A huge social problem which could arise in such a system is “buying votes”. Actually directly buying votes would probably be illegal, but depending on how it’s enforced, there will probably be a lot of ways around the law. So you might see a class of poor people who need to sell their votes to the highest bidder to survive. This creates a principle/agent problem between the vote-sellers and vote-buyers. Although the vote-sellers are incentivised to sell their votes to the buyer who will best look out for their interests overall, their ability to discern this is limited, so the market of vote-buyers will not consist of people who are looking out for vote-seller’s best interests. Rather, vote sellers will be looking for the highest cash payout, so the market will become purely a way for big-money interests to exchange cash for votes. This kind of influence on government policy-making would allow big business to craft policies in their own interests, breaking the democratic approximation of utilitarianism. If things get worse, democratic ideals are gradually eroded, eventually leading the oligarchy into a dangerous fight for power which could result in a string of dictatorships.
Couldn’t this be solved by having it be anonymous? Maybe a central government server records who is deferring to whom, but doesn’t tell you who in particular is deferring to you. Maybe it tells you roughly how many people have deferred to you but has some error and lag so you can’t use it to figure out whether any particular person did.
Or maybe that + making it illegal to buy votes would be sufficient to keep this to manageable levels.
Yeah, it seems quite possible that measures like this will be sufficient. On the one hand, it feels like you’re fighting a market, so the market will try and wiggle out of whatever constraints you put on it. On the other hand, what we do today is indeed sufficient to almost completely eliminate this problem (except for how advertisement dollars can sorta buy votes). So it seems possible to do fairly well.
I think a lot more quantitative modeling of voting patterns and value of votes would be justified before adopting this. It’s not clear to me that “buying votes” is a problem (or that it’s a bigger problem than non-monetary vote swaying through misleading advertising or celebrity platforms).
Agreed—just trying to think of possible failures, really. I think it would probably be a huge problem if absolutely nothing was done to prevent it. But it is possible that it’s an easy problem to avoid.
I would think that one of the features that defines “selling” is that once agreed on sells will be enforced by a court. Once you have given the thing away you have given the thing away and can’t choose to get it back. “you always have the right to take it back” in essence means inalienable right to recall which means its basically impossible to use the vote against its originator.
A desperate person ends up “selling” the vote, spends the money and then gets unhappy about vote usage. Recalling the vote as inalienable right propably leaves the buyer very angry. There is likely to be a claim about debt owed for the price. So if the buyer goes to contract enforcement agencies to forcibly collect the money would the police or court with a straight face play along? No. There is no real product for any buyer to receive.
One problem which could arise—if you can take back votes instantly, but the other party instantly knows it was you, then the benefits of being in a club could be revoked based on this.
Everyone is free to leave the “get X dollars in the mail every week” club at any time, but once you leave, it’s difficult to get back in (EG, requires sending votes w/o revoking them for a specified time period to re-establish trust—just an example).
Of course this becomes very difficult if the votes are somehow made anonymous, EG slow feedback on how many votes people have actually assigned to your name.
Ah, true. I suppose I started thinking “always having the right to take it back seems a bit impractical, maybe that part will be removed in implementation”.
Although really, it is only impractical for paper-trail versions, where physical votes are moved around.
A huge social problem which could arise in such a system is “buying votes”. Actually directly buying votes would probably be illegal, but depending on how it’s enforced, there will probably be a lot of ways around the law. So you might see a class of poor people who need to sell their votes to the highest bidder to survive. This creates a principle/agent problem between the vote-sellers and vote-buyers. Although the vote-sellers are incentivised to sell their votes to the buyer who will best look out for their interests overall, their ability to discern this is limited, so the market of vote-buyers will not consist of people who are looking out for vote-seller’s best interests. Rather, vote sellers will be looking for the highest cash payout, so the market will become purely a way for big-money interests to exchange cash for votes. This kind of influence on government policy-making would allow big business to craft policies in their own interests, breaking the democratic approximation of utilitarianism. If things get worse, democratic ideals are gradually eroded, eventually leading the oligarchy into a dangerous fight for power which could result in a string of dictatorships.
Couldn’t this be solved by having it be anonymous? Maybe a central government server records who is deferring to whom, but doesn’t tell you who in particular is deferring to you. Maybe it tells you roughly how many people have deferred to you but has some error and lag so you can’t use it to figure out whether any particular person did.
Or maybe that + making it illegal to buy votes would be sufficient to keep this to manageable levels.
Yeah, it seems quite possible that measures like this will be sufficient. On the one hand, it feels like you’re fighting a market, so the market will try and wiggle out of whatever constraints you put on it. On the other hand, what we do today is indeed sufficient to almost completely eliminate this problem (except for how advertisement dollars can sorta buy votes). So it seems possible to do fairly well.
Doesn’t seem like a unique additional problem ie current style suffer from similar mechanism quite to the same extent.
I think a lot more quantitative modeling of voting patterns and value of votes would be justified before adopting this. It’s not clear to me that “buying votes” is a problem (or that it’s a bigger problem than non-monetary vote swaying through misleading advertising or celebrity platforms).
Agreed—just trying to think of possible failures, really. I think it would probably be a huge problem if absolutely nothing was done to prevent it. But it is possible that it’s an easy problem to avoid.
I would think that one of the features that defines “selling” is that once agreed on sells will be enforced by a court. Once you have given the thing away you have given the thing away and can’t choose to get it back. “you always have the right to take it back” in essence means inalienable right to recall which means its basically impossible to use the vote against its originator.
A desperate person ends up “selling” the vote, spends the money and then gets unhappy about vote usage. Recalling the vote as inalienable right propably leaves the buyer very angry. There is likely to be a claim about debt owed for the price. So if the buyer goes to contract enforcement agencies to forcibly collect the money would the police or court with a straight face play along? No. There is no real product for any buyer to receive.
One problem which could arise—if you can take back votes instantly, but the other party instantly knows it was you, then the benefits of being in a club could be revoked based on this.
Everyone is free to leave the “get X dollars in the mail every week” club at any time, but once you leave, it’s difficult to get back in (EG, requires sending votes w/o revoking them for a specified time period to re-establish trust—just an example).
Of course this becomes very difficult if the votes are somehow made anonymous, EG slow feedback on how many votes people have actually assigned to your name.
Ah, true. I suppose I started thinking “always having the right to take it back seems a bit impractical, maybe that part will be removed in implementation”.
Although really, it is only impractical for paper-trail versions, where physical votes are moved around.