SSC - 2020-06-17 - Slightly Skew Systems of Government

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ONLY TEN MORE YEARS TILL THE TURCHIN CYCLE REVERSES! HANG IN THERE, PEOPLE!

SLIGHTLY SKEW SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT
PO ST ED ON JU NE 17 , 2020 BY S CO TT AL EX AN DER
[Related To: Legal Systems Very Different From Ours Because I Just Made Them Up, List Of Fictional Drugs Banned
By The FDA]
I.
Clamzoria is an acausal democracy.
The problem with democracy is that elections happen before the winning candidate takes office. If
somebody’s never been President, how are you supposed to judge how good a President they’d be?
Clamzoria realized this was dumb, and moved elections to the last day of an official’s term.
When the outgoing President left office, the country would hold an election. It was run by approval
voting: you could either approve or disapprove of the candidate who had just held power. The
results were tabulated, announced, and then nobody ever thought about them again.
Clamzoria chose its officials through a prediction market. The Central Bank released bonds for each
candidate, which paid out X dollars at term’s end, where X was the percent of voters who voted
Approve. Traders could provisionally buy and sell these bonds. On the first day of the term,
whichever candidate’s bonds were trading at the highest value was inaugurated as the new
President; everyone else’s bonds were retroactively cancelled and their traders refunded. The
President would spend a term in office, the election would be held, and the bondholders would be
reimbursed the appropriate amount.
The Clamzorians argued this protected against demagoguery. It’s easy for a candidate to promise
the sun and moon before an election, but by the end of their term, voters know if the country is
doing well or not. Instead of running on a platform of popular (but doomed) ideas, candidates are
encouraged to run on a platform of unpopular ideas, as long as those unpopular ideas will
genuinely make the country richer, safer, stronger, and all the other things that lead people to
approve of a President’s term after the fact. Of course, you’re still limited by bond traders’ ability to
predict which policies will work, but bond traders are usually more sober than the general
electorate.
This system worked wonderfully for several decades, until Lord Bloodholme’s administration. He
ran for President on an unconventional platform: if elected, he would declare himself Dictator-For-
Life, replace democracy with sham elections, and kill all who opposed him. Based on his
personality, all the bond traders found this completely believable. But that meant that in the end-
of-term election, he would get 100% approval. His bond shot up to be worth nearly $100, the
highest any bond had ever gone, and he won in a landslide. Alas, Lord Bloodholme was as good as
his word, and – after a single sham election to ensure the bondholders got what they were due –
that was the end of Clamzoria’s acausal democracy.
II.
Cognito is a constitutional mobocracy.
It used to be a regular mobocracy. It had a weak central government, radicals would protest
whenever they didn’t like its decisions, the protests would shut down major cities, and the
government would cave. Then people on the other side would protest, and that would also shut
down major cities, and the government would backtrack. Eventually they realized they needed a
better way, made a virtue out of necessity, and wrote the whole system into their constitution.
The Executive Branch is a president elected by some voting system that basically ensures a bland
moderate. They have limited power to make decrees that enforce the will of the legislature. The
legislature is the mob. One proposes a bill by having a protest in favor of it. If the protest attracts
enough people – the most recent number is 43,617, but it changes every year based on the
population and a few other factors – then the bill is considered up for review. Anyone can propose
amendments (by having a protest demanding amendments) or vote against it – (by having a
protest larger than the original protest demanding that the bill not be passed). After everyone has
had a fair chance to protest, the text of the bill supported by the largest protest becomes law
