It does my heart good to see this kind of discussion. Just one comment on the assembly issue where James wrote ...
> At least two basic types of threshold are possible: One would be to >simply give seats to the 435 people who hold the greatest total number of >proxies. And Abdul responded ... >Yes, that is the solution I came up with. A meeting determines what >is the optimum size, N, then the N proxies with the most votes are >full members. It would actually not be difficult to do. My response: It seems to me that each connected component of the DP network should have a seat in the assembly, unless that makes the assembly too large. In that eventuality one possibility is to require each of the smaller components to attach itself to one of the N larger components by delegation. But this solution bothers me because the "require" is a constraint that violates the otherwise voluntary delegation principle. Another thing that bothers me is that even the largest of the natural components of the DP network might be so small that that the N=500 largest components together might fail to represent even one percent of the population, total. These two objections might not obtain in typical cases, but it would be nice to have a method that finessed these potential problems, because when there are problems at the extremes, manipulators have incentive to press towards the extremes that favor them. Forest
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