Re: [EM] Open budget primary
Hi.
Michael Allan wrote:
Issue Guiding Primary Decisive Authority
===
Forced Legislative (tax law) [1] Assembly
revenue
Unforced Planning (production) [2] Executive (sub-office)
revenue
Planning (donation) [2] RAC pledger [3]
+ executive (sub-office)
---
Forced - (supplier contracts) None
expenditures
Legislative [1] Assembly
(statutory expenses)
Unforced Planning (expenditures) [2] Executive (sub-office)
expenditures + budget (expenditures) [4] + executive (finance)
===
Budget ??? Executive (finance)
+ assembly
- - - - - - - - - - - -
+ judiciary (all
decisions)
We need two primaries for the unforced expenditures, and two deciders.
On the primary side (left), the planning drafts for each program (or
service etc.) must include their own budgets, specifically each must
project the expenditures of the program. These are either fixed (a
number), or functions of program size, or other execution variables.
These data are pulled into the two types of budget primary
(expenditures and whole budget). Now participants in the expenditures
budgetary primary know how many votes a program needs in order to run,
or to reach a preferred size, or capability, etc. If it hasn't enough
primary votes, they'll know they need to campaign, or increase the
turnout, or turn their efforts to saving other programs.
I see.
On the decision side (right), the officer nominated to run the program
decides whether to run it at all, and according to which plan (which
variant draft from the planning primary). So this decision affects
actual expenditures. Meanwhile, the finance officer for the overall
budget has the authority to make changes here as well, of course.
Ok.
Although this is a complex practice, it looks like we're rationalizing
it fairly well. None of the primaries is looking to be too complex in
itself, not even the whole budget. The budget drafters need only
choose which programs put forward by the nominated officers must be
cancelled (not viable) or given haircuts in order to arrive at the
correct balance with revenue. The correct balance (deficit or
surplus) can be guided by a separate policy primary.
Ok.
It looks like we could almost generate a default budget automatically
from simple rules (again input from policy primaries), and then tweak
the draft to correct anomolies. Even the voting in the whole-budget
primary might be simplified by a convention: vote for the draft that
imposes the fewest tweaks, because it's likely to be the truest to the
myriad of input primaries (what we're asking for). Moreover, since
each necessary tweak signals an anomoly in the input primaries (like
asking for what's impossible), we might eliminate even those residual
tweaks by shifting our votes in the input primaries and resolving the
anomolies. The primary budget might then be determined wholly from
the input of external primaries; the whole-budget drafters *per se*
(the tweakers) being effectively removed from the process in the end.
Yes, very good and very interesting. On the other hand executives or
committees can be given power if the input primaries [3] would assign it to
them unforced via [2]. So executive action can still be supportive in swift
ways if this is seen necessary.
The finance officer offered such a perfect primary budget need only
be concerned with executing it. He/she would be purely an executive.
That's perhaps the dream of every executive. The clearer the mandate
(what ought to be) the greater the power to make it a fact (what is).
Yes, especially if the whole planning is already done in process and the plan
is kept up-to-date in near realtime. While being binding for a determined
period, this still helps to assign resources for the next budget, which can
already be planned with to a certain degree by the executive (after all this
is an important qualification for office) and help expand executive power
where it is necessary now.
Maybe SemanticMediawiki can already cover that since the mapping only has to
go from the right [3] to the budget primary on the left [2]. Pledges still
propagate through the tree of the input primary with its pipes, yet they are
patched until they may become the executive plan in which case only the
mapping is necessary (one query, right?). To project different none majority
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
conseo said:
... In the budget everything comes together really. The spreadsheet
like features will also be very interesting. I hope I can dive into
hacking that soon.
We might do the calculations in the pollwiki using these extensions.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VariablesExtension
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Extension:ParserFunctions
And pull in the external data with Semantic MediaWiki.
Here's a running prototype of a simple budget draft:
http://zelea.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=User:Mike-ZeleaCom/scratcholdid=6561
The bottom example uses SMW to clean up the external data pollution.
