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by tankenmate 3210 days ago
I wish there was times that HN supported Quadratic Voting[0] so that I could more (but costly) up votes to a really sane and pertinent comment.

[0] http://ericposner.com/quadratic-voting/

5 comments

Have you tried writing Rust? I have and I think this feature is great.

I upvoted you for your link, but actually the argument that it would be good because people who care more will make a better decision than those who don't does not completely convince me. Someone could care a lot about something but still have the wrong idea about it.

Thanks for the link, I started reading the paper. I love this:

Groups frequently make collective decisions through majority rule. Legislators pass bills by majority; shareholders make most corporate decisions by (share-weighted) majority rule, as do directors; clubs, university faculties, and civic associations typically use majority rule as well. The reason that they do so is not entirely clear. (Emphasis mine).

>The reason that they do so is not entirely clear.

Not clear? It's almost too clear as to be tautological.

They do because they (a) think all members should have equal say, (b) most members in the group want X to be done.

Unless we're talking about submitting to force or listening to expertise, why would many people wanting to do something, let fewer people tell them what to do instead?

Heck, if it comes to fighting for what's to be done (the most effective but primitive form of getting a decision), the majority could beat up the minority and have its way anyway.

Since we're going off-topic about QV here: am I correct in my understanding that you can _buy_ votes there? Because the obvious problem (because I'm probably missing something) with that would be that money is not as costly for some as it is for others? In other words, it'd lead to tyranny of the wealthy?
(from a cursory read) You can buy votes, but they become increasingly costly. Also, the payments are redistributed out among the population, so if you spend 1B to buy 31.6K votes, that 1B gets handed to the population at large who, if larger in number, can more efficiently re-spend it voting you down.

What I imagine QV does is find the point at which participants who don't care so much would rather pocket the funds and walk away, rather than spend it on voting.

If the ballot measure is "Eat Vinnl", you might want to spend a lot to vote it down, but it might not take much to convince the others not to spend it back at you (and you all eat berries instead). If the ballot measure is "Vinnl eats everyone else", you won't be able to spend enough that everyone else can't just spend it back at you, more efficiently.

Edit: one important difference here is that unless the GP is actually going to pony up real money, something of value to those they inconvenience with their (imo silly) opinion, it doesn't make much sense.

So it's a method of exchanging influence for money for poor people, and money for influence for rich people? Still doesn't sound that great...

Anyway, I see it's been submitted separately :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15206291

Interesting idea, but what if I stead of buying them, we could spend our accumulated points to emphasize ideas.
I've never heard about quadratic voting before. This is very interesting!