8 ms·

Just reading the linked summary (and not the paper itself), it seems like this doesn't take wealth disparity into account. If the cost for your votes is the squ

by eridius 12y ago

Just reading the linked summary (and not the paper itself), it seems like this doesn't take wealth disparity into account. If the cost for your votes is the square of the votes you want to cast, then that means people with a lot of money can trivially buy significantly more votes than people with very little money, even if they don't necessarily care more about the issue than the people with very little money. It seems like this would change tyranny of the majority into tyranny of the wealthy.

gipp 12y ago
Right, but the money paid into the system gets redistributed equally. So the poor get paid for their troubles, and under some probably hefty assumptions they show this leading to equilibrium.
TTPrograms 12y ago
That's why the cost is the square of the number of votes. Then someone with 100x the wealth would be able to only buy 10x the votes. If you consider the act of lobbying for policy to be equivalent to purchasing votes then currently the cost is linear. Of course by that analogy there's no real way to enforce quadratic cost on lobbyists, but perhaps if there was an alternate "legitimate" means for individuals to purchase voting power then they might follow such a scheme if the alternative were illegal and strictly policed.
ekurutepe 12y ago
Theoretically, this could be fixed by making the cost of votes expressed as a percentage of your income and/or wealth. Some european countries like Switzerland are applying this principle to traffic tickets. It's not uncommon for rich people in fast cars paying few hundred thousand dollars for a speeding ticket.
- torthrw 12y ago
  Really? I'd argue 1% of my income making minimum wage is far less disposable and than a 1% of the one percents salary. And so I would be far less inclined to buy more votes. Then taking your Euro analog, is it right/fair to make someone pay more (even say in proportion to their salary) than any other person for a vote? Who decides how much I should pay for my vote? Is it based on current salary? Because if it is there are a whole load of very rich people who technically have a very small salary. Is it based on net worth? Sounds like a nightmare to me.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    Approximate solutions are better than clearly wrong solutions.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- glenweyl 12y ago
  As paper describes, quadratic is the unique function with linear derivative and thus the only one that reveals true preferences.
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  Distributing the money to other electors gives them a lot more voting power in the subsequent election. Edit: unless that makes wage-earners negotiate to less income.
lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
The cost per vote increases quadratically. If the first vote costs $1, then buying one million votes would cost one trillion dollars. If there are 50 million voters, then this trillion dollars would be distributed among them: $200,000 each. It would be extremely difficult to buy massive numbers of votes without paying hugely to the rest of the electorate.
- emmab 12y ago
  it increases quadratically not exponentially
  - lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
    Yeah, obviously. Thanks.
- eridius 12y ago
  It would be extremely difficult for one single person to do this. But we're talking about a wealthy minority, not a wealthy individual. If 25% of the population is significantly wealthier than the other 75%, does that mean the 25% should be able to pay on average 9x more than the 75% in order to get their way on an issue?
tlholaday 12y ago
The paper has examples with dollar amounts starting around page 30. If ten thousand poor people buy one vote each for $1, the wealthy would-be tyrant needs to buy 10,001 votes to win, at a cost of $100,020,001. If the tyrant goes ahead and does this, after the election all the poor people will receive $10,001 each.
- learnstats2 12y ago
  And so? My $100m made me lord tyrant ruler of the universe. Is existing inequality enough that quadratic voting realistically dismantles rather than reinforces existing power structures? Has QV been used in any practical context? If so, I'd welcome replies as I didn't pick up on this.
  - cwp 12y ago
    Your $100M got you 4 years in Congress. Let's say you can pass a key bill that'll make you more than $100M. It had better not piss people off very much, because in the next election they'll buy TWO votes each and you'll have to spend $400M to keep your law in place. In the meantime, all those poor people you outvoted are $50,000 richer. The interesting thing about this is that the more votes you buy, the more you fund your political enemies.
    - learnstats2 12y ago
      No, you miss the point. Being $X richer is now meaningless. Whoever is in power controls the currency and the time value of money sufficiently that they can manipulate the next round of voting.
- smsm42 12y ago
  It would probably be cheaper for the would-be tyrant to just promise $5000 to each of the poor people (not necessarily in cash - i.e. "if I am elected I will institute a new support program for the people with the budget of $5000 per capita", etc.) - that's how it is done nowdays and works quite frequently.
cwp 12y ago
The thing is, we already have the tyranny of the wealthy. The Tullock paradox is basically that the cost of lobbying is dwarfed by the returns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox I'm still getting my head around it, but it seems that Quadratic Voting would actually increase what wealthy people pay to influence public policy. Edit: Just as an example, the largest "outside money" spender in the 2012 election was Crossroads, which spent about $57M. I have no idea how many votes they were able to get for that money. With Quadratic Voting, they'd get 7,550. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- kybernetikos 12y ago
  > spent about $57M. I have no idea how many votes they were able to get for that money. With Quadratic Voting, they'd get 7,550. Doesn't that make it seem likely that they would prefer to continue with their current strategy rather than use the money to buy votes then? It seems likely that they ended up with more than 7550 votes for their 57M, especially considering that 7550 votes would be a smaller proportion of total votes in a system where people could get more than one vote. While very interesting, I don't think a system like this really addresses the main problems which are more to do with the need for an educated and informed populace than anything else.
  - glenweyl 12y ago
    This is a great point. We address it in great depth in the paper with Posner, Voting Squared (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956). QV helps here, a lot we hope, because most current expenditure on advertising is useful because it targets very indifferent swing voters who feel a duty to vote but do not care one way or the other. They can easily be swayed by noisy and wasteful advertising. But under QV they would not matter much as they would never cast more than a very small vote in either direction. On the other hand persuading those who really know an issue to feel a bit more strongly or less strongly would have a lot of value. This would make the sort of public discourse that was encouraged much more intelligent and mature, like investigative reports rather than slanderous or vacuous ad copy.

by eridius 12y ago

gipp 12y ago

Right, but the money paid into the system gets redistributed equally. So the poor get paid for their troubles, and under some probably hefty assumptions they show this leading to equilibrium.

