proj-branchDemocracy-branchDemocracyDesignTodos5

mb w/r/t interpretation of rules of debate on the Board, questions of 'fact' lie with the Chairs (altho mb Appeal from Decision of the Chair can throw it to the procedural tribunal?), but questions of 'law' (eg what the rules mean) lie with the procedural tribunal

this would reduce the power of appeal from decision of the chair, and prevent spectacles where the legislature appeals a decision when the decision was clearly correct

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need to make the Board election procedure able to deal with constraints such as e.g. at least N independent directors, at least N directors with financial expertise, at least N directors of each gender, etc.

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these ppl might be interested in using it:

jeffrey berns and blockchains LLC bought 67k mostly undeveloped acres to make a town which is a "distributed collaborative entity" where "ownership rights and voting powers will be recorded in a digital wallet" according to the nytimes. Berns is a lawyer.

"Every resident and employee will have what amounts to an Ethereum address, which they will use to vote on local measures and store their personal data."

"Mr. Berns believes that one of the big problems has been security. People have been terrible at holding the private keys that are necessary to get access to a Bitcoin or Ethereum wallet.

He wants to address that with a custom-built system where people’s private keys are stored on multiple digital devices, kept in vaults, so that no one device can gain access to the keys. He has already purchased vaults that are burrowed into mountains in Sweden and Switzerland, and he plans to build additional vaults in the mountains in Nevada."

-- [1] (archived)

"After the land purchase, the company made no significant announcements, though it did hire the founder of MyEtherWallet?, Kosala Hemachandra, as its "chief blockchains officer" in June." -- [2]

https://blockchains.com/

https://twitter.com/blockchainsllc?lang=en

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learn from this:

https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-8016/

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https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00045##

" Stage c

c ollective decisions In the second part (stage c ), we asked participants to make collective decisions. First, they were instructed to find other members in their gr oup according to a numerical code found in page 1. Each group had six members, and all participants were seated next to each other in two consecutive rows. The speaker announced that there were two possible roles in the group: player or moderator. Each gro up had five players and one moderator. Each participant could 16 find their assigned role in page 1 (e.g., “You are the moderator in group 765” or “You are a player in group 391 ”). Players were instructed to reach a consensus and report it to the moderator in a maximum of 6 seconds. Moderators were given verbal and written instructions to not participate nor intercede in the decisions made by the players. The role of the moderators was simply to write down the collective decisions made by the players in their group. Moderators were also instructed to write down an ‘X’ if there was lack of consensus among the group. Groups were asked to answer four of the eight questions from stage i1 (see Supplementary Table 1 ). The speaker read the four questions again, and a nnounced the moments in which time was over. "

" Participants first answered individually, then deliberated and made consensus decisions in groups of five, and finally provided revised individ ual estimates. We found that averaging consensus decisions was substantially more accurate than aggregating the i nitial independent opinions. Remarkably, combining as few as four consensus choices outperformed the wisdom of thousands of individuals "

and the average of the revised individuals estimates (phase III) was even better, i think

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"Posner and Weyl do give one example of what I would call a decentralized institution: a game for choosing who gets an asset in the event of a divorce or a company splitting in half, where both sides provide their own valuation, the person with the higher valuation gets the item, but they must then give an amount equal to half the average of the two valuations to the loser. "

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tangentially relevant:

https://www.say.com/ https://www.alleywatch.com/2018/04/the-alleywatch-nyc-startup-daily-funding-report-4-10-18/amp/ https://www.barrons.com/articles/point72-backed-start-up-to-rock-the-proxy-vote-1523363755

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defendent decides whether 'jury' (full tribunal) is used, or just judges

or, have a 'trial' first with a panel of 3 judges, and only if they disagree, does it go to a jury

3 judges + 6 jurors = 9; needs 6 to convict

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no parliamentary system can survive if it does not provide a mechanism for quick decision-making in times of war and emergencies

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if the person who would exceed term limits or serve in multiple offices gets >=2/3 of the vote, they can do this even without the order of a majority of the Chairs. This is to prevent the owner of a company from having control taken away by surprise due to some unexpected procedural issue.

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recruit this guy to ask for advice:

Richard A. Arenberg

Arenberg worked for Sens. Paul Tsongas (D-Mass.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) for 34 years and is co-author of the award winning "Defending the Filibuster: The Soul of the Senate-Revised and Edited Edition." He is a visiting professor of political science and international and public affairs at Brown University.

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the election protocol for the Doge of Venice is interesting:

https://www.venetoinside.com/hidden-treasures/post/the-election-of-the-doge-of-the-republic-of-venice/ https://www.constitution.org/elec/VenetianGovernment.html but see https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52174/did-the-republic-of-venice-use-range-voting which disputes the actual claim that range voting was used https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2007/HPL-2007-28R1.pdf https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=venice+doge+election+voting&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=venice%20doge%20voting%20election&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1-m

the Doge seems to be sort of a cross between a king and an executive officer. The governance of Venice is purported to have been pretty good. So maybe this is worth taking a look at.

Seems to me that the primary virtue of this procedure is anti-corruption through randomizaiton; it's hard to predict who the final electors will be so it's hard to get to them ahead of time. Some evidence for this is that the electors were sequestered while they debated. But for similar reasons, it also prevents any one faction from being certain of a win.

how can we use this? i think in the election of Prime Minister (CEO). If we used it on the legislature we would lose the ability to trace and hence to have cross-councils. If we used it on the Chairs they would lose their legitimacy. We could also use it on judges, i guess, but right now i'm thinking just the CEO.

imo the full procedure is too complicated to retain legitimacy in the modern world, and even the reduced 7-round one given in the paper TODO is too complicated. Also it requires too many people.

so how about this variant: the 7-seat Board elects a commission of 7*3 = 21 distinct people, where each person must be elected by a vote of >=2/3 of the Board. The 21 people are reduced via sortition to 7. Those seven elect another commission of 21 distinct people by a vote of >=2/3. And those 21 select the CEO via single-seat triscore voting with a final threshold of 3/5.

When term limits are put on hold this procedure is too (to allow a supermajority shareholder to determine the CEO).

Note https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/52174/did-the-republic-of-venice-use-range-voting which states that the nominees are considered in random order and the first one to get >=2/3s wins (is this only in the final round or in earlier rounds too?).

Unlike just letting the Board decide, this procedure yields a non-incumbent result at unpredictable times, so we need a way to decide when to use it. I say the Board can vote out the incumbent with a simple majority vote. It's possible that this procedure doesn't result in an election, though (if one of the stages fails to elect the required number for the next stage, or if no candidate gets >=3/5 of the final vote), in which case no one wins and the incumbent remains.

hmm.. actually maybe that's not so good; that means that as long as the incumbent enjoys at least >1/3 support, on average their supporters can refuse to vote for anyone in the commission-electing rounds. And then the legislature will just vote to replace again the next day, until randomly we end up with both 7-person rounds having unusually few of the incumbent's supporters. Otoh that outcome isn't actually so bad. (mb let's actually build it in; after we have a selection, the legislature then votes whether or not to accept it by majority vote; if it rejects, explicitly say that the legislature can then vote to go back and do it again?)

This also makes me think that the supermajority votes in the original Doge of Venice elections may have been intended as majoritarian, so as to promote power being kept by whichever group of faction(s) currently holds it (which makes sense as this was an 'aristocratic' system).

I guess a problem remains that in the first round, when the legislature itself is voting by >=2/3s to select 21 people, the >1/3 supporters of the incumbent can just block every time, meaning that this protocol allows the incumbent to stay in office until 2/3s of the legislature is tired of them (which is only 5/7 so it's not THAT crazy...)

We could always make it multiseat triscore in the first round, which doesn't fail (i think) or at least can't be made to fail easily by a small faction.

