive analysis, that democracy as it stands tends not to improve the lives of people who are 40% in numbers for something. But I won't mention voter mobilization again...
rayiner 12y ago
The whole point of democracy is to limit the minorities to the whim of the majority. This is unfortunate when we're talking about harmless racial or social minorities. However, the alternate state of humanity, where the majority is subservient to minorities, such as warlords or hereditary feudal lords, is worse. As for the super wealthy, in a democracy the manner in which they exert influence is very different. In a non-democratic system, minorities have direct power (they own the guns). In a democratic system, wealthy minorities can't beat the majority with firepower. This is a fundamental distinction. They have to rely on indirect power--usually by leveraging their ownership of the means of production. This is inevitable so long as capital resides in private hands. "My factory creates 10,000 jobs in your district, so you had better vote against that environmental legislation" will always be a disproportionately powerful argument, even in the total absence of direct exchange of money for political influence.
- rdc12 12y ago
  Personally I view that as being a pretty big flaw in democracy, but it also works the other way when the extremist element has a hard time gaining influence. But that is not a guarantee either, the Tea Party being a good example. It may be a distiction, and the second way is more subtle and covert, but the net result of a power imbalance is still the result.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Flaw in democracy relative to what? Thought experiment. Zuck & Co., fed-up with U.S. immigration policy, skip the PAC and just import foreign labor in heavily-armed gunships past Navy defenses. Sounds preposterous, but that just goes to show how desensitized people living in democratic countries are to the plight of humanity. A system that forces elite minorities to get buy-in from the majority instead of unilaterally imposing their will is a historical aberration and still not enjoyed by most of the world. The Tea Party is a great example of the resiliency of democracy. Money buys influence, but billionaires must at least make the case that their interests are aligned with those of the majority. Again, it's not clear what you can do about this within a capitalistic system. The factory owner can always tell his workers: "universal healthcare will be bad for you because I won't be able to keep all of you employed if my taxes go up." And that message will always be tremendously compelling.

by rdc12 12y ago

xnull2guest 12y ago

That's a great way to phrase it. The wealthy are a minority class with extreme views.

