On 09/11/2013 10:00 PM, Fred Gohlke wrote:
You mentioned a town meeting arrangement, and I'd like examine that for
background on the inclusiveness of a political system. Although a town
meeting structure is often thought of as the purest form of democracy,
it has flaws.
You have a point there. Generally, different political systems have
different dynamics: in a given system, some things are plainly
impossible, other things degrade if you try them, and which things these
are depends on the system in question.
If you try to force direct democracy on a very large scale, I suspect
the information overload leads to either a breakdown of the system, into
a coalescing into some kind of representative system, or - particularly
if there are any influential demagogues around - the kind of mass
dynamic that can lead to collective insanity (I've mentioned the Terror
and different cult-of-personality dictatorships before).
So we shouldn't then be surprised that small scale direct democracy has
its dynamics too. And I can definitely see situations where preexisting
social oppression can spread into the social domain in a community where
everybody knows everybody else.
As I also said in another post, we've had quite some history with that
in the social realm in the small towns here (in Norway). It could get
quite ugly: stand out from the crowd and you would find yourself shunned
and nasty gossip would start to spread about you. Fortunately, this
social conformity effect is no longer as strong, among other reasons
since the people who live in such places can move more easily. (And as
an aside, many do. Not just because of the oppressive small town effect,
but because the jobs are to be found in larger cities -- though I
imagine Norway is doing better than say, Sweden, in this respect: we
have a deliberate element of decentralization in our policies.)
Town meetings tend to favor assertive individuals, and the decisions
made in the meetings tend to be made by cliques, usually under the
guidance of the same assertive individuals. Understanding how and why
this happens is important if we are to construct an inclusive system.
Yes. Perhaps I was quick to say that town hall democracy was the
standard by which representative democracy measured itself. But the
argument that I mentioned has an intuitive appeal: "we'd all get
together and discuss things if we could, but there are so many of us
that we can't, so we have to elect people to do the job". And I think
the argument would feel intuitive whether or not direct democracy was
the ultimately best system. There's an intuition that direct democracy
is the natural state, and that it is definitely better than
representative democracy, in particular where the representative
democracy does a bad job of actually representing the people.
Maybe it would be better to say that direct democracy, while not
perfect, is a good thing to try to emulate. Then we can deal with the
problems of direct democracy when we get there - to the extent those
dynamics also show up in whatever we're using to emulate it.
As an aside, I once read about an economic system that proposed the
creation of consumer and producer councils so as to balance power. Since
the consumer councils would have known what the individual people who
were part of it were buying, some critics brought up the potential
pressure to conform -- they called it the "kinky underwear problem" (or
"banned books problem"). So others are aware of this problem, though in
differnt domains, as well.
Jane Mansbridge examined such an arrangement in a town she gave the
fictional name of Selby, Vermont, and described her findings in Beyond
Adversary Democracy[1]. Her descriptions matched my personal experience
in a village in a farming community in Western New York State in the
1930s and 1940s so accurately that I'll use excerpts from her book to
describe the weaknesses in 'town meeting' democracy (showing the page
references in brackets).
Over the two hundred twenty six years of the United States' existence,
our political system has gradually broken down. We are now experiencing
a political situation foretold by Jean Jacques Rousseau in a passage
quoted by Mansfield:
"Finally, when the State, on the eve of ruin, maintains
only a vain, illusory, and formal existence, when in
every heart the social bond is broken, and the meanest
interest brazenly lays hold of the sacred name of 'public
good', the general will becomes mute, all men, guided by
secret motives, no more give their views as citizens
than if the State had never been, and iniquitous decrees
directed solely to private interest get passed under the
name of laws." [page 19]
Rousseau's description accurately fits the present state of politics in
the United States. The need to envision an alternative to the present
system is compelling, but, before we can do so, we must consider the
human traits that deter us from achieving a truly democratic form of
government, so we can devise a process that lessens their impact.
I've sometimes thought that the United States is suffering the political
equivalent of the infrastructure problem where "older" countries have to
maintain their comparatively inefficient infrastructure whereas "newer"
ones can go right to what is known to be very efficient. That could
explain quite a bit of the US becoming corrupt. It was one of the first
lasting democracies, so it couldn't know what kind of attacks that would
be attempted against that democracy, and so was much less prepared for
them. If the founders had magical hindsight from the future, perhaps
they would have used Approval, which (even though it definitely has its
flaws) is pretty hard to beat in the "bang for the buck over Plurality"
category.
Here, we see that although the process is nominally open to everyone in
the community, and thus is deemed democratic, the reality is that only
about one quarter of the people actually participate in any part of the
process. To give us a little insight into why this is so, I will cite
the comments of two citizens:
[Page 61] Elizabeth Hurley, who "has not attended a
town meeting in the last ten years", said:
"I don't care to -- well, to tell my part, you know,
right agin a whole mess of people ... I don't know,
I don't like to get up in town meeting and say, well,
this and that ... well, everybody's looking, or doing
something, and they'll say [whisper], "She's a fool!"