The thing is, if a majority faction has a candidate in mind, they can keep redoing this until their candidate wins, and if a large enough minority faction likes the incumbent, they can keep refuse to vote for anyone except their own people and thereby block the procedure from electing a replacement. So this procedure only has teeth when (a) a large enough supermajority dislikes the incumbent but (b) there is no majority preference for any single replacement.

Which seems like this is pushing us to use simple majorities rather than supermajorities. So, if any legislative faction has a majority, they can get their way (which seems OK for choosing a prime minister). And when a majority dislikes the incumbent, but there is no majority for any single replacement, now is when this procedure 'has teeth'; the procedure has some probability of coming up with a replacement which is preferred to the incumbent even by the Board, although it's not clear who this person will be.

another issue is that an incumbent friendly commission of electors could simply refuse to end debate. We can deal with that by giving the legislature the power to disolve them at will.

we can better serve the purpose of resisting corruption by making the first commission elected by the Boardelectors rather than the Board (which is more similar to the original Venetian procedure in which a large electorate elected the first commission); in fact, like the Venetians, just start by sortitioning that larger body down to 7.

what if the 7 who are selected happen to be mostly incumbent supporters? They can just refuse to elect a candidate, or to elect someone who is just as unacceptable to the Board as the incumbent. We could add complexity to force them to at least elect someone, but i think this is a lost cause -- if they like the incumbent, they like the incumbent, and they'll find some way to do what e wants. So let's just let them do their thing -- forcing them to filibuster, or to elect someone else besides their guy, is 'punishment' enough for not doing their "duty" of honestly searching for a good, broadly-supported, replacement for the incumbent.

if the office of CEO is vacant, then whoever is currently filling in for that role (acting CEO) (the understudy of the previous CEO) is in the role of incumbent in the final vote, and if they win, they become the real CEO. If the office is truly vacant (there is no one even filling in, and it's totally unclear who should), then the first Chair acts as the incumbent, but if separation of powers is in effect, they remain only an acting CEO, and in this case the CEO replacement procedure is automatically invoked every Boardmeeting until a real CEO is found.

so the procedure i'm currently advocating is:

the Board can vote to challenge the incumbent CEO. When they do so, 7 out of the Boardelectors are chosen by sortition. They elect a temporary commission of 21 seats via multiseat triscore (with a final runoff vote of the chosen replacement against debating more and then redoing the vote). That commission, after debating, elects a potential replacement CEO by single-seat triscore (with the incumbent not eligible) (with a final runoff vote of the chosen replacement against debating more and then redoing the vote); note that this procedure might not terminate, so if these commissions haven't elected a potential replacement CEO by the beginning of the next Boardmeeting, they are dissolved. This potential replacement is then sent to the Board, who vote in their own runoff between the incumbent and the potential replacement. The Board may re-challenge the incumbent (or new) CEO once per Boardmeeting. if the office of CEO becomes vacant, the previous CEO's understudy immediately becomes CEO. However if there is no understudy and the office becomes vacant, the Chair becomes acting CEO and the CEO replacement procedure above is automatically invoked every Boardmeeting, with Chair as incumbent, until a CEO is found (if separation of powers is not in effect then a vote for the incumbent by the Board makes the Chair the CEO).

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what are the advantages of the above procedure?

with this expansion of their role, we might change the name of the Boardelectors to just Electors. Which sounds better anyhow.

also, i forgot how many Boardelectors there are, but we should make the commission number the same as that, instead of just 21.

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maybe a simpler variant would be:

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yknow we could actually use the board-tracing system to have local law; when there is a civil suit between two citizens of the same traced faction, their jury is only composed of others from the same faction. And you could let each faction make its own rules that only apply to its citizens.

One issue here is that each citizen is actually in two factions at once due to the two-term structure of the Board. Do these additional rules only apply when the same rule is passed by both factions? Yeah, probably, because it's already annoying for citizens to have to obey these 'dynamic factions' that they didn't directly join.

A simpler thing would be to do the jury-only thing without the additional rules. Does the jury-only thing only trigger if both citizens match on both of their factions? Yeah, probably.

When two citizens are of different factions, we could still select the jury so that it only consists of other citizens from those two factions? i think that's a bad idea though; in that case everyone on the jury has a 'side'.

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not even precedent can override plain meaning of the rules even if the rules were not followed in the past precedent does not compel or allow them to be disregarded

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https://www-vox-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/9/25/20881843/supreme-court-britian-judicial-selection-brexit?amp_js_v=0.1#referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2019%2F9%2F25%2F20881843%2Fsupreme-court-britian-judicial-selection-brexit

"Britain’s brilliant method of picking Supreme Court justices, explained"

skimmed this but it probably deserves a read

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interesting scifi take on fundamental rights:

https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/485acb81cdb0b

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" When, finally, during the Kronstadt rebellion, the Soviets revolted against the party dictatorship and the incompatibility of the new councils with the party system became manifest, he decided almost at once to crush the councils, since they threatened the power monopoly of the Bolshevik party. The name 'Soviet Union' for post-revolutionary Russia has been a lie ever since, but this lie has also contained, ever since, the grudging admission of the overwhelming popularity, not of the Bolshevik party, but of the soviet system which the party reduced to impotence. ... More recently, his- torians have pointed to the rather obvious similarities between the councils and the medieval townships, the Swiss cantons, the English seventeenth-century 'agitators' - or rather 'adjustators', as they were originally called - and the General Council of Cromwell's army, but the point of the matter is that none of them, with the possible exception of the medieval town, 7 * had ever the slightest influence on the minds of the people who in the course of a revolution spontaneously organized themselves in councils.

Hence, no tradition, either revolutionary or pre-revolutionary, can be called to account for the regular emergence and re- emergence of the council system ever since the French Revo- lution. If we leave aside the February Revolution of 1848 in Paris, where a commission pour les travailleurs, set up by the government itself, was almost exclusively concerned with ques- tions of social legislation, the main dates of appearance of these organs of action and germs of a new state are the following: the year 1870, when the French capital under siege by the Prus- sian army 'spontaneously reorganized itself into a miniature federal body', which then formed the nucleus for the Parisian Commune government in the spring of 1871; 75 the year 1905, when the wave of spontaneous strikes in Russia suddenly de- veloped a political leadership of its own, outside all revolution- ary parties and groups, and the workers in the factories organ- ized themselves into councils, Soviets, for the purpose of repre- sentative self-government; the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia, when 'despite different political tendencies among the Russian workers, the organization itself, that is the soviet, was not even subject to discussion'; 76 the years 1918 and 1919 in Germany, when, after the defeat of the army, soldiers and wor- kers in open rebellion constituted themselves into Arbeiter- und Soldatenrate, demanding, in Berlin, that this Ratesystem be- come the foundation stone of the new German constitution, and establishing, together with the Bohemians of the coffee houses, in Munich in the spring of 1919, the short-lived Bavarian Rdterepubli\'^ the last date, finally, is the autumn of 1956, when the Hungarian Revolution from its very beginning produced the council system anew in Budapest, from which it spread all over the country 'with incredible rapidity'. 78

The mere enumeration of these dates suggests a continuity that in fact never existed. It is precisely the absence of con- tinuity, tradition, and organized influence that makes the same- ness of the phenomenon so very striking ... It is true that wher- ever the revolution was not defeated and not followed by some sort of restoration the one-party dictatorship, that is, the model of the professional revolutionary, eventually prevailed, but it prevailed only after a violent struggle with the organs and insti- tutions of the revolution itself. " -- https://archive.org/stream/OnRevolution/ArendtOn-revolution_djvu.txt

"Odysse Barrot formulated with rare precision the chief difference in terms of French history between the new form of government, aimed at by the Commune, and the old regime which soon was to be restored in a different, non- monarchical disguise"; then a French quote which translates to something about federation rather than 'one and indivisible'

" the intimate connection between the spirit of revolution and the principle of federation. In order to prove what Odysse Barrot felt to be true, we must turn to the Febru- ary Revolution of 1917 in Russia and to the Hungarian Revolu- tion of 1956, both of which lasted just long enough to show in bare outlines what a government would look like and how a republic was likely to function if they were founded upon the principles of the council system. In both instances councils or Soviets had sprung up everywhere, completely independent of one another, workers*, soldiers', and peasants' councils in the case of Russia, the most disparate kinds of councils in the case of Hungary : neighbourhood councils that emerged in all resi- dential districts, so-called revolutionary councils that grew out of fighting together in the streets, councils of writers and artists,

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hmm.. a person both lives in a neighborhood, but also works.. my 'constituencies' get part of the way there because people are free to self-organize into them, rather than top-down drawing fixed geographic districts; but i had previously thought that each citizen could become a constituent of only one 'constituency' -- but perhaps this should be generalized into a system where each citizen has one 'vote' that they can fractionally allocate between as many constituencies as they like.

most people have a home, a workplace, and a political affiliation, so people should be able to split their vote at least 3 ways.

