Juho Laatu wrote:
d) voting on laws, too
I read this as allowing individual
voters to vote directly too, without
any proxies between them and the
decisions (on laws and on anything).
Quite OK but I have some concerns
on what will happen in the tax
raise questions. It is possible that
the society would spend more than
save.
One could set some limits on the
number of levels. One could e.g.
allow only proxies with n votes to
vote in certain questions. Use of
hysteresis could help making the
role of proxies of different levels
clear (last minute decisions or
alternative direct and proxy votes
would be more complex).
The proxy systems may allow (also
for other reasons) different proxies
or direct voting to be used for
different questions.
Some idea of what this would lead to can be gathered from states with
initiative and referendum, where the citizenry can force a referendum or
the passing of a law. It seems to work in the United States states that
have them, and also in Switzerland, though the circumstances there are
more complex.
On the other hand, one could argue that the signature requirements to
start the referendum process constitutes a form of hysteresis: because
starting the process requires some effort, the system won't oscillate
wildly.
The real trick is to find the balance between something that oscillates
and something that doesn't respond at all - and that's not a problem
that's particular to politics, but appears in various guises in all
kinds of systems involving feedback. Set the PID controller wrong and
it's off to hunting land...
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