Since we are talking about political systems, how about eliminating the candidates and the election?

[Loren Pechtel]

Proposal: A direct democracy via proxies.

To participate in the system you must pick someone to be your proxy. You nominate one person per office. These can be the same person or different people.

Each person is assigned a day of the year, proxies may only be changed on that date (you enter it in advance, it takes effect on that date.)

Consider the US senate--it has 100 people. Ok, count up the votes you have. As an average person with no public face that's probably only your own. Are you in the top 100? Obviously not, ok, your vote(s) are passed along to whoever you listed as your proxy. The process repeats, are they in the top 100? No, pass it along. Occasionally proxies will end up nullified because they go in a loop (in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies.) Other than that as they pass through hops they will concentrate until you're down to the 100--those become the Senate.

Note that while you always know how many proxies you have the actual process is secret, nobody knows whose proxies they hold.

There is no election day so you can't play to the election--the shift will be gradual as people change their proxies. Since there are an equal number of people on any given day all days are equal. Perhaps some offices should have a slower rate of proxy change (the same as we elect Senators for 6 years but Congressmen for 2) to add more inertia to the system.

 

[bilby]

Proposal: A direct democracy via proxies.

To participate in the system you must pick someone to be your proxy. You nominate one person per office. These can be the same person or different people.

Each person is assigned a day of the year, proxies may only be changed on that date (you enter it in advance, it takes effect on that date.)

Consider the US senate--it has 100 people. Ok, count up the votes you have. As an average person with no public face that's probably only your own. Are you in the top 100? Obviously not, ok, your vote(s) are passed along to whoever you listed as your proxy. The process repeats, are they in the top 100? No, pass it along. Occasionally proxies will end up nullified because they go in a loop (in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies.) Other than that as they pass through hops they will concentrate until you're down to the 100--those become the Senate.

Note that while you always know how many proxies you have the actual process is secret, nobody knows whose proxies they hold.

There is no election day so you can't play to the election--the shift will be gradual as people change their proxies. Since there are an equal number of people on any given day all days are equal. Perhaps some offices should have a slower rate of proxy change (the same as we elect Senators for 6 years but Congressmen for 2) to add more inertia to the system.

If the proxies are secret, how does this work? Telepathy? Seance?

Someone has to know who gets whose proxies.

I also suspect that your airy dismissal of loops, "in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies", hides a massive flaw in the system. As the number of people still in the system decreases, the probability that the next round of proxy assignments will lead to a loop grows very rapidly. I suspect (though I haven't attempted to model it) that there is almost no chance of getting hundreds of millions of participants boiled down to just 100 without creating these loops; and that therefore almost all possible re-assignments after a loop is found will lead to another loop, rather than to a workable solution. So a kludge of some kind to break circularities will be needed.

 

[beero1000]

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If the proxies are secret, how does this work? Telepathy? Seance?

Someone has to know who gets whose proxies.

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

I also suspect that your airy dismissal of loops, "in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies", hides a massive flaw in the system. As the number of people still in the system decreases, the probability that the next round of proxy assignments will lead to a loop grows very rapidly. I suspect (though I haven't attempted to model it) that there is almost no chance of getting hundreds of millions of participants boiled down to just 100 without creating these loops; and that therefore almost all possible re-assignments after a loop is found will lead to another loop, rather than to a workable solution. So a kludge of some kind to break circularities will be needed.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Note, also, that apparently I wasn't clear--the presence of loops simply temporarily takes those people out of the process, it doesn't abort the process. The "election" happens anyway, although it might end up changing down the road.

 

[bilby]

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

I also suspect that your airy dismissal of loops, "in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies", hides a massive flaw in the system. As the number of people still in the system decreases, the probability that the next round of proxy assignments will lead to a loop grows very rapidly. I suspect (though I haven't attempted to model it) that there is almost no chance of getting hundreds of millions of participants boiled down to just 100 without creating these loops; and that therefore almost all possible re-assignments after a loop is found will lead to another loop, rather than to a workable solution. So a kludge of some kind to break circularities will be needed.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Your system appears to rely on the untested assumption that respect is a one way street - that there is a universally or at least widely agreed hierarchy of respectability. My experience suggests that respect tends to be mutual, which if true, leads to a situation that is WORSE for your model than randomness would be.