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some ideas:

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the thread starting with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21513184 had a few good points on 'loser pays' court systems:

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consider adding a third legislative house, citizen assemblies/deliberative polling either by sortition, or stratified by board tracing (which means it only can include the first layer of delegates)

now something passes if it passes a majority of those houses which choose to vote on it

a new deliberative polling group is convened whenever the other two houses disagree. there is also a standing deliberative polling group that can create its own proposals, or take up and vote against a resolution passed by another house.

in the past, similar efforts seem to have involved groups of 32 to 200 citizens, chosen in a demographically stratified manner. i would have much smaller groups, 7 to 24, chosen either randomly or using board tracing.

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yknow, i'm thinking of moving to a system with 1 Chair and 3 co-CEOs. Not as good for vision but better for balanced execution -- with 3 ppl instead of 1 it's less likely that one person's biases will cause them to miss something imoprtant -- every now and then you see a CEO make a really boneheaded decision because they blew off something important. Also, as Dana pointed out long ago, if we want the Chair to be the most respected official, that doesn't work so well if there are more Chairs and fewer CEOs.

this proposed change makes the system simpler because, instead of some Chair powers being individual and some by majority vote and some by unanimous vote, all co-CEO powers can be by majority vote. It also makes the initialization procedure simpler, because the proto-Chair can just be the actual Chair.

(In fact it could be made even simpler -- if two CEOs agree, the third one may not even have to be consulted (not sure if that's a good idea though -- requiring a formal vote means that at least the third one gets notified about what's going on as soon as possible))

the downside is that it doesn't allow for 'visionary' CEOs, and related, a single startup founder wouldn't adopt a system that requires em to work through a committee of 3 subordinates. I guess my answer to that is, the single founder would control (or at least be voted for by) a majority of the votes in the governance system, and could occupy multiple seats at once -- so the board could elect that founder to 2 seats at once, in which case they are effectively the only CEO. So really what it says is that you can have 1 CEO if the faction supporting them has 2/3s of the votes.

another downside is that this is now different enough that you can't really see existing corporations or other groups switching to it without them really being true believers.

another downside is that, by that theorem/example (all agree that A and B imply C, and 1/3 believes only A, 1/3 believes only B, 1/3 believes A and B and C), now the co-CEOs, as a group, have logically inconsistent beliefs

still, at this moment, all things considered, i like it.

dunno what the techical name for a position with 3 co-holders is. Trimumvirate? Triarchy? Troika? Triune? Triple? Tripartite? Triadic? Triad? Trio? Troika is shortish, but it has an association with particular historical institutions. Maybe just don't refer to this by any name. Or maybe Three Kings, Triple CEO, or Triceo (sounds kinda like Triceratops!). Kinda goes well with the name Triscore Voting.

Actually trio and triad are both pretty short.

later:

two more downsides. First, everything might take longer, if the 3 co-ceos insist on having a discussion before every little decision. Second, it's hard to negotiate or to work under them, because if you are talking to just 1 of them, they could promise something that the other two don't agree with; in theory if two of them promise you something you are good, but in that case, if the third doesn't agree, your promise won't be upheld if only one of the two promisers defects. Similarly, it's harder for the board to hold them accountable, because every now and then there will be some byzantine power play that will cause the alliances between co-CEOs to switch and therefore the joint policy of the co-CEOs to change, and each co-CEO will try to shift blame onto the time they weren't in the ruling pair for failures.

and one more upside. The separation of negative power from positive, and the parliamentary (vs presidential) system of having the CEO a creature of the board is sort of all part of the goal of reducing the power of the most powerful single actor (the CEO) so as to provide less of a lever for dictatorial behavior. Splitting the CEO position into 3 sort of drives a stake through the heart of this; there is no longer any single position which provides a structural platform for dictatorship -- the only remaining unitary role in the whole system is the Chair, who has only negative and parliamentarian power (and most importantly, the legitimacy that comes with the popular vote). (and i guess the downside of that is that, in governments at least, the positions of PM/President provide a honeypot for some people who in earlier times would have raised armies to take over the country).

and one more downside. The rest of the world probably isn't organized to deal with 'multisig' arrangements like this one, so e.g. banks will want to know 'is this person authorized to sign on behalf of the company?' and may not be setup to handle the answer 'no, but any two of these three people can'. For these purposes you could always allow (or even require) the co-CEOs to appoint a 'COO' who is a corporate officer in their own right (but who is subordinate to the co-CEOs and whose decisions can be overruled by them); most organizations large enough to use this system would want a COO anyhow. In that case, is the COO just the real CEO and the co-CEOs are just an executive committee? Not really, the difference is that the co-CEOs are envisioned to be involved in execution (in 'the thick of it'), not just policy-setting.

One thing to wonder about is: if there are 6 board members, 3 in each class, surely many organizations will adopt a tradition of the 3 senior board members being co-CEO. This is disappointing because now professional 'politicans' are being placed in an important 'management' position. But that's unlikely to happen in traditional corporations (because the board members don't want the full-time job of co-CEO), and it's no worse than the status quo in governments (where politicians end up being the PM anyhow). Also, surely often what will happen is that the leader of the most powerful faction will form a durable alliance with the leader of a smaller faction such that they are both CEOs and both always vote together in whichever way the powerful leader wants; in this case the co-CEO structure is effectively as if the powerful leader were a single CEO (because the opposition co-CEO is always outvoted and hence is of little consequence, although as noted above at least they get some operational visibility into what's going on). The co-CEO structure still has some impact though, b/c this dictatorial arrangement requires the dictator to keep control of the allied leader, which requires em to keep the alliegence of the allied leader's faction; so it still requires the dictator to maintain a strong level of consensus support, and of course, if a dictator has strong enough consensus support, no structural impediments can help in any case. I don't suppose this 'allied puppet' arrangement could possibly occur if the would-be dictator's faction plus the allied faction has less than 50% of the Board (because otherwise the other 50+% would get 2 co-CEOs among them), so compared to the one-CEO status quo (in which case the would-be dictator would probably simply be the CEO), this is not more dictatorial.

co-CEOs remind me a little of the 5 Spartan Ephors, although this analogy is of little use because i can't find much on the internet about whether that governance arrangement was thought to have worked out well.

one thing to keep in mind: when thinking about the increased time spent by the co-CEOs having discussions/negotiations amongst themselves, i like to imagine "hey, they can just have quick votes and be done with it". But that's not human nature for many people; their feelings will be hurt when another co-CEO disagrees with them and rather than briskly and coldly move on, they may demand time spent smoothing things over; this dynamic will also lead to many co-CEO teams making an effort towards unity and consensus decision-making. So the deadweight of the increased discussion time may be much larger than i predict. Otoh at least some of this time these discussions will lead to better understanding of the issues and will lead to the decision quality gains that i'm hoping for, by preventing co-CEOs from blowing off important issues.

people will say that oh, the best CEOs won't want to be a co-CEO, so you lose out in attracting talent. I agree that the people most suited for a single CEO job might not want to be a co-CEO, but it's an open question whether better decisions are made by the best willing single CEOs, or by the best willing co-CEOs.

