(For context, see message that follows.)
When looking for "overrun" or "wild swings" in politics, keep in mind
that politics involves multiple dimensions. This concept is conveyed in
the "pencil metaphor" at:
http://www.votefair.org/pencil_metaphor.html
Specifically, left-to-right (or liberal-versus-conservative) shifts are
just one dimension. (As a further complication, different people have
different opinions about what that one dimension refers to.)
Yet there are other dimensions too. One is the money-fueled shift away
from voters toward special interests (votes-versus-money). As the
pencil metaphor suggests, this dimension is "orthogonal" (i.e. sort of
"perpedicular") to the left-versus-right dimension.
Also consider that a "system" (either physical or political) can
resonate at several different frequencies. And those oscillations (at
different frequencies) can occur simultaneously. If "plotted" in along
more than one axis, the results can be "Lissajous curves" (which are
nicely shown in the Wikipedia article by that name). Such patterns are
more difficult to comprehend than simple one-dimensional "waveforms"
(such as an audio signal).
So, indeed, it can be very difficult to clearly identify examples of the
oscillations in current-day and recent politics.
Yet some patterns become clear in an historical context. As an example,
the U.S. stock market has large cycles with mathematically determined
"periods," such as a big 90-year-or-so cycle and a smaller 20-year-or-so
cycle, both occurring "together" (along with other cycles at other
frequencies). Such boom-and-bust cycles have what I, and others,
believe is the same cause: people with lots of money learn how to "game"
the system in their favor without realizing that those changes are not
sustainable, and then the "house of cards" collapses, and then the cycle
starts again with a different way to game the system (and maybe with a
new category of people gaming the system).
Kristofer asks what I suggest as a way to "dampen" such
resonant/oscillation effects. I recommend VoteFair ranking (including
VoteFair representation ranking and VoteFair partial-proportional
ranking) for electing political leaders, and I recommend VoteFair
negotiation ranking for voting within legislatures.
By design, together they would produce laws and enforcement priorities
that would much more closely match what voters really want.
Also they would _relatively_ _smoothly_ track changes in what voters
want. That contrasts with jerkily responding to voter shifts as happens
now, and which makes oscillations more likely.
As a result, there would be no need for term limits.
Richard Fobes
On 1/20/2013 12:41 AM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
On 01/18/2013 06:46 PM, Richard Fobes wrote:
On 1/17/2013 10:49 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm wrote:
The general pattern I was trying to think of, in any case, was this: the
society is too far in one direction (according to the people). Candidate
X has a position solidly on the other side and brings the policies in
that direction. As X pushes policies towards the center, he gains
reputation for doing something well. Then as X goes past the center, the
people think "we'll give him some time; he's been right in the past, why
shouldn't he still know what he's doing?" And so it takes time before
the people recognize how far off the other side X really wants to go.
Term limits mitigate this ...
I have also been reading about predictor or ensemble systems (like
weighted majority voting). In that context, it's like an expert that
tends to be very right, but situations change and he suddenly stops
being right. It then takes some time for his weight to be reduced,
because he has such a high weight already. In dynamic situations (where
experts may often shift from being very good to not being good at all),
sliding window versions of WMV (or UCB) do better than non-sliding
versions. I can find papers for this if you're interested :-)
Currently, in politics there is not a close correlation between voter
preferences and who ends up in office, so the tendency you claim does
tend to occur.
However, if elections are improved so that there is a high correlation
between voter preferences and who ends up in office, then such
"over-runs" would quickly lead to a push back to center.
Such over-runs are a component of the concept of "resonance" in Physics.
This over-extended "state" quickly lead to an ever-increasing push back
to center. Yet, overall, the result is an oscillation that averages out
to be centered.
In my description, the problem is that the people trust the politician
as he shifts from interests aligned with the people to interests not
aligned with the people. They say "he's done right things in the past,
so he knows what he's doing now, too". So the effect is one of people's
judgement of the politician, rather than how that judgement is being
distorted by the election method.
Do you think people are actually quick to react against overrun and the
method is the problem, rather than the people's estimates?
I suppose one way to find out which is the case would be to check if
such overruns have happened in PR countries. However, this might
complicate the situation, because PR countries - at least parliamentary
ones - don't have a Micawberian "50% + 1, I win, 50% - 1, I lose"
situation, so the gradual feedback from the parts of the people that do
change their opinions often might inform the parties currently in power
that if they don't do something, more people will follow.
(I think this is part of the reason the Labor Party here is moving to
the right. Their coalition will most likely lose their majority in the
next election anyway, though.)
So it would look like the way to find out which is right would be to
find a country with an advanced election method but not PR. But I don't
know of any such countries since I don't consider IRV an advanced
election method. One might stretch it by considering TTR advanced - it
is certainly better than IRV in my eyes... so have there been any
overruns in France? I'm not sure.
If, after election-method reform, there should be a need to "dampen"
such wild swings, there other -- and I believe wiser -- ways to do so.
Which methods or ways would you suggest?
My background, such as it is, regarding these problems is more a
cybernetics and CS one rather than a Physics one - though I don't have
any degrees in either and therefore work more on intuition than actual
calculation.
In any case, I have been thinking about methods to dampen raw populism
in more responsive democratic systems like Liquid Democracy. Here the
problem (if there is one; we don't know for sure since there haven't
been any public experiments with the thing that I know of) would be that
the people react too quickly rather than too slowly. Now, a traditional
response would be to say that "this is the problem of too frequent
elections". To me, that seems to be like saying that a thermostat that
regulates temperature and oscillates too wildly around the setpoint has
a problem because it samples temperature too often. You *could* say
that, but you could also just slow the response of the controller. It
seems a waste to force less information to be gathered instead of more
just so that the system should work. In a LD case, that might take the
shape of using a statistical method with a high breakdown point instead
of sum or average for the power calculations, or by gradually
adding/removing the voting power given by a subscription rather than
just going directly to 0% or 100%.
So I can definitely understand that more sophisticated methods could do
better. I'm thus wondering which methods you had in mind.
----
Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