 

[beero1000]

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

I also suspect that your airy dismissal of loops, "in which case everyone involved is notified that the loop happened and given a new chance to assign their proxies", hides a massive flaw in the system. As the number of people still in the system decreases, the probability that the next round of proxy assignments will lead to a loop grows very rapidly. I suspect (though I haven't attempted to model it) that there is almost no chance of getting hundreds of millions of participants boiled down to just 100 without creating these loops; and that therefore almost all possible re-assignments after a loop is found will lead to another loop, rather than to a workable solution. So a kludge of some kind to break circularities will be needed.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Note, also, that apparently I wasn't clear--the presence of loops simply temporarily takes those people out of the process, it doesn't abort the process. The "election" happens anyway, although it might end up changing down the road.

It appears that you don't understand the result. It holds for all directed graphs, so it is true regardless of the arrangement of proxies. Furthermore, temporarily deleting the vertices that lead to the loop doesn't help, the reduced graph is still a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 - you just get more loops. At the end, you have a structural decomposition into 'respected cycles' with no way of consolidating. Having people re-choose their proxies doesn't help either - the updated graph will still be full of loops...

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Note, also, that apparently I wasn't clear--the presence of loops simply temporarily takes those people out of the process, it doesn't abort the process. The "election" happens anyway, although it might end up changing down the road.

It appears that you don't understand the result. It holds for all directed graphs, so it is true regardless of the arrangement of proxies. Furthermore, temporarily deleting the vertices that lead to the loop doesn't help, the reduced graph is still a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 - you just get more loops. At the end, you have a structural decomposition into 'respected cycles' with no way of consolidating. Having people re-choose their proxies doesn't help either - the updated graph will still be full of loops...

I'm all in favor of this being tried. Though I don't understand it past the part about me choosing my proxy and being eliminated myself at step one, which I can put up with.

Presumably there is some system of "loops" and "hops" and "vertexes" and "out-degrees" and so on which finally reduces the number of candidates to 100 (or whatever number are to be elected). So I just accept that on faith. (The mathematicians etc. will figure it out somehow.)

A possible flaw is that too many people will think there is tampering with the system, so there will be the usual distrust and accusations of rigging and fraud.

But also, these elections would be characterized by much of the same demagoguery and fanfare and circus atmosphere we have now. The speeches and phony "debates" would be similar to what we have now, as the leading candidates would campaign and tell lies about each other and engage in personal insults and mudslinging, because this will be the way to win popularity and win the contest for proxy votes. The winners would all be hustlers who are charismatic and aggressive and good at manipulating people and pleasing the mob and spewing out the latest popular slogans.

But still it would be better than what we have now, since everyone would have their chance to vote for someone they really agree with.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Your system appears to rely on the untested assumption that respect is a one way street - that there is a universally or at least widely agreed hierarchy of respectability. My experience suggests that respect tends to be mutual, which if true, leads to a situation that is WORSE for your model than randomness would be.

But you're going to pick proxies that you respect and which have higher public visibility than you do.

At the top you would certainly get loops--but a loop in the frontrunners doesn't matter because it won't be evaluated in the first place as you only pass your proxies if you don't make it across the fence.

- - - Updated - - -

It appears that you don't understand the result. It holds for all directed graphs, so it is true regardless of the arrangement of proxies. Furthermore, temporarily deleting the vertices that lead to the loop doesn't help, the reduced graph is still a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 - you just get more loops. At the end, you have a structural decomposition into 'respected cycles' with no way of consolidating. Having people re-choose their proxies doesn't help either - the updated graph will still be full of loops...

Except you don't follow the out vectors at the top.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I'm all in favor of this being tried. Though I don't understand it past the part about me choosing my proxy and being eliminated myself at step one, which I can put up with.

Naming a proxy doesn't take you out of the running.

Lets take a simple system, we have Alice, Bob and Chris.

Alice picks Chris.
Bob picks Chris.
Chris picks Alice.

Bob's vote is easy to resolve as there is no loop.
Alice and Chris are more problematic but we can still resolve it because Bob's vote is feeding Chris, not Alice.

Presumably there is some system of "loops" and "hops" and "vertexes" and "out-degrees" and so on which finally reduces the number of candidates to 100 (or whatever number are to be elected). So I just accept that on faith. (The mathematicians etc. will figure it out somehow.)

You don't accept such things on faith. I see their objection about loops but I don't think it keeps the system from working.

A possible flaw is that too many people will think there is tampering with the system, so there will be the usual distrust and accusations of rigging and fraud.

Unfortunately, it needs a trusted system of some kind. I'm not completely sure you can maintain secrecy and yet have a verifiable system.

