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Comment by troupo | Hacker News Reader

> . Then the majority might want something (or not want) but wouldn't consider it important enough to spend their vote on.

Rule of the thumb: everyone will not 'just' [1]

The majority is not a single person that will somehow behave like a rational being that will count their votes and vote only for "things that matter". People view very different things as "things that matter", and the system is easily gamed. Run a few popular, but pointless votes, exhaust available winning votes for the period, then try to pass a meaningful legislation. You will have riots form people who have spent their votes, but still want to vote for something truly important.

And that's before we start talking about whether people should directly vote on removing building code regulations for example. Or whether or not measles vaccines should be mandatory.

[1] https://www.tumblr.com/squareallworthy/163790039847/everyone...

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I'm just playing with the puzzle. It's not like I deeply thought about it and this was my conclusion.

Votes per period might not work. You could in stead accumulate votes over time.

Of course the proposals could repeatedly go against a specific group. Not sure if you could create a unit of accounting for it or have some kind of independent jury examine the gaming.

I also wondered if the price could scale with the % victory. Like, if 100% votes A it costs zero votes. 51% would be the most expensive.

Maybe give the proposal makers a bunch of tokens, filling a proposal costs x, each vote against it costs y.

The core thought is basically, if people are overly attached to something they will get it but will have reduced influence on everything else.

Any time you introduce any type of cost, you create a system where it is extremely easy to disadvantage a group of people.

Do you think improvement is possible?

I don't know if it's possible to improve every kind of voting in the same way.

But we could improve some parts. For example, voting in elections could be improved by introducing Single Transferrable Vote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote (CGP Grey had a bunch of videos on this: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3897F608FAD61E88&si=TzEP...)

The only good clue I have for a new or modified system is that it has to be simple enough for the voter to understand it. The single transferable vote is technically great but the name doesn't explain how it works. You have to make up for that with education (which seems doable)

I wonder how similar the result would be if the voter could cast one vote for something and one against. This seems less complex.

It has other advantages. A large election budget shouldn't automatically convert to votes. Doing a pis poor job should probably cost more than a few votes.

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