Dear Greg,
you wrote:
I'm not speaking about majoritarianism in this case, although you are
correct that it alleviates many of the problems. What I meant was
there is the potential for vote buying under any voting method where
voting is verifiable and non-unanimity can pass a policy.
OK, I agree.
You continued, answering me:
In every reasonable voting method (remember democracy is distinct from
consensus), ...
I can only remember what I believe to be true. This claim is not!
democracy is distinct from consensus? Of course it is! I can win under
any reasonable voting method by pleasing less-than-everyone.
I think I misunderstood you there. What I meant was: Sophisticted
democratic decision methods can lead to almost complete consensus. FAWRB
promises to do so by giving everybody an incentive to search for a good
compromise and making sure it wins with very large probability. This is
indeed very near to reaching consensus! Only majoritarian (and thus
undemocratic) methods lead to results often far from consensus. For this
reason, I tend to find majoritarian methods relatively unreasonable :-)
I attempted to explain in
You Can't Have it Both Ways that a voting system cannot and should not
be designed to protect rights... but I digress.
A voting system should not be designed to protect rights? Of course it
should! It should be designed to protect the right of everybody to have
an equal amount of power in decisions!
I have never seen any method lauded so much for disobeying a criterion. ; )
What's a "criterion"? Usually it is a sentence which can either be true
or false about any decision method. Whether "passing" or "failing" a
criterion is the good thing depends on values. My most important values
are first equality and individual rights, then efficiency. Hence failing
the majority criterion is mandatory for any reasonable decision method
since majoritarian ones disrespect my most important values.
You're totally right. This is the best motivation for giving each voter the
same voting power instead of giving some majority all of the power. Then the
majority has something to "trade". In order to get my proposed option
elected, I need their cooperation which I must "buy" by taking their
preferences into account in my proposal.
I don't follow. If I reward a majority, then that does nothing to
prevent future majorities from forming.
I don't want to prevent any majority from forming. That would be
ridiculous as people have every right to have the same opinion as
others. The point is not whether there are majorities or not. The point
is that majorities must not be given 100% of the decision power in any
single decision.
Majoritarianism isn't some
complete shift of power to whoever can muster 51%...
Er? That's *exactly* what majoritarianism is! What else than a shift of
power would you call it when 51% of the people need not care what the
other 49% want in some individual decision because they can safely
establish what they want? Obviously they have the complete power in that
decision when a majoritarian method is used.
Every voter has the same capacity to influence the election.
If you believe this is the case with your favourite majoritarian method,
then please show me how the latter 45% in the following quite common
situation have the "same capacity to influence the election": 55%
wanting A, 45% wanting B. Just tell me what the 45% can do to avoid
getting A for certain.
I can tell you what they can do when FAWRB is used: They can just vote
for B and thus give B a 45% winning chance, compared to a 55% winning
chance for A. But even better: They can also propose a good compromise
option C which everybody prefers much to the 55%/45% lottery. If they
suggest such a C, everybody will have an incentive to mark C as
"approved" under FAWRB, so that C will be elected with certainty.
OMOV and
majority are not in conflict. No rules says that a majority method is
automatically non-OMOV.
OMOV is a purely formal requirement which is so trivial that I cannot
remember a single decision method having been discussed here that not
fulfilled it when interpreted correctly. "OMOV Interpreted correctly"
means "the only information about the voter used in the decision process
must be his or her preferences as revealed by him or her on the ballot".
What OMOV does *not* guarantee is that everybody has an influence on the
decision. Obviously, majoritarian methods are OMOV but make it
impossible for as much as 49% of the voters to influence the decision.
I don't think that non-majoritarian methods are intrinsically better.
If you don't think democracy is important...
Right... voting is non-contractual. THAT IS THE POINT! If it were
contractual (read "verifiable"),
No, I don't read "contractual" as "verifiable". FAWRB makes it
essentially contractual in providing safe ways to cooperate anonymously
without having to reveal my preferences to anybody.
Voters do not make contracts. Voters do not agree to
respect each others decisions.
Are you reporting your own experience here? Or are you just stating that
most methods do not provide incentives to make contracts and respect
others decisions? FAWRB does give such incentives: The 55% majority
really gains much in helping to find a compromise which is attractive to
the other 45%, too, because then they will get the compromise instead of
the 55%/45% lottery in which one faction's favourite wins at random.
I will expand this slightly.
Democracy and individual rights are inconsistent.
At least democracy is not inconsistent with the individual right to have
equal power in decisions (this is what FAWRB proves). Rather, democracy
is just *about* that particular individual right!
Being from California, I am from the west and thus am guilty of
equating majority rule and democracy.
Nobody saves you from erring even in the presence of better evidence
which I won't repeat again :-)
By democracy I meant
non-dictatorship non-perfect-consensus.
To me it makes no essential difference whether the dictator is one
person or a group of persons. So, in principle, majoritarianism
qualifies as dictatorship, too.
Democracy will only last until people realize they can just vote
themselves the money. Mutual distrust keeps them from realizing this.
It is Majoritarianism what will only last that long. In many countries
around the globe, majority populations *have* realized that they can
just vote themselves the money of the rest. That's a main reason why so
many minorities want to separate themselves from the respective
majority, which they often can only be prevented from by using violence.
Yours, Jobst
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