But also, these elections would be characterized by much of the same demagoguery and fanfare and circus atmosphere we have now. The speeches and phony "debates" would be similar to what we have now, as the leading candidates would campaign and tell lies about each other and engage in personal insults and mudslinging, because this will be the way to win popularity and win the contest for proxy votes. The winners would all be hustlers who are charismatic and aggressive and good at manipulating people and pleasing the mob and spewing out the latest popular slogans.

The big difference is that there is no election day--you can't have a campaign mode because it's done all the time.

 

[Bronzeage]

How do we choose the administrators of this system? Someone has to keep track of the records and make the phone calls.

"Yes, am I speaking to John Q. Proxy? I'm the election manager for your district and it is my honor to inform you that you are now a member of Congress. Yes, United States Congress, the one in Washington DC. Oh for Christ's sake, how bad could it be? You're the tenth on my list after nine other people said "No." I don't get it. What's so fucking bad about being a Congressman? Do you really want Number 11 to be your Congressman. The idiot wants dogs to have a representative in the UN. Do you want that? Really, after the last Congress passed the Mandatory No Socks on Thursday Law, Europe hasn't stopped laughing at us. Please, just come for one day. If you don't like it, you can go back home."








'

 

[bilby]

That "someone" can be a computer and it doesn't need to know who. All it needs to know is a number.

Theorem: If G is a finite directed graph where every vertex has out-degree 1 then G has a directed cycle.

The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.

If the assignments were random you would certainly be right--the graph would be full of loops. However, it's not random--people are going to pick proxies whose judgment they respect. The graph will mostly go up.

Your system appears to rely on the untested assumption that respect is a one way street - that there is a universally or at least widely agreed hierarchy of respectability. My experience suggests that respect tends to be mutual, which if true, leads to a situation that is WORSE for your model than randomness would be.

But you're going to pick proxies that you respect and which have higher public visibility than you do.

Am I?

You are not only making an unfounded assumption about how people will vote; you are also persistent in the error of thinking that 'respect' and 'public visibility' are sets with a significant intersection. That's not in evidence.

At the top you would certainly get loops--but a loop in the frontrunners doesn't matter because it won't be evaluated in the first place as you only pass your proxies if you don't make it across the fence.

I'm not sure if you realise this, but 100 is quite a lot less than 100,000,000. Loops will become a major problem long before your pool of candidates is small enough for it to be a non-issue.

 

[Bomb#20]

If the proxies are secret, how does this work? Telepathy? Seance?

Someone has to know who gets whose proxies.

The doomsday proxy device would be hooked up to a giant network of computers. A tape flash memory bank would be sufficient to hold a specific set of clearly defined circumstances under which the bombs votes are to be exploded propagated.

 

[Bomb#20]

Proposal: A direct democracy via proxies.

To participate in the system you must pick someone to be your proxy. ...
Each person is assigned a day of the year, proxies may only be changed on that date (you enter it in advance, it takes effect on that date.)

...Are you in the top 100? Obviously not, ok, your vote(s) are passed along to whoever you listed as your proxy. The process repeats, are they in the top 100? No, pass it along. ...

It looks to me like all the technical objections are due to the "you must" rule and the "top 100" rule. Those appear to be nonessential features, present only to make the system seem a little more familiar. Why wouldn't you let everybody who doesn't want to pick someone else as her proxy instead vote personally on every bill she cares about? Given that the whole system is computerized, there's no practical necessity to limit legislators to the number who'll fit in a building, or to require every legislator's vote to have the same weight. And when every policy wonk in the country is keeping his proxy for himself the problem of loops goes away.

Also, what's the point of the "proxies may only be changed on that date" rule? What is this, open enrollment for health insurance? What's wrong with letting somebody change her proxy the minute she finds out her current representative is planning to vote the wrong way on a bill she cares about?

Incidentally, I have a proposal for a name for your new system. It seems to me it should be called "representative democracy".

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Proposal: A direct democracy via proxies.

To participate in the system you must pick someone to be your proxy. ...
Each person is assigned a day of the year, proxies may only be changed on that date (you enter it in advance, it takes effect on that date.)

...Are you in the top 100? Obviously not, ok, your vote(s) are passed along to whoever you listed as your proxy. The process repeats, are they in the top 100? No, pass it along. ...

It looks to me like all the technical objections are due to the "you must" rule and the "top 100" rule. Those appear to be nonessential features, present only to make the system seem a little more familiar. Why wouldn't you let everybody who doesn't want to pick someone else as her proxy instead vote personally on every bill she cares about? Given that the whole system is computerized, there's no practical necessity to limit legislators to the number who'll fit in a building, or to require every legislator's vote to have the same weight. And when every policy wonk in the country is keeping his proxy for himself the problem of loops goes away.

