Entrenched interests with a large body of people attached would be able to use such a thing more effectively than the public at large. Consider the case of coal power: it appears that most people have a soft preference for coal power plants to go away; coal power plant workers, coal miners, and coal mining towns have a very strong preference for them to remain or expand.
This could easily mean the coal industry effectively uses this mechanism to advance coal interests, or at least that it sets overcoming coal’s efforts as the minimum threshold.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to disentangle inadequate equilibria shifting from general equilibria shifting, including the case of shifting to the same equilibrium which might be thought of as equilibria fixing.
That being said, even if such activity takes place it will (presumably) be rendered transparent by the mechanism. I think the new information gained across all equilibria could outweigh an evil shift or an evil fix on some of them.
Addendum: I think the key variable here is how much cheaper and easier the mechanism makes coordination relative to the actual cost that gets people with soft preferences to participate.
It feels like because the groups that are already working to drive inadequate equilibria are already investing in coordination mechanisms, making coordination cheaper and easier will be a net-loss until the soft preference threshold is crossed.
Entrenched interests with a large body of people attached would be able to use such a thing more effectively than the public at large. Consider the case of coal power: it appears that most people have a soft preference for coal power plants to go away; coal power plant workers, coal miners, and coal mining towns have a very strong preference for them to remain or expand.
This could easily mean the coal industry effectively uses this mechanism to advance coal interests, or at least that it sets overcoming coal’s efforts as the minimum threshold.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to disentangle inadequate equilibria shifting from general equilibria shifting, including the case of shifting to the same equilibrium which might be thought of as equilibria fixing.
That being said, even if such activity takes place it will (presumably) be rendered transparent by the mechanism. I think the new information gained across all equilibria could outweigh an evil shift or an evil fix on some of them.
Addendum: I think the key variable here is how much cheaper and easier the mechanism makes coordination relative to the actual cost that gets people with soft preferences to participate.
It feels like because the groups that are already working to drive inadequate equilibria are already investing in coordination mechanisms, making coordination cheaper and easier will be a net-loss until the soft preference threshold is crossed.