(unless the largest protest was against any change, in which case there is no change).
The Cognitans appreciate their system because protests are peaceful and nondisruptive. The
government has a specific Protesting Square in every city with a nice grid that lets them count how
many protesters there are, and all protests involve going into the Protesting Square, standing still
for a few minutes to let neutral observers count people up, and then going home. It’s silly to
protest beyond this; your protest wouldn’t be legally binding!
There’s been some concern recently that corprorations pay protesters to protest for things they
want. Several consumer watchdog organizations are trying to organize mobs in favor of a bill to
stop this.
III.
Yyphrostikoth is a meta-republic.
Every form of government has its own advantages and disadvantages, and the goal is to create a
system of checks and balances where each can watch over the others. The Yyphrostikoth
Governing Council has twelve members:
The Representative For Monarchy is a hereditary position.
The Representative For Democracy is elected.
The Representative For Plutocracy is the richest person in the country.
The Representative For Technocracy is chosen by lot from among the country’s Nobel Prize
winners.
The Representative For Meritocracy is whoever gets the highest score on a standardized test of
general knowledge and reasoning ability.
The Representative For Military Dictatorship is the top general in the army.
The Representative For Communism is the leader of the largest labor union.
The Representative For Futarchy is whoever has the best record on the local version of Metaculus.
The Representative For Gerontocracy is supposedly the oldest person in the country who is
medically fit and willing to serve, but this has been so hard to sort out that in practice they are
selected by the national retirees’ special interest group from the pool of willing candidates above
age 90.
The Representative For Minarchy is an honorary position usually bestowed upon a respected
libertarian philosopher or activist. It doesn’t really matter who holds it, because their only job is to
vote “no” on everything, except things that are sneakily phrased so that “no” means more
government, in which case they can vote “yes”. If a Representative For Minarchy wants to vote
their conscience, they may break this rule once, after which they must resign and be replaced by a
new Representative.
The Representative For Republicanism is selected by the other eleven members of the council.
The Representative For Theocracy is the leader of the Governing Council, and gets not only her
own vote but a special vote to break any ties. She is chosen at random from a lottery of all adult
citizens, on the grounds that God may pick whoever He pleases to represent Himself.
Long ago, the twelfth Councilor was the Representative For Kratocracy (rule by the strongest). The
Representative For Kratocracy was whoever was sitting in the Representative For Kratocracy’s chair
when a vote took place. This usually involved a lot of firefights and hostage situations, which was
fine in principle – that was the whole point – except that the rest of the Governing Council kept
getting caught in the crossfire. During the Nehanian Restoration, the Representative For
Kratocracy’s chair was moved to a remote uninhabited island, with the Representative permitted to
vote by video-link, but environmentalist groups complained that the constant militia battles there
were harming migratory birds. Finally, a petition was sent to the Oracle of Yaanek, asking what to
do. The God recommended that the position be eliminated, and offered to decide who filled the
newly vacated seat Himself; thus the beginning of the Representative For Theocracy.
The Constitution was never fully amended, so technically the position is still the Representative For
Kratocracy, and technically anyone who kills the Representative For Theocracy can still take his
seat and gain immense power. But for some reason everyone who tries this dies of completely
natural causes just before their plan comes to fruition. Must be one of those coincidences.
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85 RESPONSES TO SLIGHTLY SKEW SYSTEMS OF GOVERNMENT
Reverse order
1. Paul Crowley says:

June 17, 2020 at 10:46 am ~new~
I love the idea of Clamzorian acausal democracy, but how does it interact with variation in the
value of the currency caused by the leader’s policies?

Log in to Reply Hide
o hnau says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:05 am ~new~
Hmm, so the use of bonds creates a disincentive against inflationary policies? Might be a feature
and not a bug. 🙂 If not, one could always denominate the bonds (or part of them) in gold /
bitcoin / US$ or this world’s equivalents.

Log in to Reply Hide ↑
 Ttar says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:09 pm ~new~
I was going to suggest denominating the bonds in physical units of gold, but that wouldn’t totally
solve the problem — it would skew incentives to nationalize the gold mining industry.
2. Postlibertarian says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:51 am ~new~

The Representative For Plutocracy is the richest person in the country.
I would have thought it would be auctioned off every term!
o Scott Alexander says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:02 am ~new~
I think that would be more in keeping with the idea of plutocracy, but make for a worse
government – it would encourage corrupt people to buy it for their own ends. I think the
Clamzorians just genuinely think that super-rich people might have some useful skills that make
them good members of a governing council when checked by many other people with opposing
interests.
 anonymousskimmer says:
June 17, 2020 at 12:31 pm ~new~
Someone would hack the market the day of selection to boost the shares of their company.
 craftman says:
June 17, 2020 at 1:13 pm ~new~
Right, you’d have to have a realistic wealth-measurement metric.
Gates could buy some trivial number of Microsoft shares for 25% above market value at the closing
bell on the day of the election to boost himself above Bezos.

 mendax says:
June 17, 2020 at 1:33 pm ~new~
I tried thinking of a way that antidosis could be used to find the richest individual, but I think that
only works in situations where one doesn’t want to be the “winner”.

Hide ↑
 Scott Alexander says:

June 17, 2020 at 1:51 pm ~new~
Maybe just have terms expire unpredictably (maybe every day after two years, there’s a 1%
chance that the term expires) and once it expires everyone uses market prices from the day
before?
Hide ↑
 kupe says:
June 17, 2020 at 2:04 pm ~new~
You could have whoever paid the most tax over the past 5 years. As a bonus billionaires would
have an incentive to pay tax in case of a future run for representative.

Hide ↑
 jas0nn says:
June 17, 2020 at 5:13 pm ~new~
Or select by lots above a certain threshold of wealth, however defined.

Hide ↑
 Gurkenglas says:
June 17, 2020 at 5:44 pm ~new~
Instead of expiring terms at random, select the person with the highest average wealth since the
last selection.
Hide ↑
 Some Troll's Serious Discussion Alt says:

June 17, 2020 at 7:43 pm ~new~
Let em. Anyone rich enough to credibly make the attempt is rich enough to fulfill the point of the
seat and successfully hacking the market is a display of competence.

 No One In Particular says:

June 17, 2020 at 4:47 pm ~new~
make for a worse government – it would encourage corrupt people to buy it for their own ends.
How do those two go together? “Buying things for their own ends” is how markets work. Auctioning
it to the highest bidder maximizes efficiency, by ensuring that it goes to the person who puts it to
the most valuable use. Furthermore, if the purchaser can be held to enforceable contracts
regarding their votes, the position can be purchased by a consortium of people who elects a
figurehead (or simply purchased directly, if a collective ownership, such as via a corporation, is
allowed), assigning the votes of the position to whatever policy makes people the most money.
Plus it could be a revenue source.
It’s like you haven’t even read The Machinery of Freedom.

 10240 says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:04 pm ~new~
I think the ClamzoriansYyphrostikothers just genuinely think that super-rich people might have some
useful skills
o broblawsky says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:33 pm ~new~
Maybe we could implement some kind of charitable program along the lines of ancient Greek
liturgies or eurgetism? Whoever spends the most money on public charity gets to be the
Representative for the term.

3. Paul the Fossil says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:54 am ~new~
I’m sure everyone knows the Churchill quote about democracy being the second-worst form of
government yet invented, all others being tied for first…personally I’m pretty much ready to try
some other options such as are described here.

o No One In Particular says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:52 pm ~new~
I think you’re misunderstanding the quote.

o 10240 says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:08 pm ~new~

Actually, I think the only thing we know is that democracy is better than dictatorship and absolute
monarchy. Ever since democracy has become popular, we never try anything else except when
someone manages to become dictator.

 eric23 says:
June 18, 2020 at 2:48 am ~new~
I’m not sure there *is* an “anything else”.

4. hnau says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:01 am ~new~
Fun stuff. Reminded me of The Stormlight Archive series where the fictional world includes a
dystopian gerontocracy (the ruling family doesn’t let others live long enough to claim the throne)
and a bureaucratic meritocracy (fill out an application to become ruler), plus some other exotic
systems of government whose details I forget.

o Forlorn Hopes says:
June 18, 2020 at 1:38 am ~new~
The bureaucratic meritocracy are great. The most ludicrously bureaucratic but also the most stable
and functional government on the continent.
Sanderson also had a literal plutocracy in Elantris where the nobility were the rich and the king was
the richest; who had to cheat by counting national taxes to stay in his throne.
5. a real dog says:

June 17, 2020 at 11:04 am ~new~
The first one sounds like something Charles Stross would come up with. Actually, that applies to a
lot of ideas in this series.