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the multiple offices and term limits seem good for most purposes, but in pseudononymous groups a person could maybe evade the multiple offices thing just by getting a second pseudonym. Still, it's a hoop to jump thru, and also other voters might not respect the new pseudonym as much, so it might help.

however it's annoying to have that extra question on the ballot about allowing these to be evaded. Maybe you could replace this by just having higher voting thresholds to evade it. Like, if you are being elected to role X more than Y times, or if you win role X and also role Z, then you don't actually get role X unless you have a supermajority of support, or something like that.

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if the Chair is also elected co-CEO, then they could keep their Chair position, but the choice of co-CEOs would have to be ratified by a 2/3s vote of the Board (which is 5/7). If it fails ratification, then a new slate of co-CEOs must be selected, with the Chair excluded from candidacy. Similarly if the same person scores two co-CEO seats, 2 Procedural Tribunal seats, etc.

If a person becomes Chair while already holding other positions, they must pass a 2/3s vote for each of those other positions to keep it.

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one way to simplify the whole system would be to just cut out the Boardelectors

so then elections become simpler:

ballots just have two things:

The Board delegates delegate in rounds. At the beginning of each round, the average number of votes held by Board delegates is noted, and end of each round, any remaining delegates with less than the begin-round average are eliminated and then the next round starts; unless less than 3 or equal to 3 would be left after elimination, in which case, the top 3 win. The 7th Board seat is randomly chosen weighted by number of original ballots naming that Delegate.

Initial ballots are secret, but delegations by Delegates are public.

Chair candidates are selected by signature campaigns. Candidates are listed on the ballot in descending order of signatures collected. Only the top 7 candidates (by # of signatures collected) appear on the ballot.

Chair voting is:

Boardmembers may be expelled from the Board by a 2/3s (weighted) vote of all original Delegates (or mb just: all original Delegates who did not indirectly delegate to them!), in which case, the original Delegates that did indirectly delegate to them hold a new round of delegation to replace them.

(i guess adding back in a layer of "Boarddelegates" would not be that complicated here; you could use 23, as i did before, or you could just say that the penultimate set of Boarddelegates, that is, just before the second-to-last elimination, are the "Boarddelegates" -- but i'm not sure that it's necessary -- otoh it may make the recall process more deliberate)

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a simple majority of the Board could Appeal a Decision of the Chair to the Procedural Tribunal -- or maybe a supermajority? no probably just a simple majority; the Tribunal may not agree, after all, especially if we say that the Chair's decision is like a defendent, so it takes a supermajority to 'convict'

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had a discussion with an experienced executive on the 3 CEO issue. They think it would be a problem, and the biggest problems would be (my wording, not theirs):

Other lesser problems would be: waste of the personal time of the co-CEOs; confusion on the Board due to the conflicting narratives presented by the co-CEOs, which would be intentionally skewed more than with a unitary CEO due to the power struggle.

They think 99% incidence of power struggles will be observed. As for the impact of these disadvantages, on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means that the co-CEO innovation will not cause any noticable problems at all, and 10 means that an organization which otherwise would have been wildly successful would fail terribly as a result of this innovation, they put the impact of this at 7.

So that sounds pretty bad. So maybe i'll abandon this idea.

later:

i sent them this email:

a modification to the idea:

So when the Board is unified, there can be a single CEO (assuming the unified Board wants this), and this is has the same outcome as the traditional single-CEO system.

But when the Board is divided into factions, there are 3 CEOs. Contrast with the traditional single-CEO system's solution to a divided board: the traditional system creates winners (the Board members in the plurality faction) and losers (all of the other Board members), and gives all (executive) power to the winners and no power to the losers. In the proposed system, instead of the plurality faction getting everything they want, on various specific issues various factions get what they want, depending on which 2 CEOs ally on that issue.

So in essence, when there is disunity, rather than resolving that disunity at the Board level, the disunity is propagated down to the CEO level. The benefit is that all factions on the Board share influence on executive decision-making, rather than creating winners and losers. The cost is that the disunity now infects one level below, causing the costs we discussed (e.g. politicking between the 3 CEOs).

The idea can be modified by adjusting the threshold for 1 CEO to be permitted (or otherwise changing the criterion).

they replied:

> You have a point. Augmented by the fact that sometimes, under one CEO, if Board divided, they essentially make a strategic decision without complete information. The faction that differs from the side that the CEO favors does not have a working CEO representing that point of view. So they are dealing a little blind.

so mb do it the way that i said there.

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had a short discussion with an experienced admin. Asked them if they would rather the US have 1 president or 3, they said the more the better (so that they can check each other, it was implied). Asked them what about in a company. They said it doesn't matter, the CEO is a figurehead and the VPs make the real decisions.

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one thing we could do is say that by DEFAULT, there are 3 co-CEOs, but with a 2/3s vote the Board can set a single CEO. This makes sense because if 2 of the 3 co-CEO slots were held by the same person, that person would effectively be a single CEO anyways (although the other co-CEO would effectively have 'observer status' at least). I like this because you can still get rid of the 3 co-chairs and then you have the possiblity in a non-polarized group of having one chair and one CEO, which both 'scales down' and also fits existing practice. But i dislike it because i think the possibility of getting rid of your co-CEOs entirely will lead to more power struggles between co-CEOs. Also, in a group with a lot of discord, wouldn't you prefer 3 co-chairs over 3 co-ceos? Actually i'm not sure, maybe you would prefer 3 co-ceos...

or, instead of a 2/3s vote, could just say that if the proportional voting system elects the same person to 2 seats

or, could say that if the first winner has the 'support' (meaning a non-zero on the 0,1,2 ballot, or a non-minus-one on the -1,0,1 ballot) of more than 2/3.

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mb if there is a tie in the board election for CEO(s), the incumbent(s) stay (mb a tie in ANY of the 3 seats if 3 CEOs)

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should look into this b/c this guy likes it https://medium.com/@jameson.quinn/reweighted-voting-methods-are-second-rate-50d9c7814c35 :

https://electowiki.org/wiki/Summable_PAD_voting https://electowiki.org/wiki/PAD_voting

looks a bit random to me... and the wards are strange, although mb could use my constiuencies/asset voting to make the wards...

here's another one that guy seems to like:

https://electowiki.org/wiki/PLACE_FAQ

here's a crazy one (that i found through Google):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_approval_voting

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two tweaks to triscore voting:

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tobemined

https://www.google.com/search?q=governance+system+design https://www.google.com/search?q=governance+procedure+design https://www.google.com/search?q=governance+process+design

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/051115/what-are-some-examples-different-corporate-governance-systems-across-world.asp

https://www.google.com/search?q=constitution+process+design https://www.google.com/search?q=parliamentary+process+design https://www.google.com/search?q=rules+of+order+design https://www.google.com/search?q=constitutional+design https://www.google.com/search?q=constitutional+design+organizations

etc

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another rro/standard code of parlipro competitor:

https://www.democraticrules.com/

https://www.democraticrules.com/the-rules/

"

Short Summary of the Rules

    Fairness: Equal rights of members and good order are the underlying principles.
    The final authority is the majority of voting members, provided a quorum is present, subject always to any applicable higher law (a law of the land, a constitution, a bylaw, or an existing standing rule).
    In formal meetings, the chair guides impartially without taking part in discussion. In informal meetings, the chair participates as an equal member.
    A motion should be worded affirmatively and must not conflict with any higher law. All motions require a seconder.
    The mover’s privilege allows the mover to reword or withdraw the motion provided there is a seconder and not more than one member objects.
    Amendments can delete, substitute, or add words to a motion on the floor but must not negate it or change its topic. An amendment can not be amended.
    Postpone, refer: A motion can be postponed to an indefinite or a specific future occasion or referred to a committee for further study.
    Voting: Common voting methods include voting by ballot, standing, show of hands, show of voting cards and voice. For a motion to pass, a quorum must be present and more than half the votes cast must be affirmative.
    Informal Discussion: A motion to informally discuss some topic, if passed, allows members to consider an idea without the formality of a motion.
    Rescind, reconsider: A previous decision can be rescinded or reconsidered by the members at any appropriate time.
    Ratify: a previous decision: A decision exceeding the authority of a member, committee or meeting can be ratified at a later meeting.
    Good order: Members should discuss only one motion at a time. A member must not take more than a fair share of floor time nor interrupt another member except as allowed with a point of order.
    Point of Order: A member who believes that a law or the meeting’s good order is being breached may rise immediately and say “point of order.” The chair should allow the member to explain and, if necessary, should call for a vote for a decision.

