On 05/29/2013 12:15 AM, David L Wetzell wrote:
On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 4:36 PM, Kristofer Munsterhjelm
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 05/27/2013 09:19 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:
Smith's http://rangevoting.org/__PuzzIgnoredInfo.html
<http://rangevoting.org/PuzzIgnoredInfo.html>
needs to be taken w. a grain of salt.
The short-comings of IRV depend on the likely number of serious
candidates whose a priori odds of winning, before one assigns
voter-utilities, are strong. If real life important single-winner
political elections have economies of scale in running a serious
election then it's reasonable to expect only 1, 2 or 3 (maybe 4
once in
a blue moon) candidates to have a priori, no matter what
election rule
gets used, serious chance to win, while the others are at best
trying to
move the center on their key issues and at worse potential
spoilers in a
fptp election.
That argument is too strong in the sense that it can easily be
modified to lead to any conclusion you might wish. And it can be
modified thus because it is too vague.
Hi Karl, good to hear from you again. I doubt economies of scale args
are completely flexible and the evidence need not be as rigorously
presented when one is initially communicating ideas.
Who is Karl?
Let me be more precise. You may claim that if there're some
economies of scale, then it's reasonable to only expect 1, 2 or 3
viable candidates. But here's a problem. Without any data, you can
posit that the economies of scale kick in at just the right point to
make 2.5-party rule inevitable even under Condorcet, say. But
without any data, I could just as well posit that the economies of
scale, if any, kick in at n = 1000; or, I could claim that the
economies of scale kick in at n = 2 and thus we don't need anything
more than Plurality in the first place[1].
No, because non-competitive candidates still serve a useful purpose even
if their odds of winning are low. And a non-plurality election is
harder to game, as illustrated by the GOP's 40-yr use of a nixonian-
Southern Strategy of pitting poor whites against minorities when
outsiders are given voice to reframe wedge issues that tilt the de facto
center away from the true political center.
So you say the non-competitive candidates still serve a purpose. But
your economics-of-scale argument only considered competitive candidates.
Call the set of competitive candidates X, and the set of noncompetitive
candidates "that still matter", Y. Then I could just as easily apply
your objection so that it argues in favor of advanced methods, too. I
just say that even if you're right about economics of scale for X, that
says nothing about the relative size of Y under IRV with respect to Y
under an advanced method.
The problem with the argument is that it's very hard indeed to construct
a simple model that considers Plurality inadequate, IRV good enough, and
the advanced methods wasteful, yet can't also be tuned to either
consider Plurality adequate or IRV inadequate. The model has to be
complex or the parameters finely adjusted, and complex models without
evidence have little value.
So one may claim that "important single-winner political elections"
necessarily have economies to scale that make anything beyond
2.5-party rule exceedingly unlikely. But without data, that's claim
isn't worth anything. And without data that can't be explained as
confusing P(multipartyism) with P(multipartyism | political dynamics
given by Plurality), the simpler hypothesis, namely that there is no
such barrier that we know of, holds by default.
How about economics? There exists X a cost of running a competitive
campaign. There exists Y a reward, not per se all economic, for winning
a campaign. There exists P a probability of winning. P is roughly
inversely proportional to the number of competitive candidates, albeit
less for the last candidate to decide to compete. If there exists N
likely competitive candidates then if the calculation is k*Y/(N+1)<X
holds, w. k<1, for the N+1 candidate, who then chooses not to run, it
implies that N>(kY-X)/X. A better election rule might increase k some,
but arguably X will also tend to be higher for the less well-known
candidate, regardless of the election rule used.
So I agree that the average number of competittive candidates can be
increased by the use of a different single-winner election rule, but
with limits due to the other aspects of running an election and how a
single-winner election tends to discourage too many from putting a lot
into running for the office.
Then I set (assume, claim) k high enough that the stability Condorcet
(etc) provides is worth it. You set k low enough that it isn't, and then
we sit on each our numbers and claim that our k is right and the other
one's k is wrong.
Or, I lower X by saying that extreme expense of current US presidential
elections is caused by Plurality rather than being a prior constraint.
It might be even more specific: the political dynamics given by United
States history plus the third-party exclusion of Plurality combine to
make presidential races extremely expensive. For instance, IIRC, the
televised debates only include parties that have a chance of winning,
and parties that don't get into the debates are fighting at a severe
disadvantage, so it becomes very important to signal from the very start
that one's own party is viable, which is extremely costly[1].
I could also then point at other nations, either other presidential
countries making use of runoff (to strengthen the first claim), or other
presidential countries in general, even those under Plurality (to
strengthen the second), and say that the expense of presidential
elections in the US is pretty much unequaled elsewhere in the world.
That is, I think it is, but I'm not going to investigate in detail
unless I know you won't pull the "it's different in the US than in every
one of those other countries" response.
But most likely of all, I'd say: "economics of scale? Please robustly
show that they exist within politics. Then show that the real world
parameters are so as to strengthen your position, rather than the
position of Plurality supporters or of advanced-method supporters".
And, if you're not claiming that there is such economics of scale,
but simply that there *might* be, then it's still less risky to
assume multipartyism is right and use an advanced method. If we're
wrong, nothing lost but "momentum". If we're right, we avoid getting
stuck at something that would still seriously misrepresent the
wishes of the people.
Well, I am claiming there exists inherent economies of scale in
single-winner elections such that the number of competitive candidates
are likely to have a fuzzy ceiling apart from the specific election rule
used, and that single-partyism/multipartyism is a function of the mix of
single-winner and fair multi-winner election rules used. My implication
of the first is that it relativizes the import of alternative
single-winner election rules for political elections and thereby
elevates the import of marketing/first-mover advantage in the
replacement of FPTP.
Again, without data, there's no reason to set the parameters at your
sweet spot as opposed to somebody else's sweet spot. So the most
reasonable approach would be to not claim there is a sweet spot (or
economics of scale or whatnot) until otherwise can be shown.
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[1] And the same dynamic is replicated within the parties out of need to
be seen as winnable in the general election. For instance, Romney paying
$1M on TV ads and busing to get his supporters to the Iowa poll in 2007
can be explained in this context. He had to show himself as winnable to
win the primaries and in turn have a chance at the general election.
Warren Smith has made arguments in this direction.
----
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