6. danarmak says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:05 am ~new~
> On the first day of the term, whichever candidate’s bonds were trading at the highest value was
inaugurated as the new President; holders of everyone else’s bonds were reimbursed at their
current cost.
Suppose, the day before, everyone agrees candidate A has lost the race; his bonds trade at $1. I’m
holding some of his bonds. I offer to buy everyone else’s A bonds at $2, twice the market price, but
still far below the leading candidate; everyone gladly sells, and the market price becomes $2.
The next day, A officially loses the race, and I am reimbursed at $2 per bond. I’ve broken even on
the bonds I bought yesterday – but I’ve made money on the ones I held before that, which I
bought at closer to $1!
So traders are incentivized to raise the price of all candidate bonds to slightly below the market
leader, increasing the total government payout to everyone who holds losing-candidate bonds.
Reducing the gap between candidates makes the race less certain, and the market a worse
predictor.
What am I missing?
June 17, 2020 at 11:18 am ~new~
You’re right – what’s the standard way for having a conditional prediction market?
 jonathanpaulson says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:37 am ~new~
Refund all trades in the losing candidates.

 deciusbrutus says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:42 am ~new~
Thus attempting to bid up a candidate to win costs nothing if it fails?

 hnau says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:52 am ~new~
Likely costs quite a bit if it succeeds. A large bond market would be important to keep corruption in
check.
Hide ↑
 tmk18 says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:57 am ~new~
I think it has to be done with two levels of markets. The first one is: who will get the nomination.
You can only participate in the second level if you have bonds from the market in the first level. So,
say you have bonds for candidate A. With these bonds you can buy bonds in a level-2 market (at
an exchange rate that is determined by that market). These second-layer bonds correspond to the
approval rate that candidate A would get if they won. Each candidate has their own level-2 market.
This scheme allows us to read off the conditional probabilities easily. In case candidate A is not in
fact chosen, all level-1 bonds corresponding to that candidate expire worthlessly (and so the
corresponding level-2 market becomes useless). Because of this risk, most trading in level 2 will
happen for the candidates which are most promising. The level-1 bonds of the winning candidate
are evaluated on the day of the election. As it gets closer to the day when the president is chosen,
trading will concentrate on one market. But traders still have to be careful; the selection of the
president is based on the conditional probability, so even a candidate with a low-volume level-2
market could win.
Disclaimer: I haven’t thought that long about this. There might be problems I haven’t considered.
EDIT: thinking about it more: the evaluation on election day has to be done based on the second
level market of the winning candidate. That market can just continue trading until election day.
Makes it easier for people to participate who don’t want to wait 4 years until they get their money
back.
 Algon33 says:
June 17, 2020 at 12:03 pm ~new~
Just get rid of the guaranteed buyback when the president is elected, since it is the root of the
problem.
Or base it on some other market which doesn’t have a buyback, kinda like tmk18’s proposal.
Or just force people to put in a certain amount of their savings into the election to get enough
volume to prevent this stuff.
Or base it off some sum/lottery over the bonds and futures contracts to get enough volume.
 Donald Hobson says:

June 17, 2020 at 12:25 pm ~new~
Firstly, you create bonds that pay off if candidate X does well, and an equal number of antibonds.
You auction these off. When the time comes to refund, the government offers to pay $1 for every
bond, antibond pair. You refund your bonds by selling them to someone with antibonds, or buying
the antibonds yourself. Because of this promise, the bonds and antibonds, which they can auction
off in pairs as well, sell for about $0.99
The antibond pays off based on the number of dissatisfied voters.

