Good Afternoon, Juho (I just noticed that I have another message from you, in another area. I will copy it and respond as quickly as I can, probably tomorrow. I'm inexpert at navigating this site, but learning. flg)
In the message I'm responding to, you raise several important issues. IMPROVEMENT You mentioned several reasons why improving our political system is an uphill battle. I would add the complexity of human nature as another. Overcoming them is difficult, but "A trek of a thousand miles begins with a single step." In my view, the first step is to seek understanding. The forces that guided our political development over the past 200 years are clear enough. So far, we've tended to think of them as inevitable. We've failed to examine them analytically for the purpose of deflecting the worst of them. (I had the privilege of sitting in on a political science course last year. It described many of the blemishes in our political process, historically and present, but did not address them from the perspective of learning to correct them. Neither, to my dismay, did it encourage such an intellectual approach.) We did not reach our present situation by accident. If we are to improve, we must learn to anticipate and inhibit the forces that derailed The Noble Experiment. It will be a long, hard road, not to be completed in my lifetime, but that is no excuse for not making the first "... small steps forward." LARGE GROUPS You make the excellent point that, under the method I outlined, large groups will succeed better than small groups. Warren Smith made the same point to me, privately. Where you suggest partisan dominance, he used advanced math to show that, based on purely racial attitudes, whites would dominate blacks. The rationale supporting some of Smith's mathematical terms were obscure, but I don't doubt the conclusion. I have no doubt the attitudes of the largest group of voters will prevail. However, the group that prevails will not be party and will not be race. It will be society (at least, insofar as society is reflected in the electorate) ... and the most common attitude in society is a desire for tranquility. Society is us. All of us; our friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors and acquaintances. We have partisan feelings, we are influenced by our family, our race, our education, our national heritage, our age, our health and our status, but none of these are greater than the fact that we are, in toto, decent, law-abiding people. Society could not exist if we were not. This is the large group that will prevail; these are the "whites" in Smith's equations; these are the people whose attitudes will triumph ... if they are given a voice and a choice. GROUP SIZE and PERSUASION You suggested larger groups and fewer layers. I am not averse to such a change, but would like to describe the rationale for using a group size of three. At the initial level, when the entire electorate meets for the first time to select one member of a their group to represent the other two, there will be three kinds of participants: (1) those who do not want to be selected, (2) those willing to be selected, and (3) those seeking selection. In any group where all three participants do not want to be selected, the triad will not make a selection and all three participants will be eliminated. Thus, among the groups that actually make a selection, the people who are selected will either be people who want to be selected or people who are willing to be selected. This is not to say that each person must be of one type or the other, but rather that each person will be somewhere on the continuum from those willing to be selected to those wishing to be selected. For simplicity, we will assume that the desire to be selected is equivalent to a desire for public office and that the people we mention as examples are at one end of the wish-willingness continuum or the other. The reality is infinitely more complex but the results will differ only in degree from what we learn by thinking about the kind of people who are at the hypothetical poles. We must also note that the attitudes we've mentioned may not be static. Although, generally, a person seeking public office is unlikely to become a person willing to serve, a person willing to serve might be transformed into a person seeking public office: [If person-willing-to-serve (A) feels person-seeking-office (B) is not a good choice, (A) may seek to persuade the group that (A) or (C) is a better choice. Such an effort moves (A) closer to being a person-seeking-office because, if A will not support B, the chance that A will be chosen increases.] Based on this assessment, we can say that people who advance to the next level either persuaded the other members of their triad to select them or they relied on the other members to select them. The difference is the extent to which they used persuasion to achieve selection. In a pyramiding process of the type under discussion, it is reasonable to think that active seekers of public office will succeed more frequently than passive ones. Thus, after several iterations of the process, we can anticipate that each member of a triad will be a person seeking public office. Under such circumstances, the art of persuasion assumes mounting importance. Those making the selection want desirable qualities in the person they choose. Those seeking selection will try to persuade their peers they possess the qualities sought. When persuasion occurs between two people, it takes place as a dialogue with one person attempting to persuade the other. In such events, both parties are free to participate in the process. The person to be persuaded can question the persuader as to specific points and present alternative points about the topic under discussion. In such circumstances, it is possible that the persuader will become the persuaded. When persuasion involves multiple people, it occurs more as a monologue with one person attempting to persuade the others. The transition from dialogue to monologue accelerates as the number of people to be persuaded increases. The larger the number of people, the less free they are to participate in the process. As the number of people to be persuaded grows, the individuals among them are progressively less able to participate in the process. They can not question the persuader as to specific points or present alternative points about the topic under discussion. In such circumstances, it is impossible for the persuader to become the persuaded. Viewed in this light, we can say that when selecting public officials, a system that encourages dialogue is preferable to one which relies on a monologue. Discussion can best be encouraged by having fewer people in the "session of persuasion". Because of the need for a definitive decision, I believe the best group size to encourage active involvement by all participants is three. In working toward a functional system, other aspects of the matter are sure to arise. Group sizes of 5, or 7, or 9 may be found to offer more advantages. REGIONALITY You wondered whether the concept would have a regional bias. I intended that it should. Presumably, we would develop software to randomly assign voters to groups while preferring geographic proximity. This offers the advantages you outline and causes the least disruption for the electorate. It also supports the idea that the first fruits of the process are officials for the local community. PARTISANSHIP You raise a couple of questions of partisanship; whether "... it is possible that the party influence will infiltrate the system from top down ..." and "... if there are some groupings/parties at the top level, the candidates at one level below could make their affiliations clear ..." To take the second first, there is no top level until the level below has made its choice. There are, indeed, previously elected people with partisan attitudes. Candidates in the process might indicate their approval and support for those people. If they do, the others in their triad will decide for themselves whether they agree, and will make their selections accordingly. That is the purpose of the system. As to the first, the matter is more open to challenge. For my part, I think it will be incomparably more difficult for existing parties to "infiltrate" (or corrupt) the Active Democracy process than what we presently endure. In the first place, there is no infrastructure. There is no organization or "fund raiser" to act as an intermediary for corruption. Those who would peddle corruption can not do so en bloc as they do now; they must do it individually and directly. When those they seek to suborn have been chosen by their peers (at least in part) for their perceived integrity, approaching them will not be easy. When candidates don't have to "sell their soul" to a political party, when they owe their advancement to nothing but their own intellect and ability, I believe most of them will reject, and probably denounce, influence peddlers. I don't doubt that we'll occasionally have a deceitful public official, but he'll be operating in a goldfish bowl. It won't be as easy to keep it hidden as it is now. THE LONG CHAIN The possibility that "... the highest level decision makers do not listen to the lowest level voters ..." need not come to pass: "The process is inherently bi-directional. Because each elected official sits atop a pyramid of known electors, questions on specific issues can easily be transmitted directly to and from the electors for the guidance or instruction of the official." The extent to which this capability is enabled depends on the way the process is implemented. In terms of the length of time from the beginning of an election cycle through the multiple levels, we can say with certainty that it will not be as long as the present two-year travesty. Wow! That turned out to be more than I expected to write. I'm not certain I've given an adequate response to the issues you raised, some of which were quite subtle. I hope we can continue to examine these questions and that others will bring their expertise to bear. Fred ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
