On Mar 17, 2007, at 8:02 , Abd ul-Rahman Lomax wrote:
Asset Voting simply uses this; it assumes that if we would vote for
someone for the office, we would trust that person to choose
reasonably well a replacement for himself or herself if he or she
is unable to serve for whatever reason. If actually elected, this
is really what is going to happen with respect to much that is
covered under the duties of high office.
And given that voting under Asset becomes totally free of the need
for strategic considerations: just vote for the candidate you most
trust! -- I should be able to focus entirely on candidate
qualifications.
One could also say that Asset voting is not free of the need for
strategic considerations but that the strategic considerations get so
complex that the the votes could as well forget them. I mean that as
a voter I might be thinking that I know candidate A quite well and he
would probably behave in a certain way when participating the further
negotiations and elections, and therefore it would be strategically
optimal to vote for him. But as said, this may be too complex to manage.
Given, again, that there is no need that the "candidate" actually
be elected or electable, I can choose a candidate whom I personally
know. I expect the numbers of candidates to blossom if Asset is
adopted. And the result will be much closer to what a hiring search
would produce.
Many points in your mail dealt with knowing the candidates
personally. If we want this property, the basic model in my mind is
to arrange more levels in the representational system.
Let's start from a village of 100 inhabitants. Everyone knows most of
the other inhabitants quite well. The village elects 5 of the
inhabitants to represent the village in communication towards he
external world.
Then 20 villages send all their 5 representatives to a town meeting.
All 100 meeting participants know each others reasonably well since
this group has made decisions together many times before. The meeting
elects 5 of the participants to represent the town in communication
towards the external world.
Then 20 towns form a region. Now we already cover a population of
40'000. The next level covers population of 800'000. Then 16'000'000,
320'000'000 and 6'400'000'000. And finally we have 5 persons that
could represent the earth in communication with other civilizations,
if needed.
One key positive thing in this scenario is that the representatives
are always in direct contact with the people who elected them and
therefore need to be able to explain to them at personal level the
rationale behind whatever decisions or negotiations they work with.
One key negative thing in this scenario is that the direct
responsibility may fade away when the distance from the village
people to the top level decision makers increases. It is e.g.
possible that the people at the top consider themselves to be more
clever and more important than the people that elected them, they may
consider their closest colleagues and direct electors more important
than those at the lower levels.
Clearly there is a tradeoff between knowing your nearest
representatives at personal level, and electing your top level
representatives directly but knowing them only via TV. To me the
additional layer of representatives and negotiations that you
discussed represents in some sense adding one step in this hierarchy.
Direct democracy has some benefits and the model above has some. Same
with weaknesses.
Juho
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