- I think it's hard to delve into this area well without addressing the elephant in the room: the poor incentivization to provide good votes at all.
- Raising the price of votes to filter out noise is an interesting idea, but I didn't find the argument for why we should expect the remaining votes to the better than the the other scenario. There seems to be an implied assumption that a given citizen's vote quality would be identical whether they were paying information/etc. costs to vote or paying information/etc. costs plus $500 to vote.
- It isn't clear to me how we should think of error costs. You seem to imply that the bad votes coming from error are just as bad as informed votes are good, but that shouldn't work -- bad and good votes that cancel out are not a major harm. We could analyze the problem of noise (which is huge), but you also seem to identify certain bad decisions voters make as shallow or dumb. I don't know how to deal with that attitude in this context, where at times you seem to rely on the rationality assumption.
- "democracy is a process to obtain a good, not a good in and of itself...democracy is...only as useful as the justness of the laws it produces" -- this seems incorrect, but I don't want to read your other piece.
- It isn't clear to me why this number should be binary or bounded. Why don't people who pay $250 get half a vote and people who pay $5000 get ten votes? (The UBI system seems orthogonal.)
- I'm not sure why voting is good in and of itself. As I argue, democracy is a means to get us just laws. If encouraging more people to vote would produce more just laws, I'd be open to that proposal. Yet on its face, it appears that there's currently a lot of noise in the system thats impeding our institutions. Securities laws, trade laws, and tax laws would be better made by well informed experts, rather than by the populous.
- If the opportunity cost of voting is higher, then the value of voting would need to be higher as well for someone to want to vote. People who have invested thought and time in the vote would be more likely to forgo $500 from voting rather than someone apathetic and may have voted for misinformed reasons.
- Error costs are the bad results from noise in the system. If you have more uninformed votes, laws will be less likely to be just. I use the example of some cities' misguided housing policies due to community input procedures. And we don't want the noise to cancel out the signal. We want to maximize signal.
- I discuss above. The point of democracy is just laws. If we knew that a democratic system would produce unjust laws and an undemocratic one would produce just ones, then there wouldn't be a good justification for going with the democratic system. What could justify forcing people to live under bad laws?
- I prefer to keep things simple. There may be a voting market that would produce the best laws. But I have no idea what that is. But I believe that the strongest argument for VC is the principle. Its fair to provide compensation to people who have forfeited their governing power. Since the market recognizes the legitimate trade off between voting power and economic benefits, that same ability should be extended to citizens (based on my Rawlsian argument above and made throughout this substack).
> I'm not sure why voting is good in and of itself.
I didn't say voting was good, I said it seemed like democracy is useful other than the justness of the laws it produces. It seems like democracy provides checks on tyrany that don't have to do with law-passing and is a non-tyranical way to suppress revolt.
> on its face, it appears that there's currently a lot of noise in the system thats impeding our institutions. Securities laws, trade laws, and tax laws would be better made by well informed experts, rather than by the populous.
This assertion seems utterly unsupported.
Today's experts are certainly aware of more efficient policies than the popular ones, but that does *not* mean they would make better laws. This does not tell us that those are the laws they would put into place, nor what the incentives are for expertise rather than quackery in whatever system gives them the power.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
> Error costs are the bad results from noise in the system.
I think you're being inconsistent -- at times you talk about bias, at times noise, and I can't find a systematic way.
> I prefer to keep things simple.
I don't think introducing an arbitrary number and a UBI component really adds simplicity. These things need to be doing some specific work to justify them over a model with fewer terms and arbitrary constants.
------------------------------------
All the above was petty squabling, the real thing that matters:
> If the opportunity cost of voting is higher, then the value of voting would need to be higher as well for someone to want to vote. People who have invested thought and time in the vote would be more likely to forgo $500 from voting rather than someone apathetic and may have voted for misinformed reasons.
It seems exceedingly rare that the value of a good vote to a rational voter should be greater than $500. A vote, even under the system you specify, is going to be unlikely to make a difference, thus the benefit to the voter would have to be exceedingly high -- if a vote has a 0.1% chance of swining the election (very high!), then the result would have to be worth $500,000 to the voter. I can imagine situations where this could be the case, but I have no reason to think that such a thing is just, efficient, or any other property that provides broad benefit.
Good government is a public good. I was presuming before that you were operating on a model that didn't have positive net benefit for the voter, but that was treating voting as altruistic or hobby behavior.
>It seems like democracy provides checks on tyrany that don't have to do with law-passing and is a non-tyranical way to suppress revolt.
I do not argue for tyranny. People would still have voice through speech and voting. I argue that people's voting rights should be expanded to include a compensation right. And to the extent that laws are just, then supressing revolts would be justified. I'm not sure what the justification for government is besides making just laws, since that is the government's purpose.