Tips for Meetings

    Discuss the idea together, informally, before forming a motion.
    After a motion is stated, let the mover, aided by the members, modify it before voting. But if more than one member objects, changes require formal amendments.
    Never allow an amendment to the amendment. The motion can be defeated and stated again if necessary.
    The chair must never allow a member to interrupt a speaker or personally criticize or ridicule another member."

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already read, but it has some interesting ideas:

https://theconversation.com/why-the-us-military-usually-punishes-misconduct-but-police-often-close-ranks-127898

more ideas in some of the comments in the discussion here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23650114

ideas that stood out for me:

also, an idea of mine: maybe oaths of integrity, and training about what went wrong in past atrocities, is more effective in the military because maybe the people who train you are farther removed from your future chain of command; so these things said ritually in training form a culture, because they are something that everyone shares, and there is not enough interpersonal familitarity to support a different culture; whereas in local police departments, you are probably being trained by the same people you will be colleagues with later, so there is a chance for other cultural transmission to overshadow the ritual oaths.

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-judges-misconduct-specialreport/special-report-thousands-of-us-judges-who-broke-laws-oaths-remained-on-the-bench-idUSKBN2411WG

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pabs3 3 days ago

parent flag favorite on: De-escalating social media conflict

This reminded me of Polis:

https://pol.is/ https://github.com/pol-is/

Taiwan use it for their multi-stakeholder decision making to find points of agreement. Their application of it to the Uber vs Taxis situation was quite interesting.

https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-min... https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5 https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-blend... https://debconf18.debconf.org/talks/135-q-a-session-with-minister-tang/ https://blog.pol.is/uber-responds-to-vtaiwans-coherent-blended-volition-3e9b75102b9b

ImaCake? 3 days ago [–]

That is excellent. Tools like this get us close to the kind of granular democracy that our ancestors could only dream of.

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mistermann 2 days ago [–]

An imperfect system for granular democracy could be built fairly easily, or bolted onto an existing system (Facebook has the largest global membership I'd think).

There's nothing stopping anyone from building one (other than maybe reasonable fear of being suicided if it gets too much traction, etc), yet I don't think I've ever heard of anyone who's tried. It's so obviously useful that the lack of attempts almost seems like a glitch in The Matrix.

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ImaCake? 2 days ago [–]

There is an obscure party in Australia whose platform is to allow people to vote on every issue in parliament. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Direct_Democracy

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mistermann 2 days ago [–]

Very interesting!

> Online Direct Democracy does not have any policies. Instead it has pledged to conduct an online poll for every bill that passes before Parliament. Anyone on the Australian electoral roll would be allowed to register to vote in these polls and will be allowed one vote per bill. The MPs would then be required to vote in accordance with the clear majority (55%-70% and more than 100,000 votes). If there is no clear majority they will abstain from voting. A beta version of the system is operating and available for public use. This system has been designed to highlight the possibilities on online democracy.[2]

"required to vote in accordance with the clear majority" seems a bit problematic (in the short term anyways) - in this case it is only on a per ODD-elected MP basis so that's probably fine, but jumping straight to a direct democracy based system from what we have now likely would be a bit messy.

What I have in mind is setting up a completely independent parallel political system, that has zero power (direct power anyways), which would allow time to work out the numerous kinks and complexities, while simultaneously allowing for the first time ever for the true (or, more true at least)will of the people to be known...as opposed to the obviously untrue "will of the people" we've been sold on for hundreds of years.

Someone will eventually see this elephant in the room and do something about it, and things should start to get pretty interesting then. Although, my spider sense tells me that time may be running out, the propaganda techniques seem to be becoming so effective that it's hard to find independent opinions on most any topic - framing direct democracy as dangerous and evil strikes me as something that would be a very easy sales job in the current state of collective consciousness.

That said, there are also a massive number of obscure, disconnected communities who all seem to be coming to the same general conclusions about what is going on here on Planet Earth, perhaps the sum total of all these obscure groups is actually a very large number, it's just that they're undetectable.

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https://github.com/pol-is/

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23736306

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maybe include the bias towards freedom in the hermeneutics of interpretation of the rules too, in addition to the differing vote thresholds:

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mb have referendum of everything memebr-pwr-reducing or debt-increasing with 50% threshold to overturn

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"attendance at such meeting constitutes waiver of the notice requirement"

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remember that for the Board, or indeed any body, the rule is:

the motivation of the 'one member MORE' conditions is:

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could consider a more centralized membership procedure for some or all groups, in addition to vetting by an executive or Forum membership and/or a quasi-jury trial membership committee:

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"Pelosi will hold a news conference on the bill with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., at the Capitol Friday morning, the release said. Raskin, a constitutional law expert, introduced a similar measure in a previous Congress."

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" nabla9 7 hours ago [–]

Civil law systems have "The abuse of rights principle". It means that legal right can't be used in the purpose of _only_ causing annoyance, harm, or injury to another or violating or invalidating the rights.

In the EU the principle is codified in the article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights and in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. They both prohibit the use of rights in a way that they nullify or weaken the rights provided by the agreements.

The principle also exists in the European contract law and property law. You can't use the property rights for the sole purpose of causing annoyance or violating other rights.

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https://definitions.uslegal.com/a/abuse-of-rights/

At least one of four conditions is required to invoke the doctrine:

(1) the predominant motive for exercising the right is to cause harm;

(2) no serious or legitimate motive exists for exercising the right;

(3) the exercise of the right is against moral rules, good faith, or elementary fairness; or

(4) the right is exercised for a purpose other than that for which it was granted.

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edit: In the common law systems it can exist under names like "nuisance, duress, good faith, economic waste, public policy, misuse of copyright and patent rights, lack of business purpose in tax law, extortion, and others" see: Abuse of Rights: A Pervasive Legal Concept https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=17...

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"

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"one of the central foundation stones of a democracy is the idea that you do not, you do not allow the politicization of the criminal justice system, the intelligence system, the military." -- obama

(not sure how to block that tho.. civil service? indirect and delayed selection a la courts? also, not sure how it is typically applied in parliamentary systems (i looked up one example; in Germany, the Minister of Defence is the commander-in-chief.. also not sure if any of that is relevant to non-governmental organizations -- although it probably would be nice just to have prefabed procedures for non-political ministries within in any organization, in addition to the hands-off prefabbed procedures for something like a central bank which can print money)

each of those three ministries is tricky for different reasons:

regarding mechanisms of civilian control of the military in parliamentary systems, this document looks like a good summary:

https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/default.aspx?pdffile=CDL-AD(2008)004-e

i havent read that but some quick notes from it:

interestingly that document talks about a "national accounting body", which would seem to correspond to an organ present in non-governmental organizations as well:

"Additionally, the role played by Audit Offices and Courts of Auditors who control the legality and appropriateness of public spending is an important element and constitutes an adequate response to the growing concern of citizens in the accountability of democracies. The military is generally answerable to a national accounting body, except in some countries"

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Let delegates attend meetings and vote in place of their principal

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"Does it allow anonymous accusations? Is the accused allowed to know the charges against them, before a finding of guilt is rendered? Is there a presumption of innocence? Is the accused allowed to have a trusted third party - one who knows the rules of the game - to advocate on their behalf? Who, exactly, is responsible for deciding matters of fact vs matters of "law"? Is there an appeals process to fix possibly incorrect decisions? "

note: matters of fact should not be decided by the legislature, at least

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how to guarantee a substantial enough budget for the chairpeople?

maybe a budget is set for both the chairpeople and the CEO(s) together, and the chairpeople decide how much goes to the CEO(s)? or something like that.

we have a few branches to set each other's budgets:

the legislative clearly should be the one setting the 'total budget' for all this compensation

even if the salary of each chairperson is as high as each CEO, the CEO could still have more staff. Maybe could distinguish between person staff and other 'execs' and say that has to be decided in the same way as salary. What's the difference between an exec and staff? Maybe some sort of legislative confirmation and/or some sort of independence from the CEO.

i mean, i guess we could just flat-out mandate that sum(Chairs) and sum(CEO)s always have the same pay and staffing budget. But that seems hard for smaller organizations. Could maybe do that but then put it under the 2/3s voter approval, like with term limits, holding multiple offices.