That leaves pure, original, budgetary content in the draft. Now we
can cleanly patch budget differences from draft to draft. (It looks
like MediaWiki saves our bacon here, once again. I didn't think we
could this without custom software.)
This would all go in ??? below, as the whole-budget primary. I make
corrections below to the Unforced expenditures row:
Issue Guiding Primary Decisive Authority
===
Forced Legislative (tax law) [1] Assembly
revenue
Unforced Planning (production) [2] Executive (sub-office)
revenue
Planning (donation) [2] RAC pledger [3]
+ executive (sub-office)
---
Forced - (supplier contracts) None
expenditures
Legislative [1] Assembly
(statutory expenses)
Unforced Planning (expenditures) [2] Executive (sub-office)
expenditures + budget (expenditures) [4] + executive (finance)
===
Budget ??? Executive (finance)
+ assembly
- - - - - - - - - - - -
+ judiciary (all
decisions)
We need two primaries for the unforced expenditures, and two deciders.
On the primary side (left), the planning drafts for each program (or
service etc.) must include their own budgets, specifically each must
project the expenditures of the program. These are either fixed (a
number), or functions of program size, or other execution variables.
These data are pulled into the two types of budget primary
(expenditures and whole budget). Now participants in the expenditures
budgetary primary know how many votes a program needs in order to run,
or to reach a preferred size, or capability, etc. If it hasn't enough
primary votes, they'll know they need to campaign, or increase the
turnout, or turn their efforts to saving other programs.
On the decision side (right), the officer nominated to run the program
decides whether to run it at all, and according to which plan (which
variant draft from the planning primary). So this decision affects
actual expenditures. Meanwhile, the finance officer for the overall
budget has the authority to make changes here as well, of course.
Although this is a complex practice, it looks like we're rationalizing
it fairly well. None of the primaries is looking to be too complex in
itself, not even the whole budget. The budget drafters need only
choose which programs put forward by the nominated officers must be
cancelled (not viable) or given haircuts in order to arrive at the
correct balance with revenue. The correct balance (deficit or
surplus) can be guided by a separate policy primary.
It looks like we could almost generate a default budget automatically
from simple rules (again input from policy primaries), and then tweak
the draft to correct anomolies. Even the voting in the whole-budget
primary might be simplified by a convention: vote for the draft that
imposes the fewest tweaks, because it's likely to be the truest to the
myriad of input primaries (what we're asking for). Moreover, since
each necessary tweak signals an anomoly in the input primaries (like
asking for what's impossible), we might eliminate even those residual
tweaks by shifting our votes in the input primaries and resolving the
anomolies. The primary budget might then be determined wholly from
the input of external primaries; the whole-budget drafters *per se*
(the tweakers) being effectively removed from the process in the end.
The finance officer offered such a perfect primary budget need only
be concerned with executing it. He/she would be purely an executive.
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
This is fairly complicated. But it's interesting too, because it
shows how different types of primary come together in the budget.
conseo said:
Yes, if [supply side] accounting happened in the same process, then
budget drafting would be embedded in the process, right? ...
We spoke since. Here's a summary of how we figured the budget is
decided, and how that decision is guided by the participants. The
summary reveals some holes, which I try to fill in below. It looks
like whole-budget drafting fits in one of them.
Issue Guiding PrimaryDecisive Authority
=
Forced Legislative (tax law) [1] Assembly
revenue
Unforced Planning (production) [2] Executive (sub-office)
revenue
Planning (donation) [2] RAC pledger [3]
+ executive (sub-office)
-
Forced - (supplier contracts) None
expenditures
Legislative [1] Assembly
(statutory expenses)
Unforced Budget (expenditures) [4] Executive (finance)
expenditures
=
Budget ???Executive (finance)
+ assembly
- - - - - - - - - - - -
+ judiciary (all decisions)
Forced revenue comes from taxes guided by legislative primaries and
decided by the assembly. (These could be member fees for other types
of organization, but I use government as my standard here.) Unforced
revenue may come from production (goods and services charged for),
which is guided by planning primaries and decided by the officer who
is charged with executing the plan. Unforced revenue may also come
from donations that are pledged to specific variants of the plan via
the RAC, the pledged amounts being decided by the pledger (of course)
while the variant is chosen by the executive; the pledge is redeemable
only if the pledged variant is chosen. (We discussed how wealth could
influence the planning decision here, and we mostly agreed it's normal
in this context, and not a problem.)
