At 09:38 PM 5/15/2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >Though, the tricky thing I've always run into when trying to formulate a >better social utility measure is that when trying to make sure no one is >left too far behind, do we unfairly reward people who complain too much?
And if we don't, then we leave some people too far behind.... This is one of a general class of problems that I'd see Delegable Proxy as solving. The key is Filtering. Delegable Proxy systems that we are designing use the proxy as a filter. The filter judges traffic, and passes some but not all. It does this in both directions. It's fairly clear that someone or some process has to filter information; indeed, this is the central problem of scale in democracy. Delegable proxy allows the individual member (citizen, voter, whatever) to choose the filter. Authoritarian models choose the filter from the top, that is, a member is, at best, assigned someone to go to to pass information up the structure, who may also be the person who transmits information down from the center or top, which may be, for example, orders. The scale on which the proxies are chosen is crucial. If it is large, proxies concentrate too much power at one level. The only harm from "too small" is that the communication chain becomes long, and thus not so efficient. The ideal level is one such that no proxy is overwhelmed with traffic, yet every member (in general) should be able to contact the proxy and receive personal attention. How does it address the problem of "rewarding complaint?" In a DP system, a complaint does not ordinarily go directly to the top. It goes to a proxy, who is, most often, a low-level proxy, perhaps representing only, say 20 to 100 people. (The number depends on the nature of the organization, it could be larger, if the traffic permits, and it does work if it is small, just not as efficiently.) The proxy decides whether or not to pass the information ("complaint") up. The proxy is in the middle, and may face pressure from below to pass the information on ("or else I'll give my proxy to someone else"), and will face pressure from above to not pass on frivolous information and requests ("keep sending me garbage like this and I'll withdraw my acceptance of your proxy.") Crucial in the early implementations of DP is the Free Association context. In FAs, there is no power other than the power to communicate that is conferred by being at a high level, because power in an FA remains in the hands of the members, generally. The FA itself does not make controversial decisions, but individual proxies can advise their members in any way they choose. Presumably after communicating with others! The theory is that such an organization will naturally seek consensus, because it is empowering. Otherwise you end up with factions pulling against each other, with much less net result. Yet there is no requirement that unanimity be reached. Essentially, the organization, in theory, will value unity and will seek it, but not obsessively. The DP structure actually allows individual attention to be given to every minority, but only relatively large minorities get direct consideration at the top. If it is expected that proxies be available for communication to their clients, this puts pressure on the proxies to not accept too many clients. And especially not many clients who are complainers! Many people, encountering this concept for the first time, miss this. They assume that having more proxies gives you more power, therefore people will crave and seek it. Probably they will, even without direct power. There *will* be prestige coming with being a high-level proxy. But if you get there by being available to thousands of clients, directly, it won't be worth the work. So the way to get to a high level, without working yourself to death, is by becoming the proxy for others who themselves represent clients. And once you are in that position, you want your clients to do a good job of filtering. You don't want more than the optimum number of clients. The structure will regulate itself. This is theory. We aren't going to really know until we have functioning DP systems. But the *theory* looks very good, from my perspective. http://beyondpolitics.org/wiki http://metaparty.beyondpolitics.org ---- election-methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info