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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...

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...