Forced expenditures come from supplier contracts that are already in
force for materials, manpower, capital and such. Payment for these is
mandatory by contract law, and not decided by anyone. Expenditures
may also be enforced by statutory law, as with statutory programs or
services. Unforced expenditures - the discretionary balance among
departments, programs and services - are guided by the budget primary
for that purpose, but decided by the finance officer.
The sum of all these decisions is the budget (bottom left), which
again is decided by the finance officer, typically in conjunction with
the assembly, which has a veto. Note that we're missing a primary
here to guide the budget as a whole (???). So I guess we need:
(A) Budget primary (whole budget)
It might be implemented like a legislative primary [1], with variant
budgets instead of bills. It also needs special markup to read data
from external sources that are shareable by the variant drafts, and it
must render the data on the fly, instead of writing them directly to
the text. These data include things like the latest results of the
expenditures primary, cost of supplier contracts, interest rate
projections, and so forth. It also needs spreadsheet-like
capabilities to display intermediate and final calculations on the fly
instead of writing them in. Then it might be possible to patch
variant budget drafts using text diffs, like we patch bills. The
drafting medium (so modified) is the budget composing tool we spoke of
earlier. The chief financial officer uses it to compose the official
budget. And rivals for that office in the *executive* primary (or
budding future candidates) tend to be experienced drafters in the
*budget* primary, where they all work more-or-less together.
All decisions in the authority column (above) are subject to judicial
review. Courts may strike down or alter decisions. So the judiciary
is a decider, too. But the deciders - the members of the assembly,
executive and judiciary - are themselves the products of decision.
Here's how *they* are decided:
Issue Guiding Primary Decisive Authority
== === ===
Assembly Single and multi- [5] Electorate
-winner electoral
Executive Executive electoral [6] Electorate (presidential)
or assembly (parliamentary)
Judiciary ??? Executive, electorate,
or executive + assembly
== - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Re: [EM] Open budget primary
Thanks C, Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the vote, but their taxes rather directly with their vote in form of resources. I guess the budget vote is a vote for expenditures (i.e. for a program or service or purchase). Maybe the RAC pledge would be where the voter contributes additional revenue as a kind of donation or (government) voluntary tax toward the same expenditure. You asked on IRC whether additional code might be needed for the budgeting practice. Two things I can think of: (1) Tool for finance officer to produce budget itself. He adds revenue, debt servicing and other forced expenditures, account cancellations, and so forth. The tool combines these with the current results of the budget primary, and produces the official budget. Maybe candidate finance officers can produce their budgets in advance, as part of applying for office in the executive primary. Maybe the opposition finance officer (out of office) always has a shadow budget, as a kind of critique of the gov't. (2) Tool to compare official budget with the primary, verifying that the wishes of the primary participants are being met, or what the discrepencies are exactly. Probably these two are related, maybe even the same tool. Mike conseo said: Michael Allan wrote: Here's a rough design for an open budget primary based on transitive delegation: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/budgeting It runs in parallel with an open executive primary of similar design. The officers currently nominated in the executive primary maintain accounts for particular programs and services in the budget primary. Each voting participant has a single vote to cast into an account. Together the participants shift these votes to ensure that the most important accounts are sufficiently funded. When the executive is eventually elected, it comes complete with a primary budget. Will this work as hoped? Or is there an obvious flaw? I am not sure whether this is close enough to democratically steer the economic process, but it is definitely a well-integrated way to develop a budget. I don't see a direct problem with it and I think it is a very interesting idea which matches the pipe indirection nicely. Good idea! Since it is also combinable with our resource accounting, people could both determine the global budget and contribute more than the vote, but their taxes rather directly with their vote in form of resources. conseo Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