June 17, 2020 at 5:55 pm ~new~
Why should people sell bonds at one cent if the only way for someone with an antibond to get their
money back is to buy a bond? By symmetry, each could sell for 50 cents, though in practice all
prices are consistent and the price may be decided by who is more patient or stubborn.
 Long Disc says:

June 17, 2020 at 12:57 pm ~new~
I do not think refunding the trades in the losing candidates makes any sense and also it not clear
to me what “refund” would mean – refund at 100%? At price paid? Either would create obvious
arbitrage opportunities that reduce prediction quality.
A simple solution is to have one base asset per candidate. This asset repays $100*approval rating
in % at the end of term but only if the candidate wins the presidency to start with. One can then
create the usual futures market to enable short selling. During the pre-selection period, basket of
all base assets would be a candidate-independent bet on the final approval and would trade like an
index fund.
Until the selection day, each base asset would be a dual prediction of candidate odds to be selected
and of his eventual approval rating.

 silver_swift says:
June 18, 2020 at 4:05 am ~new~
Yeah, but then you muddy the prediction (and therefor the election) by predicting both who gets
elected and how well they do.

Bonds for a hypothetical candidate who would be wildly popular at the end of their term, but who
has basically no chance of being elected (because few people believe they will be wildly popular)
would be accurately valued at $0,-, even for those people that do correctly guess that they’d be
popular.
This gets worse once you take the meta level into account, once it becomes common knowledge
that [some policy] makes it less likely for candidates to win the presidency, no candidate running
on a platform that includes [some policy] can ever win.

June 17, 2020 at 6:09 pm ~new~
The way I see to do it is to have no refunds (so the bond tracks approval*win probability), an extra
bond that pays out iff the candidate is elected (so it tracks win probability), divide their prices to
deduce approval, then select the candidate with the highest approval.
 rui says:
June 17, 2020 at 6:30 pm ~new~
I also wonder what’s the “standard”. It feels we are all thinking it on the spot. So I’ll join in
Bonds (/anti-bonds) may only be sold jointly with an I-ll-pay-you-back-the-amount-you-just-paid-
if-the-condition-doesn’t-come-true paper.
7. bullseye says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:17 am ~new~
The acausal democracy amounts to rich people predicting the preferences of ordinary people. Rich
people think that ordinary people are a pack of morons, so it comes to “Which candidate will be
best able to con the suckers into thinking he did a good job?”
June 17, 2020 at 11:20 am ~new~
Presumably it’s harder to con people into thinking you did a good job than into thinking you will do
a good job, so it sounds like the remaining concern is that rich people might think ordinary people
are more connable than they actually are. I’m not sure that’s true – usually rich people
underestimate the chances of demagogues rather than the opposite.

 silver_swift says:
June 17, 2020 at 12:05 pm ~new~
I’d be more worried about rich people just eating a loss to get their preferred candidate elected.
 zero says:
June 17, 2020 at 12:11 pm ~new~
I think this is the usual complaint with prediction markets being used to drive policy, and the usual
counter is “If there’s an obvious difference, there’s money to be made on the other side.” “Rich
people just eating a loss to get their preferred candidate elected” requires a level of coordination
among all rich people that is extremely fragile.

 po8crg says:
June 17, 2020 at 3:26 pm ~new~
Or it expects rich people to have similar preferences.

They certainly have an interest in common – which is that they are rich. So if one candidate has
policies that favour rich people vis-a-vis the other, one can reasonably expect rich people to be
more likely to prefer that candidate to the other.
Obviously, not all rich people are utterly selfish and some will prefer a candidate who is hostile to
wealth. But we can reasonably expect that to be a minority.

Hide ↑
 Mary says:
June 17, 2020 at 7:47 pm ~new~
Being rich is not an interest but an attribute. It’s also a general one, which can contain a lot of
conflict.
For instance, a rich person who can structure his riches so he does not have a lot of income has an
interest in high taxes on incomes so that rich people who can’t do that can’t accumulate as much
and so rival him.
Likewise, the details of their richness will result in a lot of differences in regulations and finer
details of taxes.
Hide ↑
 10240 says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:27 pm ~new~
@po8crg It not only requires rich people to have similar preferences, it also requires them to
cooperate. If the collective interest of rich people is to predict A (which justifies a policy that
benefits the rich), but the likely outcome B, then each rich person individually has an interest in
betting on B. (Except if someone owns such a wealth that his effect on policy outweighs any gain
from betting on B.)