>Today's experts are certainly aware of more efficient policies than the popular ones, but that does *not* mean they would make better laws. This does not tell us that those are the laws they would put into place, nor what the incentives are for expertise rather than quackery in whatever system gives them the power.
This is admitting my point. If experts are more informed, then our institutions should give their ideas more weight, while correcting for power through checks and balances. This is what we have currently, as the legislature, courts, commercial interests, and agencies all have their own agendas, but can only come to agreement on those laws which can be reasonably accepted by impartial parties.
Moreover, I'm not sure why you attribute bad faith on the part of experts, but not that to voters. If you're worried about one group being too powerful, you should support less democracy as a check against mob rule.
>I think you're being inconsistent -- at times you talk about bias, at times noise, and I can't find a systematic way.
Error costs are the costs associated with biased information provided through the voting system, which can be classified as "noise." But I refer to bad information generally here.
>I don't think introducing an arbitrary number and a UBI component really adds simplicity. These things need to be doing some specific work to justify them over a model with fewer terms and arbitrary constants.
VC is simplier than a market for voting as you suggest, which introduces economic, legal, and constitutional issues. A standard UBI for voting provides the fewest constraints, which is better for a mass system. But as I provide above, what matters in the principle of voter compensation, rather than the amount or method.
>It seems exceedingly rare that the value of a good vote to a rational voter should be greater than $500. A vote, even under the system you specify, is going to be unlikely to make a difference, thus the benefit to the voter would have to be exceedingly high -- if a vote has a 0.1% chance of swining the election (very high!), then the result would have to be worth $500,000 to the voter. I can imagine situations where this could be the case, but I have no reason to think that such a thing is just, efficient, or any other property that provides broad benefit. Good government is a public good. I was presuming before that you were operating on a model that didn't have positive net benefit for the voter, but that was treating voting as altruistic or hobby behavior.
Under this theory of voting, where voting would be decided on a cost/benefit calculation, no one would vote. Yet given that people do vote means that people don't make this calculation when they vote. So voting has pro-social motivations. Yet the value of that pro-social vote can vary based on how informed a voter is/how socially orienteded they are/how confident they are etc. VC tries to give more weight to these high value votes.
Thanks for sharing this post, a few thoughts
- I think it's hard to delve into this area well without addressing the elephant in the room: the poor incentivization to provide good votes at all.
- Raising the price of votes to filter out noise is an interesting idea, but I didn't find the argument for why we should expect the remaining votes to the better than the the other scenario. There seems to be an implied assumption that a given citizen's vote quality would be identical whether they were paying information/etc. costs to vote or paying information/etc. costs plus $500 to vote.
- It isn't clear to me how we should think of error costs. You seem to imply that the bad votes coming from error are just as bad as informed votes are good, but that shouldn't work -- bad and good votes that cancel out are not a major harm. We could analyze the problem of noise (which is huge), but you also seem to identify certain bad decisions voters make as shallow or dumb. I don't know how to deal with that attitude in this context, where at times you seem to rely on the rationality assumption.
- "democracy is a process to obtain a good, not a good in and of itself...democracy is...only as useful as the justness of the laws it produces" -- this seems incorrect, but I don't want to read your other piece.
- It isn't clear to me why this number should be binary or bounded. Why don't people who pay $250 get half a vote and people who pay $5000 get ten votes? (The UBI system seems orthogonal.)
Thanks for your feedback!
- I'm not sure why voting is good in and of itself. As I argue, democracy is a means to get us just laws. If encouraging more people to vote would produce more just laws, I'd be open to that proposal. Yet on its face, it appears that there's currently a lot of noise in the system thats impeding our institutions. Securities laws, trade laws, and tax laws would be better made by well informed experts, rather than by the populous.
- If the opportunity cost of voting is higher, then the value of voting would need to be higher as well for someone to want to vote. People who have invested thought and time in the vote would be more likely to forgo $500 from voting rather than someone apathetic and may have voted for misinformed reasons.
- Error costs are the bad results from noise in the system. If you have more uninformed votes, laws will be less likely to be just. I use the example of some cities' misguided housing policies due to community input procedures. And we don't want the noise to cancel out the signal. We want to maximize signal.
- I discuss above. The point of democracy is just laws. If we knew that a democratic system would produce unjust laws and an undemocratic one would produce just ones, then there wouldn't be a good justification for going with the democratic system. What could justify forcing people to live under bad laws?
