Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmount | Hacker News Reader

With all due respect, it sounds like while it might fight flaws common to other voting systems, pay-back based voting will have its own gamesmanship.

Consider 1,000 voters upwind of a factory and 1,000 more voters downwind. Suppose the factory wants to stop scrubbing its exhaust for a savings of $1,000 (to itself) and cost of $10 to each down-wind voter (in health costs). All the factory has to do is propose the same initiative (to allow the removal of regulation) again and again and not vote that much. Each time the down-wind people try to protect their selves they transfer money to up-wind abstainers. After enough rounds of this the down-winders are impoverished and the factory buys the election cheaply.

Edit: and instead of voting large the factory could try to bribe the up-wind voters or a faction of the down-wind voters.

View on HN

This is not an equilibrium; the down-winders would not vote unless they thought that vote mattered. In any case we have a nominating process to avoid this sort of manipulation; see http://ssrn.com/abstract=2321904 or http://ssrn.com/abstract=2343956.

My point is: it is a bad situation, equilibrium or not. And some down-winders have to vote if the factory votes a little bit each time. Or even if the factory threatens to vote (and then doesn't). If all the magic is in the nominating process- then we really don't need the voting mechanism.

Agreed, but what I mean is it can't happen.

If it's not an equilibrium then it can't happen! That doesn't make the claim foolproof or anything-- maybe it's not actually an equilibrium for one reason or another we didn't foresee, but the phrase "it is a bad situation, equilibrium or not" is nonsensical.

Assuming that the proofs make perfect assumptions that exactly match real life, sure.

"the down-winders would not vote unless they thought that vote mattered." - this decision requires mental resources to make, and if the rational choice is too complex then many people wouldn't make it, breaking your assumptions.

Is there any research that tries to model the economic cost of coming to a "rational" decision (as defined by the voting game)?

Yes, in this paper (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2571012) I also consider the case where people make mistakes. You can study equilibrium even in models where people are not perfectly rational.

The paper covers this. The solution is to force a commitment of votes before you can propose a vote on an issue.

So factory votes $1 each time (small commitment, forcing some fraction of the down-winders in unless they can form a coalition).

...as in an actual financially significant amount

Setting that amount to something that's actually a barrier and allows for grassroots movements to actually participate could be quite difficult.

Possibly, but it's an alternative that could have promise and is worth experimenting with in more contexts as the paper suggests. Such experimenting could disprove its utility and we on with the systems we currently have, or it could show promise and we keep experimenting with it in more and more contexts.

Just because it could be gamed is not a reason to wholly dismiss.

Yes, but every time the factory proposes that initiative the 1,000 downwind voters can also counter-propose that the factory continue to scrub the exhaust AND for the factory to pay $1,000 to some initiative they do support.

The 1,000 downwind voters collect 1,000 votes of the counter-proposal and the factory has to either make up the cash for 1,001 votes or implement the counter-proposal. Whichever is more economically viable for the factory.

I would expect the formation of a "union" of down-wind voters. They pool their money, and one person votes with it all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com