There's one man in particular [Bedell], that's up on
this road here, boy oh boy, he's into hot water all
the time. [JM: He talks up in town meetings?] Oh!
Gracious to Betsy, I guess he did. [JM: Do people
pay attention to him?] Hah, hah, no they don't, boy,
we just, ah ..."
Anonymity should be integrated into the system, but finding the exact
point where the identity is unveiled would be difficult. On the one
hand, individuals should be given the capacity to reveal and bring
issues to attention that the community might not like to talk about; on
the other, when politicians gain power, their apparatus, which makes
decisions on the behalf of the people, should be as transparent as
possible. Somewhere in between, the need for protection of unpleasant
expression turns into the need for transparency - but there's no
algorithm that can tell us where that crossing point should be.
Though perhaps one could say that advisory systems could be secret while
the decision systems are public. But that doesn't really fit with the
secret ballot: it is a "decision system" - where the people decide who
gets into power - yet it is anonymous and secret.
Another flaw in the town meeting concept is the tendency of the process
to resolve public issues in private, outside the process.
Perhaps that could be seen as an ad-hoc manner of handling the anonymity
problem. Ask people that you know (and trust) first, so that if they
agree, you can all speak as a group.
The point about anxiety is useful to note as well: it may not be that
the community is all that hostile, but some feel as if it would be. Then
having some "protection" works to alleviate that anxiety, whether or not
what one fears is real.
This material tells us that, if we are to increase the inclusiveness of
the political process, if we are to empower every member of the
electorate by letting them participate in the practice of politics to
the full extent of each individual's desire and ability, we must devise
a process that does not expose the people to ridicule for expressing
their views.
One may argue that voting does not expose anyone to ridicule, but the
efficacy of the vote is open to question. The right to vote would be an
essential element of democracy if the people were able to select the
people and the issues for which they vote. However, in the United
States, the people's right to select the candidates and decide the
issues on which the people vote has been usurped by the political
parties. They have arrogated to themselves the right to name the
candidates for public office.
From a control perspective, voting happens too infrequently. It would
be like trying to keep a temperature by adjusting the power to the
heater once every four (or two) years.
But the control perspective isn't complete. At least in multiparty
systems that I am familiar with, there is a political debate between the
actual elections. The parties try to position themselves - adjust what
they're "selling" - even though the actual "purchase" only happens every
n years.
Your point about the people being able to select the people shows this.
If they can select the people, then there is an adjustment between the
elections, where the people decide which candidates are to run - or
which candidates have a chance of winning when they do run. A better
election method makes this work better because it decreases the chances
that artifacts in the system itself obscures the selection process. For
instance, if everybody spent lots of time deciding which of many
candidates would be good ones, and then the system just picks the
candidate a dictator approves of, then the selection process is
pointless. The more accurate the election method is, the better it would
be at letting the accumulated opinions of the people decide which
candidate is (or candidates are) to rule.
You made the critical point that, with an electorate in the
multi-millions of people,
"... we need somebody to act for us, but few enough that
that they can still govern by deliberation. Hence,
representative, elected democracy."
In the United States, the number of representatives in the two Houses of
Congress seem (to me) reasonable. That leaves the question of how the
representatives are to be selected. You mentioned that delegable proxy
lets the deliberation happen "on the outside", presumably before the
representative is chosen. However, I'm not sure if that approach
requires or allows political campaigning, which is a corrosive activity
that demands huge expenditures to manipulate the voting public.
It might support campaigning in general, whether or not it's produced by
a political party. But there is a balance here. Say famous person X says
"delegate your vote to me". If you think X is particularly good at
politics, you might do so. For that matter, plenty of people would give
their vote to X just because X is famous - actors have become
politicians after all.
But with delegable proxy in particular, the balance is that the relation
is supposed to be two-way. If you delegate your vote to a celebrity, and
there are thousands that also do so, and you say "hey, I'd rather prefer
you to support an extension/limitation of copyright", then he doesn't
have to listen to you. He has thousands of others. But if you give your
vote to a proxy along that has a hundred others, or fewer, then he's
going to take your suggestions much more seriously. In turn, if you're a
proxy and you have a hundred voters subscribed to you, then you can
influence greater proxies more than if you're just a single voter.
Thus there's a point where campaigning fails to do much good. The voters
will say, emotionally, that they feel more familiar with smaller
proxies, and instrumentally that they have more of a say when subscribed
to a smaller proxy than to a large one. You could say that proxy-proxy
interactions happen near their own scale: large proxies talk to large
proxies, small proxies to small. There would be less of the kind of mass
"one to many" manipulation that parties, particularly in two-party
systems, do.
re: "But on the other extreme, consider you have an emperor (or
an elected king). If you suspect corruption from power is
a real problem, then you have to set up some form of
oversight. The oversight doesn't automatically arise from
the system itself, but rather has to be separately
implemented."