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Everything that restricts or disempowers members goes to a popular vote

debt goes to a popular vote

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get that constitution dataset from the constitution project and see if you can't do a multivariate correlation analysis with stability or prosperity or happiness or government satisfaction

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research suggests that presidential systems (as opposed to parliamentary) tend to lead to constitutional instability. is there any research on whether civil law or common law, and particularly precedent/stare decis is good for the long-term stability of a government? E.g. constitutional stability? E.g. does precedent constrain judges and help prevent the courts being (ab)used to further an authoritarian takeover?

a google search that doesn't look particularly promising: https://www.google.com/search?q=civil+law+common+law+precedent+constitutional+stability+longevity+%22constitutional+crisis%22&

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Civil service as docracy branch.

Each branch of government (including civil service) could have its own chair with investigatory/prosecution powers only.

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> Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from U.S. Term Limits

> We exploit variation in U.S. gubernatorial term limits across states and time to empirically estimate two separate effects of elections on government performance. Holding tenure in office constant, differences in performance by reelection-eligible and term-limited incumbents identify an accountability effect: reelection-eligible governors have greater incentives to exert costly effort on behalf of voters. Holding term-limit status constant, differences in performance by incumbents in different terms identify a competence effect: later-term incumbents are more likely to be competent both because they have survived reelection and because they have experience in office. We show that economic growth is higher and taxes, spending, and borrowing costs are lower under reelection- eligible incumbents than under term-limited incumbents (accountability), and under reelected incumbents than under first-term incumbents (competence), all else equal. In addition to improving our understanding of the role of elections in representative democracy, these findings resolve an empirical puzzle about the disappearance of the effect of term limits on gubernatorial performance over time.

https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/9

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toread https://quizlet.com/14295837/chapter-15-objectivesnotes-flash-cards/

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could make ~half of the board (one class; 3) recallable by electors and half not or not even recallable, just continuous asset voting

so: 3 'stable+elected' board members elected by electors via asset voting at election 3 'continuous' board members elected continuously by asset voting 1 'stable+sortition' board member chosen weighted randomly via a uniform random choice of a voter ballot, and then selecting the representative named on that ballot

this is simple and gives the intermediate reps (electors) some power

could even just 'snapshot' the continuous election for the stable+elected. Or, probably even better, could do a time-weighted selected of them over the past election cycle at election time -- this is simple, stable, and has some time-displacement which encourages long-termism (after being selected for at least half of an election cycle, a candidate would know that they would be selected in the following one, and so can begin being more comproming) -- one wrinkle here is that, with term limits/limits on multiple offices in effect, you may not want the 'stable' candidates to be flip-flopping with the 'continuous' ones every other year, so you'd want a 'stable+elected' officeholder to be accruing time for the next year -- but this is simply achieved by making a separate space on the (elector) ballot for the stable office and the other one -- the selection for stable ballot just doesn't have an immediate effect.

could have the 3 'stable+elected' board members impeachable/removable by a vote of 2/3s of their peers, to then be replaced by those who signed votes to them. If the voter votes are private but the asset voting transfers are public, this provides further incentive to not just vote for big 'national' candidates directly, b/c in that case if they are impeached/removed and you voted for them directly, you don't get any say in their replacement

an issue with impeaching the stable/elected board members combined with time-weighting (or meeting-weighting) is that you have to keep historical records of who delegated to who at all times in the past, and then suddenly upon impeachment take a vote of those people and weight their votes accordingly. This is probably too complicated for most organizations to handle. So maybet just don't do impeachment.

could expand that to all reps, but more complicated. but maybe worth doing esp. since we have some continuously elected board members now.

so is the 'forum' is not being continuously elected, but rather private ballot all the way up? if not, though, then what's the difference? is it just that topics are being delegated separately? maybe

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for the classification of forum votings into topics, each voter ballot could allow them to select any one of a number (or an open-ended) set of organizations who would be responsible for classifying each vote into topics -- so this way the ontology could be completely open and selected by each voter independently

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whoever receives (and voluntarily accepts) a pardon is ineligible for office. pardons cannot be issued before conviction.

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Appeals court needs a greater majority/supermajority than the original court in order to overturn

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Do we even need a layer of electors? The thing where the electors can remove the board members from office could simply be recursively specified for all representatives. That is to say, any representative can be recalled if a) 2/3s of their peers, defined as others who voted for the person that they voted for, vote to recall them -- And after they are recalled the people who gave their vote to them can send them back or can choose someone different. In fact maybe they have to choose someone different unless the recalled person elected themselves (that is, had enough votes as a citizen to support their own election)

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For elections to the board the asset voting support cut off could simply rise linearly over time --no actually that's too fast at the beginning. So log it is. You know you don't have to have this cut off thing (where people without enough support are progressively eliminated by rising minimal support thresholds) in the system, you could just let people form coalitions at the last minute

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When a person proxies their vote just ask for two things: a list of proxy destinations by topic, And the organization who will decide which topic each vote is

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For ceo, maybe just say that each Boardmember can vote for one CEO candidate and the top three candidates, with ties excluded, win, unless one candidate has two thirds or more, in which case there is only one winner. Boardmembers are expected to vote strategically to achieve a proportional result (?can this be possible?). CEO votes can be taken with a 1/3 vote threshold (so 3), but don't actually change the CEOs unless confirmed by a majority (4/7). This allows coalition to form without having edge effects at the time of the vote.

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" A more radical alternative has been suggested by the veteran Canadian ecological campaigner David Suzuki, who wants to replace the country’s elected politicians with a randomly selected citizens’ assembly, which would contain everyday Canadians with no party affiliation who would each spend six years in office. In his view, such an assembly, resembling a form of political jury service, would deal more effectively with long-term issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss, and solve the problem of politicians obsessed with the next election.

But could an assembly of today’s citizens really be able to step into the shoes of future generations and effectively represent their interests? A new movement in Japan called Future Design is attempting to answer this very question. Led by economist Tatsuyoshi Saijo of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto, the movement has been conducting citizen assemblies in municipalities across the country. One group of participants takes the position of current residents, and the other group imagines themselves to be “future residents” from the year 2060, even wearing special ceremonial robes to aid their imaginative leap forward in time. Multiple studies have shown that the future residents devise far more radical and progressive city plans compared to current ones. Ultimately the movement aims to establish a Ministry of the Future as part of central government, and a Department of the Future within all local government authorities, which would use the future citizens’ assembly model for policy-making. " -- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190318-can-we-reinvent-democracy-for-the-long-term?referer=http%3A%2F%2Faleph.se%2Fandart2%2F

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score -1/0/1 vote of 20%, 25%, or 33%+ is how things should be added to an agenda (support from my analysis of Haskell extensions; those extensions that got net >=33% in the annual Haskell survey seem to be the ones worthy of further consideration in 2020, or >=20% base in 2019)

note that on a 7-person committee this is close enough to requiring only a proposer and a 'second' to raise a topic of discussion. So i think there should be a round-robin where each person makes a proposal, and if there is a second, the topic is opened for debate; after that topic is disposed of, it's the next person's turn (unless a 2/3s supermajority interrupts with urgent business).