Hide ↑
o Reasoner says:
June 17, 2020 at 9:46 pm ~new~
Still seems like an improvement over “Which candidate is best able to con the suckers into thinking
they will do a good job?” (our current system).

8. JohnBuridan says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:33 am ~new~
Mrs. JohnBuridan says that you would have to schedule the protests at 1pm so that people would
arrive by 5.
9. Alejandro says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:43 am ~new~
Cognito’s “protests” remind me of the legislative assemblies of the Roman Republic.

o DizzyParsley says:
June 17, 2020 at 12:09 pm ~new~
Cognito’s constitutional mobocracy reminds me of the “town meeting” form of government I grew
up with in New England. There was a “moderator” who tended to be a “bland moderate” as in
Cognito, and policy decisions were made based on voice votes (“all in favor, say aye” “AYE” “all
opposed, say nay” “NAY.”) For big decisions (funding an expansion of the high school, e.g.) my dad
would bring me to add to the shouting, which was fun because I got to stay up late on a school
night and shout in public.

10. IvanFyodorovich says:

June 17, 2020 at 12:02 pm ~new~
“environmentalist groups complained that the constant militia battles there were harming
migratory birds”
I just read this phrase over and over and laugh.
On a more serious note, I’ve gotten to see mobocracy in action, sort of. I lived in Nepal for the
better part of a year. Whenever a political faction was angry about something, they called a bandh.
The word is typically translated as “general strike” but that makes it sound too voluntary. A faction
would call its hoodlums onto the street, and if you opened your business or drove your car around
they would smash it up. Pharmacies and restaurants attached to tourist hotels were exempt.
Writing about it, it’s amazing how regulated the protests were in that regard. I think it’s because
they were organized by political factions rather than being loose movements.
Nepal was supposed to draft a new constitution in 2012 and in the run-up to the deadline, every
faction took turns calling bandhs to show their strength. You really could tell the strength of the
faction by the compliance. When the royalists called a bandh, some businesses ignored it. When
the Newar (the main ethnic group in Kathmandu) interest group called a bandh, you couldn’t even
ride a bicycle. Finally the deadline for the constitution passed without agreement and the
international press talked about how there was a huge political crisis in Nepal. I found that
hilarious. There was no crisis. For the first time in weeks life was back to normal!
11. JulieK says:

June 17, 2020 at 12:50 pm ~new~
The Clamzorian system reminds me of Lewis Carroll’s take on academic tenure:
“Am I right in thinking that in your Universities, though a man may reside some thirty or forty
years, you examine him, once for all, at the end of the first three or four?”
“That is so, undoubtedly,” I admitted.
“Practically, then, you examine a man at the beginning of his career!” the old man said to himself
rather than to me. “And what guarantee have you that he retains the knowledge for which you have
rewarded him—beforehand, as we should say?”
“None,” I admitted, feeling a little puzzled at the drift of his remarks. “How do you secure that
object?”
“By examining him at the end of his thirty or forty years—not at the beginning,” he gently replied.
“On an average, the knowledge then found is about one-fifth of what it was at first—the process of
forgetting going on at a very steady uniform rate—and he, who forgets least, gets most honour, and
most rewards.”
“Then you give him the money when he needs it no longer? And you make him live most of his life on
nothing!”
“Hardly that. He gives his orders to the tradesmen: they supply him, for forty, sometimes fifty,
years, at their own risk: then he gets his Fellowship—which pays him in one year as much as your
Fellowships pay in fifty—and then he can easily pay all his bills, with interest.”
“But suppose he fails to get his Fellowship? That must occasionally happen.”
“That occasionally happens.” It was Mein Herr’s turn, now, to make admissions.
“And what becomes of the tradesmen?”
“They calculate accordingly. When a man appears to be getting alarmingly ignorant, or stupid, they
will sometimes refuse to supply him any longer. You have no idea with what enthusiasm a man will
begin to rub up his forgotten sciences or languages, when his butcher has cut off the supply of beef
and mutton!”
“And who are the Examiners?”
“The young men who have just come, brimming over with knowledge. You would think it a curious
sight,” he went on, “to see mere boys examining such old men. I have known a man set to examine his
own grandfather. It was a little painful for both of them, no doubt. The old gentleman was as bald as
a coot——”
12. thasvaddef says:

June 17, 2020 at 12:53 pm ~new~
I propose penentatsalinocracy.
Rule is by a council of fifty members who are chosen on the basis of being genetically identical
clones of former Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin. Each year, 5 clones are produced by the
National Cloning Laboratory. For maximum stalinity, the clones are sent to Georgia to be raised in
poverty. On their 16th birthday, the clones are informed of their destiny and given 4 years to
eliminate the other clones of their year group and to present themselves at the Council of Stalins
building. Only one clone is admitted to the council each year. Elder Stalins are expected to retire at
the age of 70, although due to deaths of serving council members this rarely happens in practice.
All executive, judicial and legislative power is given over to the council of Stalins, as well as
complete control over the media, military, economy and the actions and opinions of all citizens.
Any disagreement among the Stalins is dealt with amongst themselves as they see fit.
The concentration of power in the hands of the council ensures peace and tranquility compared to
the constant protests and disputes in other systems. The command economy guarantees prosperity
for all. The uniform age distribution of the council ensures that all age groups in society are
represented, as opposed to most other systems which are often led exclusively by old men. There
is no racial or gender discrimination, although in practice, males of the Georgian ethnicity tends to
predominate.
I know Scott thought of disadvantages to each of his systems, but I can’t think of any for
penentatsalinocracy.
o The Pachyderminator says:
June 17, 2020 at 2:40 pm ~new~
I really, really want to see this movie.

o Exetali Do says:
June 17, 2020 at 3:24 pm ~new~
While of course this form of government is, in a limited sense, ideal, there *is* one disadvantage
to this intermediate description – it’s non-stable. Surely you agree that a government of 51 Stalins
is strictly better than a government of 50 Stalins? And of course, that government would eventually
be replaced by one of 52 Stalins. Eventually this will result in the creation of a Stalin-derived
Friendly AI to re-organize the energy and matter of this universe into the maximum number of
Stalins possible. (Or perhaps some other wonderful Stalin-based system that my limited non-Stalin
perceptions are incapable of comprehending.)

o John Schilling says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:36 pm ~new~
Coming soon to a theater near you: “Death of Stalin XLVII: This Time It’s Kind of Boring Really”
o Nancy Lebovitz says:
June 18, 2020 at 3:48 am ~new~

This is reminding me of _A Confusion of Princes_ by Garth Nix. The ruler is the winner from a large
number of optimized-from-birth candidates. It’s about a character fighting off his chosen one
status.
13. ManyCookies says:

June 17, 2020 at 1:00 pm ~new~
Relevant Goblinpunch
–
The Representative For Minarchy is an honorary position usually bestowed upon a respected
libertarian philosopher or activist. It doesn’t really matter who holds it, because their only job is to
vote “no” on everything, except things that are sneakily phrased so that “no” means more
government, in which case they can vote “yes”.
That actually sounds like a decidedly nontrivial office, much harder than an honorary figurehead
spamming a novelty oversized No button. How do they vote on a compromise bill that expands one
department but contracts another? A bill that broadly refactors the tax system? A bill ending some
economic regulations that may or may not lead to expanding the social security net? Which
candidate do they back for that Republican seat?

o eric23 says:
June 18, 2020 at 2:54 am ~new~
They don’t have to be perfect to be effective.
Of course, even a perfect office-holder probably wouldn’t be effect at 1 out of 12 seats.

