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Re:Quadratic Voting (2014) by notahacker on Sunday May 03, 2015 @08:19AM (#9481000)
The "artificial currency" would ensure votes accurately reflect the importance an individual attaches to an issue relative to other votes, but in practice this gives significantly more "voting power" to groups which seldom participate in votes, even where it is difficult to believe the intensity of their preferences are stronger. Given a fixed budget to be used over a number of votes, an essentially apolitical person told by their community leader to use all their votes in opposing a particular issue they know little about will have more influence on the outcome than a highly-informed, politically-motivated and civic minded regular referendum participant, yet it's difficult to argue the absolute intensity of the preference of the regular voter is lower (this is of course related to the standard welfare economics criticism of cardinal utilities).

This isn't a problem if the individuals apportioning their vote budget are similarly-highly-motivated legislators prioritising from a known raft of policies whilst being well informed about which initiatives are most likely to meet with strong opposition (though it significantly advantages parties able to coordinate the efficient distribution of their votes). Probably they can handle the complexities of a voting budget that compensates the losers too.

But for a broader electorate that doesn't excel in performing stochastic optimisation problems, doesn't have good intelligence to help them vote tactically, doesn't know what future votes might be, the quadratic nature of the voting system doesn't deal with the problem of budgeted and secret voting being a game of iterated prisoners' dilemma; it might even intensify the problems.

It's not too difficult to devise a scenario in which it actually makes the "tyranny of the majority" problem worse: a minority of bigots wish very strongly to enact a law against a minority of regular targets. The disinterested majority wishes to avoid diluting their future voting power by participating, whilst the victimised minority wishes to hold back some of their voting power to avoid being disenfranchised when faced with conceivable future bullying initiatives[1]. In a secret ballot, the bigots can conceivably win if the groups are a similar size (even if they can subsequently reverse the decision)

[1]This is mitigated if the losers get their own votes back as compensation, but actually worsened if they get higher compensation, in which case optimum strategy in a iterated electoral battle is to win by the narrowest possible margin, whilst voting for something incredibly unpopular is a practical way to increase your future influence.

Re:Quadratic Voting (2014) by glenweyl on Sunday May 03, 2015 @08:26AM (#9481022)
I cannot completely follow this scenario, but if you can write it up as an actual equilibrium analysis I would be fascinated to see this. I have worked very hard to come up with cases where QV does worse than one-person-one-vote and have never found a case where it occurred by a significant margin. But your basic point, that allowing exchange with a broader set of goods to make sure that if all voting is more valued by people they can have more overall voting influence, is something I very much agree with and why I think that while artificial currency is an improvement over one-person-one-vote eventually using cash will be better.
Re:Quadratic Voting (2014) by notahacker on Sunday May 03, 2015 @10:01AM (#9481304)
To be honest the premise of my argument is that a static equilibrium wouldn't be reached given uncertainty about others' preferences, risk aversion and a multi-stage game, but here's a simple edge case scenario

Imagine a scenario in which there are N Jews, N neoNazis (for simplicity: example works if the Jews simply believe the number of Nazis is approximately equal) and yN ordinary citizens. Each individual in those groups has an equal budget to distribute between initiatives V(1)...V(X), where X > 2.

neoNazis desire a "yes" vote for both initiatives V(1) and V(2) - let's call them "internment" and "pogroms" - so strongly that they are (or are believed to be) willing to forego all votes on initiatives V(3)...V(X) to pass them

Jews have similarly strong views on not being interned or the victim of pogroms, but in the absence of adequate information on how the neoNazis will use their votes cannot be assured of allocating their voting budget between V(1) and V(2) in a way sufficient to negate the votes of the neoNazis on both issues. (Note also that the existential threat posed by V(1) and V(2) sitting on the [future] referendum list also deters the Jews from using part of their budget to influence votes on V(3)...V(X) in ways which might improve their individual utilities)

If ordinary citizens have a preference for a "no" vote which would be sufficiently strong for them to vote against it in a regular referendum, but insufficiently strong for them to allocate voting budget that could otherwise purchase decisions on initiatives V(3)...V(X) the moderate majority will not provide the same bulwark against extremism as they do under a 1 person 1 vote system. If all or most Jews decide that pogroms are significantly worse than incarceration and are sufficiently risk averse to warrant allocating all their budget to eliminate the possibility of an equal number of Nazis enacting V(2), it's surprisingly easy and inexpensive in terms of voting budget for the Nazis to pass V(1). The only way I can see the Jews avoiding both initiatives being passed is to put the neoNazis on the defensive with an equally vicious anti-Nazi counter-proposal - assuming Nazis can be targeted as effectively as Jews - but I'm not convinced that mutually assured destruction is the ideal way of resolving voting conflicts.

Unfortunately, this also applies to less extreme examples where balloting is secret and intentions uncertain: in order to shift the Nash equilibrium of a particular proposal in your favour you simply raise the spectre of an [additional, and credible] proposal you anticipate your adversaries will like even less.

Re:Quadratic Voting (2014) by glenweyl on Sunday May 03, 2015 @10:59AM (#9481502)
This is why there is a nominating procedure. I don't think this is a great forum for hashing this all out without a white board, but I would be happy to do it with a whiteboard. I think I could persuade you that there is no case where this can happen in an equilibrium of any model, including with uncertainty about preferences, risk-aversion, etc. to a significant extent and over a reasonable range of cases more than happens in 1p1v. One has to average over a reasonable range of cases to compare different systems. 1p1v can extremely easily lead to a nazi equilibrium as we have seen in practice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...