John,
Interesting and provocative. I agree with [snip]. But Adam Tarr's IRV "nightmare" example is conclusively damning, especially since it is political-spectrum based with everyone voting sincerely/plausibly. [snip rest.]
I agree that Adam Tarr's "nightmare" example is impressive, but I don't think it is "conclusively damning." Because, I am an old (well, 50) cynical post-economics-major. (I completed all-but-thesis on a Master's degree, many years ago.)
In economics there is a criterion known as "pareto-optimality" that some mathematical models of economic systems manage to satisfy. Pareto-optimality is on the face of things a modest criterion: that when comparing two situations, A is to be judged better than B if in A there is at least one person who is better off, in their own opinion, than they are in B, and there is no one who is worse off. Who could possibly object to that? Economists make a virtue of their humility; they are "scientists", and (arguing from a philosophy known as logical positivism) science deals with facts, and values cannot be derived from facts, so "scientists" therefore, AS SCIENTISTS, can say nothing about values. Economists therefore allow themselves the tiny presumption of using Pareto-optimality as a value-criterion, as a way of judging which proposed economic systems/policies are better than others. It is presumptuous because Pareto-optimality IS admittedly a value-criterion, and so technically off-limits for scientists, but it is such a modest one, such a tiny presumption, that they hope everyone else will forgive them.
I believed that for awhile as an undergraduate, and even as a graduate student, but later came to regard that whole act as a swindle. The trick is the flip side of the coin: not that Pareto-optimality is bad, but that ALL OTHER VALUES ARE EXCLUDED FROM THE DISCUSSION. So economists cannot say anything about the justice of the distribution of income and wealth, or about ecological sustainability, or about many other subjects, because the background philosophy of logical positivism claims that "scientists" cannot say anything about values. And logical positivism, originally developed by A.J. Ayer, was destroyed by other philosophers decades ago; in 1958 even A.J. Ayer admitted that enough holes had been poked in it that he could no longer hold it himself.
As Pareto-optimality is a tiny, modest criterion, so the flip side, of excluding all other values from the dicussion, is like stealing all the gold in Fort Knox. (Where the U.S Govt. kept all its gold, back in the days when the dollar was backed by gold; I don't know if there is anything left there nowadays. So it may be an anachronistic expression.)
Taking both sides together, and reducing Jargon to plain English, Pareto-optimality effectively means that the most desirable situation is one in which all possible profitable trades are taken advantage of (I.E. all possible profits have been made.) So, economists are therefore allowed to advocate policies that make it easier for corporations to make profits, and forbidden from advocating policies that interfere in any way, for any reason, with corporations making profits. In fact, they can say "AS SCIENTISTS" that policies interfering with Free Trade are Bad, Bad, Bad, but "AS SCIENTISTS" they can say nothing else, and no one else can either.
Another little fact about Pareto-optimality is that it can be satisfied only in abstract models that make highly unrealistic assumptions. The more "realism" you allow into the models, the harder it is to achieve pareto-optimality; in the real world nothing does. The normal operation of the marketplace violates pareto-optimality all the time. If a new store opens up on Main Street, and takes some customers away from another store, that other store's owner is made worse off. So we cannot say "AS SCIENTISTS" that the new situation is better. Economists inhabit a mathematical fantasyland, but they use their mumbo-jumbo to argue for policies in the real world, which coincidentally favor the interests of the already-wealthy-and-powerful.
I suspect that Condorcet-efficiency is playing a similar role in the discussion of voting methods. It sounds like a fine criterion. Who could possibly object to it?
In plain English, Condorcet-efficiency means "elect the centrist, always, always." I'm not sure that's a good idea. Even if it's a good idea, ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL, it's certainly not the only quality we might desire in an electoral system. Other things are not equal.
In the real world of electoral politics, with parties, with biased and false information broadcast wholesale, with control over electoral offices worth billions to particular industries and corporations, with voters of all different levels of sagacity, we have existing, established electoral systems, and entrenched corrupt interests that have evolved methods to use them. There is some movement among citizens to reform these electoral systems, in the hope of rooting these interests out of their entrenched positions. One technique for defeating efforts at reform is to sow confusion among the reformers; for example, if there is a proposal on the ballot that you wish to defeat, put one or two more proposals on the ballot that sound like they are addressing the same problem. The voters will split, and nothing will be enacted.
The battle-cry of a small-but-growing set of reformers is "Proportional Representation and the Instant-Runoff Ballot!" I am not accusing those who favor the Ranked Pairs method and Approval Voting of being pawns of the Capitalist Hegemonists. Really, I'm not. Not yet, anyway. I'd just like to keep the discussion in the real world.
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John B. Hodges, jbhodges@ @usit.net
The two-party system is obsolete and dysfunctional.
Better forms of democracy: www.fairvote.org
REAL CHOICES, NEW VOICES, by Douglas J. Amy
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