Very interesting idea! The first critique that comes to mind is that the increased voting power given to those whose bills are not passed risks giving undue power to stupid or inhumane voters. Normally, if someone has a bad idea, hopefully it will not pass, and that is that. Under Ophelimo, however, adherents of bad ideas would gather more and more votes to spend over time, until their folly was made law, at least for a time. It’s also morally questionable-deweighting someone’s judgments because they have been voting for and receiving (hopefully) good things may satisfy certain conceptions of fairness (they’ve gotten their way; now it’s someone else’s turn), but it makes less sense in governance, where the goal should be to produce beneficial policies, rather than to be “fair” if fairness yields harmful decisions.
The increased weight given to more successful predictors seems wise. While this might make the policy a harder sell (it may seem less democratic), it also ensures that the system can focus on learning from those best able to make good decisions. It’s interesting that you’re combining this (a meritocratic element) with the vote re-balancing (an egalitarian element). One could imagine this leaning to a system of carefully looking to the best forecasters while valuing the desires of all citizens; this might be an excellent outcome.
An obvious concern is people giving dishonest forecasts in an effort to more effectively sway policy. While this is somewhat disincentivized by the penalties to one’s forecaster rating if the bill is passed, and the uncertainty about what bills may pass provides some disincentive to do this even with disfavored bills (as you address in the article), I suspect more incentive is needed for honesty. Dishonest forecasting, especially predicting poor results to try to kill a bill, remains tempting, especially for voters with one or two pet issues. If someone risks losing credibility to affect other issues, but successfully shot down a bill on their favorite hot button issue, they very well may consider the result worth it.
Finally, there is the question of what happens when the entire electorate can affect policy directly. In contemporary representative democracy, the only power of the voters is to select a politician, typically from a group that has been fairly heavily screened by various status requirements. While giving direct power to the people might help avoid much of the associated corruption and wasteful signalling, it risks giving increased weight to people without the requisite knowledge and intelligence to make good policy.
increased voting power given to those whose bills are not passed risks giving undue power to stupid or inhumane voters.
True. Equalizing the influence of all parties (over the long term at least) doesn’t just risk giving such people power; it outright does give them power. At the time of the design, I justified it on the grounds that (1) it forces either compromise or power-sharing, (2) I haven’t found a good way to technocratically distinguish humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones, or rightly-reviled inhumane minorities from wrongly-reviled humane minorities, and (3) the worry that if a group’s interests are excluded, then they have no stake in the system, and so they have reason to fight against the system in a costly way. Do any alternatives come to your mind?
Dishonest forecasting, especially predicting poor results to try to kill a bill, remains tempting, especially for voters with one or two pet issues.
Indeed. I spent a great deal of time and effort investigating this for possible solutions. Haven’t found any yet, though. It’s the only attack vector that I know for sure would work.
While giving direct power to the people might help avoid much of the associated corruption and wasteful signalling, it risks giving increased weight to people without the requisite knowledge and intelligence to make good policy.
I may have been unduly influenced by my anarchist youth: I’m more worried about the negative effects of concentrating power than about the negative effects of distributing it. Is there any objective way to compare those effects, however, that isn’t quite similar to how Ophelimo tries to maximize public satisfaction with their own goals?
“True. Equalizing the influence of all parties (over the long term at least) doesn’t just risk giving such people power; it outright does give them power. At the time of the design, I justified it on the grounds that (1) it forces either compromise or power-sharing, (2) I haven’t found a good way to technocratically distinguish humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones, or rightly-reviled inhumane minorities from wrongly-reviled humane minorities, and (3) the worry that if a group’s interests are excluded, then they have no stake in the system, and so they have reason to fight against the system in a costly way. Do any alternatives come to your mind?”
1. True, but is the compromise beneficial? Normally one wants to compromise either to gain useful input from good decision makers, or else to avoid conflict. The people one would be compromising with here would (assuming wisdom of crowds) be poor decision makers, and conventional democracy seems quite peaceful. 2. Why are you interested in distinguishing humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones? Neither one is likely to give you good policy. Wrongly-reviled humane minorities deserve power, certainly, but rebalancing votes to give it to them (when you can’t reliably distinguish them) is injecting noise into the system and hoping it helps. 3. True, but this has always been a trade-off in governance-how much do you compromise with someone to keep the peace vs. promote your own values at the risk of conflict? Again, conventional democracy seems quite good at maintaining peace; while one might propose a system that seeks to produce better policy, it seems odd to propose a system that offers worse policy in exchange for averting conflict when we don’t have much conflict.
“I may have been unduly influenced by my anarchist youth: I’m more worried about the negative effects of concentrating power than about the negative effects of distributing it. Is there any objective way to compare those effects, however, that isn’t quite similar to how Ophelimo tries to maximize public satisfaction with their own goals?”
Asking the public how satisfied they are is hopefully a fairly effective way of measuring policy success. Perhaps not in situations where much of the public has irrational values (what would Christian fundamentalists report about gay marriage?), but asking people how happy they are about their own lives should work as well as anything we can do. This strikes me as one of the strongest points of Ophelimo, but it’s worth noting that satisfaction surveys are compatible with any form of government, not just this proposal.
