Exotic Governmental/Legal Systems

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Can you literally buy votes? "I will pay you 500 dollars a year to choose me as your representative?"


That's a system I can totally see though.

Sure. That allows authorities to see how much the public values them. There probably should be some limitation like ensuring that the money is personal.

How it turns out will depend on the TL. In Ancient Athens, government property was very slim. There was not a whole bevy of assets that needed extra magistrates to control. The Laurium mines were an exception. In a more modern state, the state would at least have to have a corporate structure whoever held the proxy.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Rule by proxy:

There is no government. Theoretically. It is a pure democracy. But anyone who wishes can proxy his vote as he will. The effect is a weighted legislature with the most popular having the most clout. Executive and judicial magistrates are either chosen out of their number or by reproxying to new parties. Thus the size of the government varies constantly.

The difficulty with that is the information processing load of keeping track of every citizen all the time to check who has which proxies. It's something you could do in a highly networked totalitarian state, but pretty hard otherwise.

A more practical limited implementation does exist in the party list election - where you only assign the proxies of people who bother to turn out to vote and only allow them to change at occasional intervals. The step where the party leaders reassign the proxies to individual members is a traditional but unnecessary flourish.

[David Johnston2]

Social network aristocracy. The legislature is made up of the people who have the most social network "likes" and willing to accept the job.

Social network sanctioning. There are no codified punishments for crime, but if you accumulate too many dislikes people stop associating with you, and after a certain point people can gain likes for exacting vigilante justice on you.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Social network aristocracy. The legislature is made up of the people who have the most social network "likes" and willing to accept the job.

Social network sanctioning. There are no codified punishments for crime, but if you accumulate too many dislikes people stop associating with you, and after a certain point people can gain likes for exacting vigilante justice on you.

Both of those are parts of all governments anyway.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The difficulty with that is the information processing load of keeping track of every citizen all the time to check who has which proxies. It's something you could do in a highly networked totalitarian state, but pretty hard otherwise.

Couldn't you do it just by handing out tokens or certificates of proxy? Have a voter registration day a few months before each election, where citizens collect their single tokens, then they pass them on to whoever they trust.

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Social network sanctioning. There are no codified punishments for crime, but if you accumulate too many dislikes people stop associating with you, and after a certain point people can gain likes for exacting vigilante justice on you.

Wasn't that one on an episode of The Orville last year?

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

Wasn't that one on an episode of The Orville last year?

Yup, it was.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Couldn't you do it just by handing out tokens or certificates of proxy? Have a voter registration day a few months before each election, where citizens collect their single tokens, then they pass them on to whoever they trust.

That's not really any different than a straight up election - which indeed originally often were done with tokens. The feature that makes a more complex proxy system much more than a trivial variation on an electoral one is dynamically reassigning the proxies. And that's the information processing heavy part - unless all members of your society have enough magical ability to summon their tokens back or something, they don't help with that, and even if they do you still need to recount all the tokens every vote in the legislature to determine the instantaneously correct weights.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

That's not really any different than a straight up election - which indeed originally often were done with tokens. The feature that makes a more complex proxy system much more than a trivial variation on an electoral one is dynamically reassigning the proxies. And that's the information processing heavy part - unless all members of your society have enough magical ability to summon their tokens back or something, they don't help with that, and even if they do you still need to recount all the tokens every vote in the legislature to determine the instantaneously correct weights.

The main difference is that legislators in practice will not be equal because they wield the proxies they have into the legislature. Theoretically there can be a write in (indeed I voted write in last time) and someone can write in themselves. But in practice legislators will be from an organized cluster of party machines as in a typical state. It would have to be at periodical times, though of course if so that would make reproxying difficult and reproxies might be an appropriate oil for fueling an executive branch. However it is not difficult for the parties to agree among themselves that there will be a time when proxies will be gathered. In fact the difficulty of digesting it would normally be made more difficult by having local chiefs and dons and bosses wield a lot of the power and have votes semi-permanently assigned to them until officially yanked. It could be government by patronage As you point out it would be difficult to keep track of. But there could be unwritten rules to slow it down as well as only using this on periodical elections (I originally only intended it for periodical elections and reasonably regulated referendums anyway). A lot of the system would have to just adjust to a quirky form of a familiar electoral state with the familiar characters such as the party boss, the scandalmonger, the
lobbyist, etc.

One problem not brought up is that officially everyone would have to have access to the assembly chamber while it is in session as legislators have no theoretical authority. That would make security difficult.

[jason taylor]

One version which is kind of like this is that each legislator retains the votes cast for him all through his term and proxies them at will. The effect would be a weighted legislature.

A more mundane version is that this system is used only during referendums and special elections.

Still another would be appropriate for a community with an adventuring tradition. Someone who has to go trading, fighting, or animal driving can leave his vote behind with a friend or family member or hired manager whatever orders for how it is to be wielded.