- I prefer to keep things simple. There may be a voting market that would produce the best laws. But I have no idea what that is. But I believe that the strongest argument for VC is the principle. Its fair to provide compensation to people who have forfeited their governing power. Since the market recognizes the legitimate trade off between voting power and economic benefits, that same ability should be extended to citizens (based on my Rawlsian argument above and made throughout this substack).
> I'm not sure why voting is good in and of itself.
I didn't say voting was good, I said it seemed like democracy is useful other than the justness of the laws it produces. It seems like democracy provides checks on tyrany that don't have to do with law-passing and is a non-tyranical way to suppress revolt.
> on its face, it appears that there's currently a lot of noise in the system thats impeding our institutions. Securities laws, trade laws, and tax laws would be better made by well informed experts, rather than by the populous.
This assertion seems utterly unsupported.
Today's experts are certainly aware of more efficient policies than the popular ones, but that does *not* mean they would make better laws. This does not tell us that those are the laws they would put into place, nor what the incentives are for expertise rather than quackery in whatever system gives them the power.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
> Error costs are the bad results from noise in the system.
I think you're being inconsistent -- at times you talk about bias, at times noise, and I can't find a systematic way.
> I prefer to keep things simple.
I don't think introducing an arbitrary number and a UBI component really adds simplicity. These things need to be doing some specific work to justify them over a model with fewer terms and arbitrary constants.
------------------------------------
All the above was petty squabling, the real thing that matters:
> If the opportunity cost of voting is higher, then the value of voting would need to be higher as well for someone to want to vote. People who have invested thought and time in the vote would be more likely to forgo $500 from voting rather than someone apathetic and may have voted for misinformed reasons.
It seems exceedingly rare that the value of a good vote to a rational voter should be greater than $500. A vote, even under the system you specify, is going to be unlikely to make a difference, thus the benefit to the voter would have to be exceedingly high -- if a vote has a 0.1% chance of swining the election (very high!), then the result would have to be worth $500,000 to the voter. I can imagine situations where this could be the case, but I have no reason to think that such a thing is just, efficient, or any other property that provides broad benefit.
Good government is a public good. I was presuming before that you were operating on a model that didn't have positive net benefit for the voter, but that was treating voting as altruistic or hobby behavior.
>It seems like democracy provides checks on tyrany that don't have to do with law-passing and is a non-tyranical way to suppress revolt.
I do not argue for tyranny. People would still have voice through speech and voting. I argue that people's voting rights should be expanded to include a compensation right. And to the extent that laws are just, then supressing revolts would be justified. I'm not sure what the justification for government is besides making just laws, since that is the government's purpose.
>Today's experts are certainly aware of more efficient policies than the popular ones, but that does *not* mean they would make better laws. This does not tell us that those are the laws they would put into place, nor what the incentives are for expertise rather than quackery in whatever system gives them the power.
This is admitting my point. If experts are more informed, then our institutions should give their ideas more weight, while correcting for power through checks and balances. This is what we have currently, as the legislature, courts, commercial interests, and agencies all have their own agendas, but can only come to agreement on those laws which can be reasonably accepted by impartial parties.
Moreover, I'm not sure why you attribute bad faith on the part of experts, but not that to voters. If you're worried about one group being too powerful, you should support less democracy as a check against mob rule.
>I think you're being inconsistent -- at times you talk about bias, at times noise, and I can't find a systematic way.
Error costs are the costs associated with biased information provided through the voting system, which can be classified as "noise." But I refer to bad information generally here.
>I don't think introducing an arbitrary number and a UBI component really adds simplicity. These things need to be doing some specific work to justify them over a model with fewer terms and arbitrary constants.
VC is simplier than a market for voting as you suggest, which introduces economic, legal, and constitutional issues. A standard UBI for voting provides the fewest constraints, which is better for a mass system. But as I provide above, what matters in the principle of voter compensation, rather than the amount or method.
>It seems exceedingly rare that the value of a good vote to a rational voter should be greater than $500. A vote, even under the system you specify, is going to be unlikely to make a difference, thus the benefit to the voter would have to be exceedingly high -- if a vote has a 0.1% chance of swining the election (very high!), then the result would have to be worth $500,000 to the voter. I can imagine situations where this could be the case, but I have no reason to think that such a thing is just, efficient, or any other property that provides broad benefit. Good government is a public good. I was presuming before that you were operating on a model that didn't have positive net benefit for the voter, but that was treating voting as altruistic or hobby behavior.
Under this theory of voting, where voting would be decided on a cost/benefit calculation, no one would vote. Yet given that people do vote means that people don't make this calculation when they vote. So voting has pro-social motivations. Yet the value of that pro-social vote can vary based on how informed a voter is/how socially orienteded they are/how confident they are etc. VC tries to give more weight to these high value votes.