Personally, I don't consider either a viable option, but you make the
excellent point that neither automatically accommodates oversight. In a
democracy, oversight should be exercised 'before' a candidate is elected
to public office. The electors need a way to assure themselves that the
candidate's internal gyroscope is aligned with their objective(s)
'before' they make their choice. Therefore, the electoral method must
ensure that candidates are carefully examined by people with a direct
interest in uncovering any aspect of a candidate's intentions that is at
odds with the public interest.
What I meant was that systems that derive their authority from the
people combine the governing and oversight aspects. The people
themselves provide the oversight. If the system is inaccurate (has a bad
election method, say, or gives too much power to a single individual for
too long a time), then that will effect both the governing and the
oversight aspects. In contrast, aristocratic systems need explicit
systems to provide oversight because the two tasks aren't implicitly
connected.
Still, you're right. You'd need explicit oversight in two respects even
in a system based on authority from the people. First, between elections
- hence the checks and balances of the US system. Second, when it's
possible for the apparent "popular will" to be manipulated or to diverge
from what the people really wanted (had they had enough time and clarity
of mind), then the implicit feedback can be weakened.
re: "(In a multiparty democracy, the different parties are
supposed to check one another, and in a coalition system,
the opposition is supposed to check the position, where
the respective coalitions may change from time to time,
again lessening the chance that corruption can set in.)
Does it actually work this way in practice? I have no experience with
multiparty democracy, and cannot make an informed comment on the
practice. However, systems based on the organized pursuit of power seem
(to me) susceptible to corruption.
Consider a comparison to the market. If you have only one business,
that's a monopoly (one-party state). Monopolies regularly charge too
much for low quality goods. If you have two, then you have a duopoly,
which is better but still not ideal, and there's the definite risk of
collusion. As you increase the number of businesses providing the same
goods, competition pushes their prices down.
A multiparty system thus solves more of the corruption problems by
providing more alternatives. Like a market with many companies, it's not
perfect. You still need regulation (in the political case, good systems
and rules); but in my opinion, multiparty democracy seems to be
considerably better at avoiding corruption than two-party ones.
The culture of the society in question of course also matters. Some
countries have multiparty systems but still have only two parties of
importance (e.g. Mali), or even one (e.g. South Africa). And yet others
are unfamiliar with the democratic process and have so many fragmented
parties that the system doesn't really work.
In any case, the point of the market comparison is that every
participant in the market (political system) wants to maximize profit
(power). Yet by having enough of them, the idea goes, they will keep
each other in check. It seems to work at least enough that I would say
multiparty systems are better than two-party ones.
re: "I'm imagining the election method for the hybrid to be
proportional, also, so that if 10 of the 500 think that
advocates for position X should be on the legislature,
then 3 (same proportion) will, assuming they vote according
to that opinion."
I'm not clear on this point. By proportional, do you mean the number of
random choices will be proportional to party size? That is, if party
'A' is 23% of the electorate, 23% of the total candidates selected will
be chosen, at random, from party 'A'? If so, may I suggest that
non-partisans be treated in the same way? If 57% of the electorate is
non-partisan, 57% of the candidates are chosen, at random, from the
non-partisans? (I will avoid consideration of the treatment of
advocates of a particular position until I have a clearer understanding
of your idea.)
Not per party, but per opinion. Say that in the initial stage, 23% will
rank people who express a liberal foreign political stance ahead of
everybody else. Then 23% of the second council will consist of people
who expressed a liberal foreign political stance.
(And such preferences might be nested. If 50% prefer X-ists, and half of
these 50% prefer [X,Y]-ists, the other half [X,Z]-ists, in the sense
that they'll rank these groups ahead of everybody else, then you would get
25% [X,Y]-ists
25% [X,Z]-ists
50% everybody else
in the legislature, subject to that it's actually possible to do so. For
instance, the above would be impossible if there were only three members
in the second stage.
re: "A system can be pushed more towards "not alienating those
further away" by increasing the threshold for action (e.g.
supermajority rule), and that's what I noticed."
At the risk of diverting attention from the critical issues we are
discussing, I'd like to suggest that, instead of using a supermajority
rule, we consider the sunsetting of legislation, that is, varying a
law's life depending on the percentage of legislators supporting the
law, with all laws subject to repeal at any time by a simple majority.
Perhaps, something like:
Approval Rate Term of Legislation
------------- -------------------
Less than 52% law expires in one year
52% to 60% law expires in two years
60% to 75% law expires in five years
75% to 90% law expires in ten years
over 90% no automatic expiration
These terms are, of course, only for illustration. The actual terms
should be determined by study. Given the harm done by bad legislation,
this might be a topic worthy of thought and discussion.
That may also work. If you want less fine-tuning, you could use a
variant of Simmon's consensus algorithm, something to the effect of:
"everybody gives both a compromises vote and a favorite; if the
compromise has sufficient support, it wins with a long term sunset,
otherwise the favorite wins with a short term". But I expect that in a
small council like a legislature, there would be negotiations ahead of
time anyway, so the compromise would win an ordinary vote as well.
Perhaps it would be useful for time-limited matters where the body can't
afford to deliberate for months on end?
(Note that when I say a "compromise vote", the vote itself may suggest
multiple candidates.)
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