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too negative; it’s a fascinating idea!
Very interesting idea! The first critique that comes to mind is that the increased voting power given to those whose bills are not passed risks giving undue power to stupid or inhumane voters. Normally, if someone has a bad idea, hopefully it will not pass, and that is that. Under Ophelimo, however, adherents of bad ideas would gather more and more votes to spend over time, until their folly was made law, at least for a time. It’s also morally questionable-deweighting someone’s judgments because they have been voting for and receiving (hopefully) good things may satisfy certain conceptions of fairness (they’ve gotten their way; now it’s someone else’s turn), but it makes less sense in governance, where the goal should be to produce beneficial policies, rather than to be “fair” if fairness yields harmful decisions.
The increased weight given to more successful predictors seems wise. While this might make the policy a harder sell (it may seem less democratic), it also ensures that the system can focus on learning from those best able to make good decisions. It’s interesting that you’re combining this (a meritocratic element) with the vote re-balancing (an egalitarian element). One could imagine this leaning to a system of carefully looking to the best forecasters while valuing the desires of all citizens; this might be an excellent outcome.
An obvious concern is people giving dishonest forecasts in an effort to more effectively sway policy. While this is somewhat disincentivized by the penalties to one’s forecaster rating if the bill is passed, and the uncertainty about what bills may pass provides some disincentive to do this even with disfavored bills (as you address in the article), I suspect more incentive is needed for honesty. Dishonest forecasting, especially predicting poor results to try to kill a bill, remains tempting, especially for voters with one or two pet issues. If someone risks losing credibility to affect other issues, but successfully shot down a bill on their favorite hot button issue, they very well may consider the result worth it.
Finally, there is the question of what happens when the entire electorate can affect policy directly. In contemporary representative democracy, the only power of the voters is to select a politician, typically from a group that has been fairly heavily screened by various status requirements. While giving direct power to the people might help avoid much of the associated corruption and wasteful signalling, it risks giving increased weight to people without the requisite knowledge and intelligence to make good policy.
True. Equalizing the influence of all parties (over the long term at least) doesn’t just risk giving such people power; it outright does give them power. At the time of the design, I justified it on the grounds that (1) it forces either compromise or power-sharing, (2) I haven’t found a good way to technocratically distinguish humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones, or rightly-reviled inhumane minorities from wrongly-reviled humane minorities, and (3) the worry that if a group’s interests are excluded, then they have no stake in the system, and so they have reason to fight against the system in a costly way. Do any alternatives come to your mind?
Indeed. I spent a great deal of time and effort investigating this for possible solutions. Haven’t found any yet, though. It’s the only attack vector that I know for sure would work.
I may have been unduly influenced by my anarchist youth: I’m more worried about the negative effects of concentrating power than about the negative effects of distributing it. Is there any objective way to compare those effects, however, that isn’t quite similar to how Ophelimo tries to maximize public satisfaction with their own goals?
“True. Equalizing the influence of all parties (over the long term at least) doesn’t just risk giving such people power; it outright does give them power. At the time of the design, I justified it on the grounds that (1) it forces either compromise or power-sharing, (2) I haven’t found a good way to technocratically distinguish humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones, or rightly-reviled inhumane minorities from wrongly-reviled humane minorities, and (3) the worry that if a group’s interests are excluded, then they have no stake in the system, and so they have reason to fight against the system in a costly way. Do any alternatives come to your mind?”
1. True, but is the compromise beneficial? Normally one wants to compromise either to gain useful input from good decision makers, or else to avoid conflict. The people one would be compromising with here would (assuming wisdom of crowds) be poor decision makers, and conventional democracy seems quite peaceful. 2. Why are you interested in distinguishing humane-but-dumb voters from inhumane-but-smart ones? Neither one is likely to give you good policy. Wrongly-reviled humane minorities deserve power, certainly, but rebalancing votes to give it to them (when you can’t reliably distinguish them) is injecting noise into the system and hoping it helps. 3. True, but this has always been a trade-off in governance-how much do you compromise with someone to keep the peace vs. promote your own values at the risk of conflict? Again, conventional democracy seems quite good at maintaining peace; while one might propose a system that seeks to produce better policy, it seems odd to propose a system that offers worse policy in exchange for averting conflict when we don’t have much conflict.
“I may have been unduly influenced by my anarchist youth: I’m more worried about the negative effects of concentrating power than about the negative effects of distributing it. Is there any objective way to compare those effects, however, that isn’t quite similar to how Ophelimo tries to maximize public satisfaction with their own goals?”
Asking the public how satisfied they are is hopefully a fairly effective way of measuring policy success. Perhaps not in situations where much of the public has irrational values (what would Christian fundamentalists report about gay marriage?), but asking people how happy they are about their own lives should work as well as anything we can do. This strikes me as one of the strongest points of Ophelimo, but it’s worth noting that satisfaction surveys are compatible with any form of government, not just this proposal.
Hopefully this doesn’t come across as too negative; it’s a fascinating idea!