3 ms·

Hi Glen, I mentioned this in another comment, but copying here because I'd like to hear your thoughts on it: > If enough people are participating in a vote, th

by jmckib 11y ago

Hi Glen, I mentioned this in another comment, but copying here because I'd like to hear your thoughts on it: > If enough people are participating in a vote, then the cost of voting (e.g., research + going to polling station) outweighs the benefit (possibility of changing the outcome). The cost of voting is roughly fixed, while the benefit decreases rapidly as the number of participants grows. Does quadratic voting address this, or are there other ideas you've heard of that address that problem?

glenweyl 11y ago
Fantastic question. QV does not really address this much; at a quantitative level you are right that it reduces the problem a bit, but you can't beat those asymptotic properties you highlight. The right solution is representative bodies (or random samples). Great work on this by Jerry Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01718517?LI=true http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01718517?LI=tru... If you make the set of deciders smaller this starts to go away. This is arguably the fundamental justification for representative rather than direct democracy. There is a nice property we believe QV has that we (myself and Richard Zeckhauser) are working to prove which is that if you have representatives elected via QV and then those representatives use QV to vote you get efficiency in a hierarchical fashion. So while I don't think QV directly solves this issue, I think it fits nicely into a broader system that does.
- jmckib 11y ago
  Thanks for answering my question! I hadn't thought of using random samples. So maybe a good solution is QV for representatives, with only a small random sample of the population being able to vote. The representatives should also use QV, of course. I just read a big chunk of your paper "Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics", and I really enjoyed it. For a long time I've wanted to do an open source project related to characterizing an optimal government, or at least simulating the outcomes you could expect from different types of governments. If you know of a useful way to go about doing this I'd love to hear it. By the way, I reside in a coliving space with 50+ people, and we've struggled with voting on certain issues that minority groups feel strongly about. I will definitely be suggesting QV!

by jmckib 11y ago

glenweyl 11y ago

Fantastic question. QV does not really address this much; at a quantitative level you are right that it reduces the problem a bit, but you can't beat those asymptotic properties you highlight. The right solution is representative bodies (or random samples). Great work on this by Jerry Green and Jean-Jacques Laffont: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01718517?LI=true http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01718517?LI=tru... If you make the set of deciders smaller this starts to go away. This is arguably the fundamental justification for representative rather than direct democracy. There is a nice property we believe QV has that we (myself and Richard Zeckhauser) are working to prove which is that if you have representatives elected via QV and then those representatives use QV to vote you get efficiency in a hierarchical fashion. So while I don't think QV directly solves this issue, I think it fits nicely into a broader system that does.

jmckib 11y ago
Thanks for answering my question! I hadn't thought of using random samples. So maybe a good solution is QV for representatives, with only a small random sample of the population being able to vote. The representatives should also use QV, of course. I just read a big chunk of your paper "Voting Squared: Quadratic Voting in Democratic Politics", and I really enjoyed it. For a long time I've wanted to do an open source project related to characterizing an optimal government, or at least simulating the outcomes you could expect from different types of governments. If you know of a useful way to go about doing this I'd love to hear it. By the way, I reside in a coliving space with 50+ people, and we've struggled with voting on certain issues that minority groups feel strongly about. I will definitely be suggesting QV!