Note that 5/7 is a 2/3s supermajority -- so it's still possible that a proposal is made, there is a second, but then the rest of the group immediately votes to cut short discussion. Still, at least the proposer got a (5 minute?) speech in.

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this guy has opinions on and ideas for new detailed mechanisms for constitutions, ask him to review and ask if he has a similar project or knows of other resources or groups:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=emn13 eg: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25847744 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25863669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25849545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25850691

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more resources on judicial selection to read someday

https://www.csm.org.pt/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/authemaandelena2004judicialcouncilslessonslearnedeuropelatinamerica.pdf Global Best Practices: JUDICIAL COUNCILSLessons Learned from Europe and Latin AmericaVIOLAINE? AUTHEMANSANDRA ELENAEditorKEITH? HENDERSONApril 2004

https://www.extractiveshub.org/servefile/getFile/id/2414 transparency international CombatingCorruptioninJudicialSystemsAdvocacyToolkit?

https://www.unodc.org/dohadeclaration/en/news/2019/09/the-importance-of-transparency-in-judicial-selections-and-appointments.html The Importance of Transparency in Judicial Selections and Appointments

https://knowledgehub.transparency.org/assets/uploads/kproducts/Topic_guide_on_judicial_corruption_.pdf transparency international FIGHTING JUDICIAL CORRUPTIONTOPIC GUIDECompiled by the Anti-Corruption Helpdesk

https://www.transparency.org/en/publications/policy-position-01-2007-enhancing-judicial-transparency https://images.transparencycdn.org/images/TI_Policy_Position_Judiciary_01.07.pdf transparency international Enhancing Judicial Transparency

https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/vol18/iss1/6/ Global Judicial Transparency Norms: A Peek Behind the Robes in a Whole New World — A Look at Global “Democratizing” Trends in Judicial Opinion-Issuing Practices https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/233219808.pdf

https://www.ifes.org/sites/default/files/chengdu_version2_web.pdf IFES Ru lEo F law wh I t E Pa P E R SE R I E S Global Lessons and Best Practices FIghtIng? CoRR? uPtIonandPRomotIngthE RulEoF? lawthRough tRanSP aRE nCy,oPE nnESSand JudICIalIndEPEndEnCE?1

https://www.idlo.int/news/speeches-and-advocacy/enhancing-judicial-transparency-and-promoting-public-trust Enhancing Judicial Transparency and Promoting Public Trust

https://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnadq106.pdf REDUCING CORRUPTION IN THE JUDICIARY OFFICE OF DEMOCRACY AND GOVERNANCE USAID PROGRAM BRIEF

https://www.ncsc.org/topics/international/judicial-reform-around-the-world/home/judicial-reform

https://biblioteca.cejamericas.org/bitstream/handle/2015/5204/jud-transparency-checklist.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Judicial Transparency Checklist

https://moderncourts.org/programs-advocacy/judicial-selection/methods-of-judicial-selection/

https://www.unodc.org/dohadeclaration/en/news/2018/08/effective-judicial-selections-and-appointments.html

https://www.judges.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Q1_Text.pdf

https://thecommonwealth.org/sites/default/files/press-release/documents/Compendium%20on%20Judicial%20Appt%20Tenure%20and%20Removal%20in%20the%20Commonwealth.pdf

https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/2019-08/Report_Choosing_State_Judges_2018.pdf Choosing State Judges:A Plan for Reform By Alicia Bannon Brennan Center for Justice atNew York University School of Law note: this one has nice short/readable summary boxes throughout; toread

http://www.dplf.org/sites/default/files/guidelines_selection_of_highlevel_judges.pdf DPLf Guidelines for a transparent and merit-based system for the appointment of high-level judges note: this one is nice and short/readable; toread

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/professional_responsibility/publications/professional_lawyer/2016/volume-24-number-1/rethinking_judicial_selection/ this one only points out problems (notably, reselection) and asks questions, but provides no suggestions (except that reselection is a problem)

https://ir.law.fsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1455&context=lr Selection and Retention of Judges: Is There One "Best" Method? suggests the US 'merit' system (selection by commission), and replacing 'retention elections' by another commission

https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1940&context=ulj some best practices at the end

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IG_Semmelweiss 1 day ago

unvote [–]

Examples like this show the time is ripe for alternative social media platforms to replace the established networks.

Dealing with bad actors in public forums is not as hard as tech companies would want you to believe. This is evident, because we do it today. Its our system of courts.

Take any platform, and implement a simple e-court system with juries, being random users from the network. The injured party can effectively e-sue , and the pool of randomly users must all agree that abuse took place. This takes care of " No more frivolous takedowns.

This also takes care of the pesky catch-all ToS?. Platform no longer needs to define abuse. Instead, we take approach of Justice Steward: "I know it when I see it"

Juries participating get rewards (badges, recognition, opportunities as judges / advocates, etc)

The reason companies do not implement such a system is because it takes power away from them (management, staff) and gives it to the users.

That's precisely why such a system would be a winner.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27217296

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mb you could have '2nd level voluntary rulemaking' organizations that (a) dont have fixed dues, and dont have 'income taxes', but rather subsist on donations, and (b) use that quadratic (sqrt) voting thingee. Rich ppl would donate more b/c they want the power and prestige; they get sqrt(donations) voting power. They wouldn't create anon aliases b/c they want the prestige of being a high donor.

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_carbyau_ 39 minutes ago [–]

As an australian, the reason the process is boring is because voting is mandatory. Well, to within a practical degree; some people can't, some people don't etc

By making it mandatory:

1. everyone has to accept that voting has to be accessible.

2. it's pretty hard to contest the results of a vote when you know "everyone had their say".

In the US the variations around accessibility can significantly affect voter turnout.

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the previous comment (copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27522427 ; commentator is responding to a parent comment saying that voting accessibility is a boring topic in Australia, and why is it controversial in the US?) brings up a great point that i hadn't thought of. We know that in US politics, often campaigning must focus on boosting turnout rather than persuading. This could be contributing to the divisive 'outrage politics'. But of course, if voting becomes mandatory, this goes away. That sounds great.

We should make voting mandatory for all voting members. For voluntary organizations (which branch/concord democracy is targeted at), if you don't want to have to vote, you can reliquish your ability to vote (and become a non-voting member), but then you can't get it back without going through a process similar to approval as a new member again.

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https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23176879

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about ranked choice voting: " Popular overseas. It has also been used by Australia, Ireland and Malta since the early 20th century. Northern Ireland, New Zealand and Scotland have all adopted it as well. https://www.rcvresources.org/history

Not the first push in the U.S. Two dozen cities adopted ranked-choice voting in this country in the early-to-mid-20th century, but it faced a backlash and was repealed in all of them but one. It is still in use in Cambridge, Mass.

Outside politics. The Oscars have also been using it since 2009 for its Best Picture category, but not everyone is a fan of the results it has produced. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/24/opinions/ranked-choice-oscars-politcs-rifkin/index.html " -- [5] note: the complaint of the article about the Oscars is something that imo doesn't apply to politics; the author is saying they would prefer movies that some people love and other people hate to movies that is everyone's second choice. In fact the author comes out and says that they would like ranked choice voting in politics, for this reason.

tadmilbourn 1 day ago [–]

Great to see this on Hacker News! I'm a former YC Founder who's been working with NYC on voter education for this year's elections through RankedVote? (https://www.rankedvote.co).

You can get a sense for what it's like to vote in a ranked-choice election here: https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topp...

And you can see the results visualized here (over 20K people voted in this one!): https://app.rankedvote.co/elections/7568/Best-NYC-Pizza-Topp...

