How to Organize Society From Top To Bottom

Chapter 19

Quadratic Voting FAQ’s
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9477747

Quadratic Voting

The idea is that we examine here how allocating 100 credits to each voter, how he or she will use them across issues and or candidates will in fact work out.

The objections and explanations for what issues are discussed below in a FAQ format.

This voting pattern allows for not only who gets elected, as in the proportional system, but also allows how intense a person supports a given issue by registering how many credits they allow on a given issue.

This intensity is an added feature with this particular voting method which other voting methods do not allow.
I cannot see why this quadratic method cannot be combined with other methods currently in use. Certainly we could do an experiment to see what the pros and cons of such a combination might reveal;.

Since we have read through these materials cited above and detailed below, I have a few observations that might apply.

With 100 credits to spend in anyway I want:

1. There is no check on powerful corporations coercing employees to use their credits in the ways which benefit them, the corporation.

2. There is no check for the influence of money in politics where billionaires can publicize their particular issues and their candidates and other less known candidates never surface to public notice.

3. There is no check on family dynasties whose members are better known to the public, hence they get themselves elected.

What we need is a check on who gets elected no matter what personalities might be involved in a campaign.

How can that be done?

First, we could eliminate money in politics by selecting people on a slate basis. That is individuals would not stand for election, rather they are part of a pledged slate whose members stand for issues of moment to the public.

Members could be chosen, by lot or randomly, or they could be chosen by their status in the organization or in society: ie workers, middle class slates, for example, by the groups they represent, and are matched up against other classes. No expensive campaigns are allowed in the election.  
A variation on this would be similar to how we choose jury member--who can possess the powers of life and death, and can obviously vote in a given election.

Whichever one we choose, if we combine it with a single tax then this tax on rents levied on corporations, would see proceeds go back to the public which would be used, via, say the 100 credits as to which public infrastructure could and would be built; which schools could and would be built,
Private property could be in fact returned to the public good as opposed to private consumption and the aggrandizement of personal wealth, which is the system we currently have.

A corollary to the above system is that all public corporations would reimburse all citizens for use of their submitted data.

That is, if Facebook uses my data, if Google uses my data, accumulates funds by selling ads, then why cannot reimburse tax payers and individuals for use of their data?

Currently they sequester these funds as “their private property” and nothing is returned to the public which is the original source of that data.

Similarly, a given piece of property has increased in value due to the investments of the community, due to investments of infrastructure, whereby property is relatively valueless unless the public invests in supports which increases the value of that property.

Property in New York is valued at millions of dollars a square foot over desert property in New Mexico precisely due to community investments make make that property valuable.

The rent for that property is public investments which are not returned to those that have created it, in the the first place.

Taxing improved property via its increase in values in how the public gets a return on its investment.

This lets us ponder this for a moment.
Nest we tackle the issues of immigration, and the internationalization of these ideas,