TTPrograms 12y ago

That's why the cost is the square of the number of votes. Then someone with 100x the wealth would be able to only buy 10x the votes. If you consider the act of lobbying for policy to be equivalent to purchasing votes then currently the cost is linear. Of course by that analogy there's no real way to enforce quadratic cost on lobbyists, but perhaps if there was an alternate "legitimate" means for individuals to purchase voting power then they might follow such a scheme if the alternative were illegal and strictly policed.

ekurutepe 12y ago

Theoretically, this could be fixed by making the cost of votes expressed as a percentage of your income and/or wealth. Some european countries like Switzerland are applying this principle to traffic tickets. It's not uncommon for rich people in fast cars paying few hundred thousand dollars for a speeding ticket.

torthrw 12y ago
Really? I'd argue 1% of my income making minimum wage is far less disposable and than a 1% of the one percents salary. And so I would be far less inclined to buy more votes. Then taking your Euro analog, is it right/fair to make someone pay more (even say in proportion to their salary) than any other person for a vote? Who decides how much I should pay for my vote? Is it based on current salary? Because if it is there are a whole load of very rich people who technically have a very small salary. Is it based on net worth? Sounds like a nightmare to me.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Approximate solutions are better than clearly wrong solutions.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

glenweyl 12y ago
As paper describes, quadratic is the unique function with linear derivative and thus the only one that reveals true preferences.
SamReidHughes 12y ago
Distributing the money to other electors gives them a lot more voting power in the subsequent election. Edit: unless that makes wage-earners negotiate to less income.

lazzlazzlazz 12y ago

The cost per vote increases quadratically. If the first vote costs $1, then buying one million votes would cost one trillion dollars. If there are 50 million voters, then this trillion dollars would be distributed among them: $200,000 each. It would be extremely difficult to buy massive numbers of votes without paying hugely to the rest of the electorate.

emmab 12y ago
it increases quadratically not exponentially
- lazzlazzlazz 12y ago
  Yeah, obviously. Thanks.
eridius 12y ago
It would be extremely difficult for one single person to do this. But we're talking about a wealthy minority, not a wealthy individual. If 25% of the population is significantly wealthier than the other 75%, does that mean the 25% should be able to pay on average 9x more than the 75% in order to get their way on an issue?

tlholaday 12y ago

The paper has examples with dollar amounts starting around page 30. If ten thousand poor people buy one vote each for $1, the wealthy would-be tyrant needs to buy 10,001 votes to win, at a cost of $100,020,001. If the tyrant goes ahead and does this, after the election all the poor people will receive $10,001 each.

learnstats2 12y ago
And so? My $100m made me lord tyrant ruler of the universe. Is existing inequality enough that quadratic voting realistically dismantles rather than reinforces existing power structures? Has QV been used in any practical context? If so, I'd welcome replies as I didn't pick up on this.
- cwp 12y ago
  Your $100M got you 4 years in Congress. Let's say you can pass a key bill that'll make you more than $100M. It had better not piss people off very much, because in the next election they'll buy TWO votes each and you'll have to spend $400M to keep your law in place. In the meantime, all those poor people you outvoted are $50,000 richer. The interesting thing about this is that the more votes you buy, the more you fund your political enemies.
  - learnstats2 12y ago
    No, you miss the point. Being $X richer is now meaningless. Whoever is in power controls the currency and the time value of money sufficiently that they can manipulate the next round of voting.
smsm42 12y ago
It would probably be cheaper for the would-be tyrant to just promise $5000 to each of the poor people (not necessarily in cash - i.e. "if I am elected I will institute a new support program for the people with the budget of $5000 per capita", etc.) - that's how it is done nowdays and works quite frequently.

cwp 12y ago

The thing is, we already have the tyranny of the wealthy. The Tullock paradox is basically that the cost of lobbying is dwarfed by the returns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tullock_paradox I'm still getting my head around it, but it seems that Quadratic Voting would actually increase what wealthy people pay to influence public policy. Edit: Just as an example, the largest "outside money" spender in the 2012 election was Crossroads, which spent about $57M. I have no idea how many votes they were able to get for that money. With Quadratic Voting, they'd get 7,550. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
kybernetikos 12y ago
> spent about $57M. I have no idea how many votes they were able to get for that money. With Quadratic Voting, they'd get 7,550. Doesn't that make it seem likely that they would prefer to continue with their current strategy rather than use the money to buy votes then? It seems likely that they ended up with more than 7550 votes for their 57M, especially considering that 7550 votes would be a smaller proportion of total votes in a system where people could get more than one vote. While very interesting, I don't think a system like this really addresses the main problems which are more to do with the need for an educated and informed populace than anything else.
- glenweyl 12y ago
  This is a great point. We address it in great depth in the paper with Posner, Voting Squared (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956). QV helps here, a lot we hope, because most current expenditure on advertising is useful because it targets very indifferent swing voters who feel a duty to vote but do not care one way or the other. They can easily be swayed by noisy and wasteful advertising. But under QV they would not matter much as they would never cast more than a very small vote in either direction. On the other hand persuading those who really know an issue to feel a bit more strongly or less strongly would have a lot of value. This would make the sort of public discourse that was encouraged much more intelligent and mature, like investigative reports rather than slanderous or vacuous ad copy.