And you can see Mayor Bill de Blasio eating a pepperoni pizza as a result of this here: https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1404809865235767315

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[6]

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klodolph 1 day ago [–]

Two reasons: Arrow’s impossibility theorem and the fact that people are not perfect logicians.

I honestly thought that after learning Arrow’s impossibility theorem that Condorcet is not especially important. Since we can’t have a perfect voting system, we have to pick an imperfect one, and among the alternatives, it’s important to capture information from voters. Instant runoff captures a lot of information.

Approval voting I think is much too tactical and, strictly speaking, worse than IRV. No contest.

IRV lets people express their preferences in a fairly understandable way. The strategy I see people talking about is “rank all the front-runners, and use the leftover spots to rank the people you want to win, even if they’re not likely to win.”

...

godelski 1 day ago [–]

> Arrow’s impossibility theorem

First off, Arrow's doesn't apply to all systems. You'll need to look into both Gibbard's and Gibbard-Satterthwaite's theorems.

Second off, just because you can't find a global optimization in a highly dimensional space doesn't mean there aren't local optimizations along criteria we care more about. Appealing to Arrow's is a cop-out.

> Approval voting I think is much too tactical and, strictly speaking, worse than IRV. No contest.

You're going to have to back this up with some strong evidence. Approval has higher VSE, is simpler, is more resistant to spoilers and tactical voting.

> IRV lets people express their preferences in a fairly understandable way.

Actually your argument holds true for any ordinal or cardinal system. Cardinal even having more flexibility since you can give two candidates the same score. And in cardinal if you want to rank your candidates, no problem. Better yet, you have better encoding opportunities because you can specify the distance between your ranking instead of the uniform spacing that ordinal systems force upon you. (BTW, given what the person above you wrote, I would assume that they know how ranked voting works and explaining how it is going to come off as you calling them dumb).

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magila 1 day ago [–]

One big problem with approval voting is that it presents voters with a difficult conundrum: what do you do with candidates you don't particularly like but would still strongly prefer over one-or-more other candidates? If people are too lenient with their approval it increases the risk of someone no one really likes getting elected over someone a majority would have preferred. If people are too stringent you start running into the same problems as FTTP.

Approval voting has some nice mathematical properties, but I think in practice trying to pidgeon hole people's preferences into a binary decision would be a major source of voter frustration and lead to tactical voting.

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godelski 1 day ago [–]

Fine, go STAR or Score/Range. Honestly I prefer those systems (in that order and I'd argue most people that are pro cardinal systems have that same preference[0]). Nice benefit is that people can bullet vote and we collapse to Approval which is a "good enough" system.

> but would still strongly prefer over one-or-more other candidates?

In fact, this is why I argue for STAR or score. It encodes information for better than a ranked (ordinal) system. In any ranked system you encode your preference with equidistant from one another. Where as when you score you can indicate a much stronger preference.

Here's an example. Let's say I REALLY like candidate A, moderately like candidate B, and strongly dislike candidate C.

Ranked:

A > B > C (with my encoding I'm saying that my preference of A over B is the same as my preference of B over C)

Scoring

A: 10, B: 7, C:0 (with this encoding I can indicate that my preference of A over B is not as large as my preference of B over C. Obviously we are capturing more information here)

Let's just encode information better, I agree. But also let's consider other factors like how easy it is to count the votes (which every cardinal system is going to beat ranked systems).

[0] That same preference where the distance between STAR, Score, and Approval is smaller than the distance between preference of Approval over IRV (e.g. STAR: 10, Score: 8, Approval: 7, IRV: 3, Plurality: 0).

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ad8e 18 hours ago [–]

Small correction: The term "bullet voting" means voting for one candidate only (001000), rather than voting 0 or 1 on each candidate (101011). It is caused by low engagement from the voters, who only take the time to learn about one candidate, their favorite. It has been a problem for approval voting in practice, and it is unclear to what extent it affects score methods in practice.

I think STAR is slightly worse than Score, is comparable to Approval, is much better than IRV, and is likely better than Condorcet methods. STAR has some odd behavior which can be explored in a 3-person race. Score has less-problematic behavior caused by risk-taking with equilibrium voters (not like voters behave in any way similar to Nash equilibria though, and who knows what the real-world behavior will be).

However, STAR's main benefit may be in overcoming political resistance, if its properties are simpler to convince voters. Majority criterion sounds nice even when it is inefficient. Much like Top Trading Cycles losing to Gale-Shapley in school choice algorithms (excluding Boston).

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" Until today I was one of the three members of the board that checks warrants for the Dutch intelligence and security services. This board is called “Toetsingscommissie Inzet Bevoegdheden” or TIB.

If either of the civil or the military intelligence and security services of The Netherlands want to use their lawful intercept, SIGINT or hacking (& some other) legal powers, they have to first convince their own jurists, then their ministry and finally the TIB. The TIB then studies if the warrant is legal, and that decision is binding.

    To further international transparency, the TIB also publishes its annual report in English.

When I joined the regulatory commission, I was very happy to find that the Dutch intelligence and security services were doing precisely the kinds of things you’d expect such services to do. I also found that our regulatory mechanisms worked as intended - if anything was found to be amiss, the services would actually stop doing that. If the ex-ante regulator (ie, my board) ruled a permission to do something was unlawful, it would indeed not happen. I think it is important to affirm this in public.

Over the past two years however there have been several attempts to change or amend the Dutch intelligence law (English language translation).

The most recent attempt has now cleared several legislative hurdles and looks set to be passed by parliament.

Under this new law, my specific role (technical risk analysis) would mostly be eliminated. In addition, the Dutch SIGINT (bulk interception) powers would be stripped of a lot of regulatory requirements. Furthermore, there are new powers, like using algorithmic analysis on bulk intercepted data, without a requirement to get external approval. Finally, significant parts of the oversight would move from up front (’ex ante’) to ongoing or afterwards (’ex post’).

Doing upfront authorization of powers is relatively efficient, and is also pleasingly self regulating. If an agency overloads or confuses its ex ante regulator, they simply won’t get permission to do things. This provides a strong incentive for clear and concise requests to the regulator.

A regulator that has to investigate ongoing affairs however is in a different position. It can easily become overloaded, especially if it is unable to recruit sufficient (technical) experts. In the current labor market, it is unlikely that a regulator will be able to swiftly recruit sufficient numbers of highly skilled computer experts able to do ongoing investigations of sophisticated hacking campaigns and bulk interception projects. An overloaded regulator does not provide good coverage. It is also vulnerable to starve the beast tactics. "

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read ISS and Glass Lewis's corporate governance guidelines

https://www.glasslewis.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/US-Voting-Guidelines-2023-GL.pdf

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https://www.corporate-rebels.com/blog

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interesting idea:

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/novel-approach-would-avoid-shutdown-force-congress-to-keep-working-61406568?mod=hp_lead_pos6

" The bill, co-sponsored by Sens. James Lankford (R., Okla.) and Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.), would set in motion 14-day continuing resolutions, which keep the government funded at the prior year’s levels, while Congress works exclusively on passing appropriations bills. ... To impose a cost for failing to wrap up appropriations measures, the bipartisan bill would ban official and campaign travel spending outside the Washington region until appropriations bills pass both chambers. Lawmakers rely on these funds to travel back and forth to their home states.

The bill would also block both the Senate and the House from going on recess or adjourning for more than 23 hours, and would require daily quorum calls, when lawmakers are asked to show up on the floor of their respective chambers. "

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i think the problems with having to be tied to your proxy vote in order to un-proxy mean that instead of that, we should just have the Forum have a direct vote on every issue -- the infrastructure can help you just easily vote the recommendations determined by your proxies. Also the proxy system can empower proxies to speak in the Forum, just not for the actual final votes.

also, i think there should be a requirement to vote, as well as a rule that there can be no fee or duty or increased probability of being selected for duty that is incurred by voting or registering to vote. For the requirement, either you pay dues which are rebated (towards next year's dues?) if you vote, or you lose some privilege if you don't vote, or something.

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