aetherson 12y ago
Well, the concept of QV is that it only rewards fairly large minorities who have intense preferences (not "extreme" ones). So if the top 1% want to buy enough votes to overcome the other 99%, then they have to buy 98 votes each, which costs something in the general vicinity of 10,000 times the base price of a vote. And that's assuming that the subject is so not extreme that nobody in the other 99% is willing to pay 1/10,000th of that much to get an extra vote. If you like the idea of rewarding fairly large minorities with intense preferences, but think that quadratic voting isn't sufficiently steep a curve, I don't see any really strong reason to think that the third or fourth power, or even an exponential curve, are that different in concept.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  That's the concept. The implementation can't distinguish between 'fairly large minorities' and 'large amount of wealth', nor can it distinguish between 'intense' and 'extreme.' Or non-primitive recursive! I just invented the AV (Ackermann-Function-Voting)! Honestly I don't see how it's an improvement at all to turn votes into a commodity nor how one would balance the conceptual idea of 'giving rights to a minority with intense preferences' (picking a function that grows relatively slowly) against the threat of 'giving control to a wealthy minority with malicious aims' (picking a function that grows extremely quickly). And as far as I can tell it's pretty much impossible to do real world case studies with to get empirical data without putting some very fundamental things in jeopardy.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Okay, first, on the intense versus extreme thing: you're just wrong. If a minority "intensely" prefers something, it means they value it a lot. If a value is "extreme," it means that it has a lot of opponents. Of course, a minority might "intensely" prefer an "extreme" position, but they aren't the same, and just like in regular voting, "extreme" causes a problem -- in fact, maybe more of a problem, because here's how it goes: Say the 5% wealthy minority intensely prefers a non-extreme position -- that is, the other 95% are against it, but don't care. So the 5% have to buy 18 votes each -- let's say that the first bought vote costs $50, so they need to pay $16,200 each. Now say that the 5% wealthy minority intensely prefers an extreme position -- so extreme that of the other 95%, 20% of them will buy one extra vote, and 10% will buy 5 extra votes. The 95% now equal the 165%, and the 5% have to buy 32 extra votes each, now costing them $51,200 each (their opponents, meanwhile, have spent $50 each for the 20% and $1,250 for the 10%). How turning votes into a commodity is an improvement: well, I don't totally buy this argument, but the argument itself is pretty straightforward. You say, "If something would massively improve the lives of 40% of the population, but would be kind of vaguely disconcerting to 60% of the population, a better society would do that thing, but democracy as it stands tends to not do it." It's not particularly difficult to design a function like this that is arbitrarily resistant to small minorities taking over the system. If you make it 2^n, then buying 20 votes costs you a million times buying one vote. There is no definition of "the wealthy" that creates a group that can buy a majority that way. But it's still pretty cheap for a population of 30 or 40% to buy 1 or 2 extra votes each and do what the system is designed to do: allow them to triumph over a majority population with only a MILD preference.
    - xnull2guest 12y ago
      I never intended 'extreme' to mean 'has a lot of opponents.' I think this is my fault, and I should have used 'intense.' It's all semantics, but I'll take the blame for being unclear. That said, I would argue that even in the case where there is an 'extreme' view by your definition the numbers you suggest both seem arbitrarily unmotivated by real example is not reassuring to me monetarily. It also still does not address questions I raised about those with no expendable income whatsoever (either as the 'aggressor' minority or as the 'defensive' majority). It does not account for the question I raised about voter mobility (which looks nothing like you've pictured in the above imagined case study). Nor does it address the issue of finding a function that balancing the political mobility of the disenfranchised and capital poor with the power and financial elite. Nor does it address example groups (given both for historical and current political groups). And there are more issues, such as enforcement (how do you prevent fronts from buying votes or families or employees from buying votes so that n becomes n/m and this f(n/m) << f(n))? The argument you give doesn't seem to defend turning votes into a commodity, but appears to be a general argument for 'this thing I'm proposing is good.' I could use the words in the exact quote as an 'advertisement' (it really isn't an argument...) for any system, take say for example a Parliamentary system. I also disagree with it on the grounds that it claims, without any substantive analysis, that democracy as it stands tends not to improve the lives of people who are 40% in numbers for something. But I won't mention voter mobilization again...

rayiner 12y ago

The whole point of democracy is to limit the minorities to the whim of the majority. This is unfortunate when we're talking about harmless racial or social minorities. However, the alternate state of humanity, where the majority is subservient to minorities, such as warlords or hereditary feudal lords, is worse. As for the super wealthy, in a democracy the manner in which they exert influence is very different. In a non-democratic system, minorities have direct power (they own the guns). In a democratic system, wealthy minorities can't beat the majority with firepower. This is a fundamental distinction. They have to rely on indirect power--usually by leveraging their ownership of the means of production. This is inevitable so long as capital resides in private hands. "My factory creates 10,000 jobs in your district, so you had better vote against that environmental legislation" will always be a disproportionately powerful argument, even in the total absence of direct exchange of money for political influence.

rdc12 12y ago
Personally I view that as being a pretty big flaw in democracy, but it also works the other way when the extremist element has a hard time gaining influence. But that is not a guarantee either, the Tea Party being a good example. It may be a distiction, and the second way is more subtle and covert, but the net result of a power imbalance is still the result.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Flaw in democracy relative to what? Thought experiment. Zuck & Co., fed-up with U.S. immigration policy, skip the PAC and just import foreign labor in heavily-armed gunships past Navy defenses. Sounds preposterous, but that just goes to show how desensitized people living in democratic countries are to the plight of humanity. A system that forces elite minorities to get buy-in from the majority instead of unilaterally imposing their will is a historical aberration and still not enjoyed by most of the world. The Tea Party is a great example of the resiliency of democracy. Money buys influence, but billionaires must at least make the case that their interests are aligned with those of the majority. Again, it's not clear what you can do about this within a capitalistic system. The factory owner can always tell his workers: "universal healthcare will be bad for you because I won't be able to keep all of you employed if my taxes go up." And that message will always be tremendously compelling.