Also, what's the point of the "proxies may only be changed on that date" rule? What is this, open enrollment for health insurance? What's wrong with letting somebody change her proxy the minute she finds out her current representative is planning to vote the wrong way on a bill she cares about?

Incidentally, I have a proposal for a name for your new system. It seems to me it should be called "representative democracy".

Direct democracy is not viable, there simply isn't time for the average person to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice.

 

[Bomb#20]

Direct democracy is not viable, there simply isn't time for the average person to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice.

There isn't enough time for a full-time professional legislator to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice. The California legislature considers over 2000 bills a year and passes about 1000 of them. Who the heck is going to read 2000 bills, let alone understand them? So why not let each person decide for himself whether he has time to judge a bill? The vast majority of voters are just going to pick a proxy and then get on with their lives. And when thousands of wonks decide they want to be low paid or unpaid legislators, great! They'll break up the loops in your proxy chains; and they'll probably be more educated about the bills they vote on than our current legislators. They won't have to spend four hours a day on fundraising, and chances are they'll care more about what the bills say and less about what the lobbyists say.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Direct democracy is not viable, there simply isn't time for the average person to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice.

There isn't enough time for a full-time professional legislator to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice. The California legislature considers over 2000 bills a year and passes about 1000 of them. Who the heck is going to read 2000 bills, let alone understand them? So why not let each person decide for himself whether he has time to judge a bill? The vast majority of voters are just going to pick a proxy and then get on with their lives. And when thousands of wonks decide they want to be low paid or unpaid legislators, great! They'll break up the loops in your proxy chains; and they'll probably be more educated about the bills they vote on than our current legislators. They won't have to spend four hours a day on fundraising, and chances are they'll care more about what the bills say and less about what the lobbyists say.

They have staffs to help with it--it's not just each having to do it entirely on their own.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Direct Democracy should be experimented with. It might work in some form.

There isn't enough time for a full-time professional legislator to learn enough about the measures to make a reasonable choice. The California legislature considers over 2000 bills a year and passes about 1000 of them. Who the heck is going to read 2000 bills, let alone understand them? So why not let each person decide for himself whether he has time to judge a bill? The vast majority of voters are just going to pick a proxy and then get on with their lives. And when thousands of wonks decide they want to be low paid or unpaid legislators, great! They'll break up the loops in your proxy chains; and they'll probably be more educated about the bills they vote on than our current legislators. They won't have to spend four hours a day on fundraising, and chances are they'll care more about what the bills say and less about what the lobbyists say.

They have staffs to help with it--it's not just each having to do it entirely on their own.

Those staffs would also be useful to the thousands/millions of unpaid voter-legislators who would study all the reports. Maybe also watch videos where details are explained.

Direct Democracy should be taken as a serious possibility, where everyone has a way to vote on everything presented. Maybe even on minor procedural questions, like voting on whether to bring the motion back up for a vote tomorrow or a week or two later.

There should be at least these two conditions:

1. There must be some procedure to ensure that everyone voting has knowledge of the issue being voted on. Those having too little knowledge must be excluded somehow. Perhaps everyone wanting to vote on a proposed bill has to be tested on the contents of the bill.

This could mean that in reality the total number voting on a particular measure might be only a few thousand, or a million or two on a high-profile issue. And hardly anyone would participate in every vote, or even half of them, or 1/10, but each participant would choose which issues to spend the necessary time on.

2. The whole Direct Democracy procedure has to first be tested in a symbolic form only, as a mock exercise, to see what the results would be. So first a period of testing, maybe for 3-5 years, before doing it for real.

And maybe phase it in slowly.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Proposal: A direct democracy via proxies.

Awful suggestion. Democracy is too democratic even today. We need less direct democracy. Not more. If you think Trump was bad, wait until direct democracy. Switzerland has had direct democracy since forever and is also Europe's most conservative country. Change happens at a snails pace over there. They were the last country in Europe to give women the vote (1988).

The people who shout the loudest are always the crazies. Sensible people just don't have the time or energy. In direct democracy you get rule by the crazies. All decisions are irrational and fear based.

So yeah... terrible idea. I'm happy with representative democracy. I want a system of rule by elites, but one which makes sure we can get rid of the person at the top if they get the idea of ruling in perpetuity. Which is what we have now. I'm happy about it.