14. Bugmaster says:

June 17, 2020 at 1:08 pm ~new~
I’m actually curious about plutocracy. Let’s say I really did want to set up a government where
leadership positions are sold on an open auction. How would I go about doing that ? For example,
who holds the auction, and why would anyone trust them not to game the system or skim too
much off the top ?

o Jerden says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:34 pm ~new~
If you’re worried the Plutocracy will be corrupt, then why create a Plutocracy at all? The
assumption is that the Plutocrats will create policy designed to enrich themselves further, which will
be good for the economy as a whole.

I think this is a stupid assumption.
It would certainly be interesting.

15. Donald Hobson says:

June 17, 2020 at 1:22 pm ~new~
The country of Aviolletta is a autodevolved Statistical microdemocracy. Every government position
is elected, down to every last small town librarian. But in practice, the cost of having every person
in the country vote on who should be the librarian in a small town is huge, so instead, they asked a
randomly selected subset of the population.
In practice, every government position was written on a big list. Slips of paper listing every voter in
the country were put into a big hat. For each government position, several voters were picked from
the hat. These are the voters who get to choose a candidate for that position. The more important
positions in government naturally have more people voting on them.
In practice, this means that half a dozen people across the country got to select a librarian for a
particular town, out of a list of everyone who applied for the job. If that librarian resigns or dies,
then those half a dozen people got to choose a new one.
Of course, this means that the government can’t increase in size without a new election.
The downside of this is that a lot of people were voting on positions about which they knew little
and cared less.
Then they made it so that people can choose the position that they get to vote on. If I know a lot
about books and libraries, and really want to elect a new librarian, I can do so. Of course, more
people want to vote on candidates for the more important positions, but the more voters get to
influence a position, the less influence each voter gets, so it all balances out. You can have a big
influence on who the town librarian is, or a small influence on who the minister of health is. The
problem with that is that if you have a bunch of friends, you can get yourself elected to positions
that you are totally unsuitable for, and the people who notice this and want to use their vote to fix
it have to wait until the next election.
Now they operate on a system of continuous voting. Which is like casting the same vote again and
again, every second. Anyone can change who they vote for and what position they are voting on at
any time. All vote counts are public. To stop leadership constantly flipfloping on close fought
positions, a new candidate must be ahead by at least squareroot(number of voters on that
position) to push out the incumbent. The incumbent has 4 weeks to regain the largest number of
votes before they are ousted. Sure this incentivizes switching around, constantly putting your vote
onto the nearly tied positions, but not too much, and you probably want more politically active
people to have a bit more influence anyway.

o AlexOfUrals says:
June 17, 2020 at 6:24 pm ~new~

The problem came from a totally unexpected and unforeseen fact that the amount of people
genuinely caring about professional qualities of government officials on all but the highest levels is
negligible compared to the amount of people worried about some political agenda. So the major
parties started to motivate their followers to vote on as many lower level positions as physically
possible, wanting to get the control of the local government or at least prevent the opponents from
doing so. Which of course lead to the situation where only the candidates supported by one of the
two major parties could have any position at all. Because sure the entire population of your 5k
people town may vote for you to be the local librarian because of how good you are at that. But the
Yellow Party has a million supporters across the country who would click on every candidate on the
list as fast as their can, and so does the Black party. And the fact that every position is all-or-
nothing vote ensured that any vote for a smaller party is wasted. So the main determinant of who
holds a given post on a given time became the random fluctuations in the number of voters these
two parties can muster – with maybe the exception of a few high ranking officials, for which the
entire country wanted to vote.
This resulted in a peculiar dynamic in the citizens’ voting behavior. Since all voting is public and the
parties spared no effort to convince their supporters to vote as much as they can, voting was
expected to be a full-time job, or at least a major part of their lifestyle for any politically active
citizen. On the other hand, the majority of people not concerned with partisan politics saw no sense
in voting for anyone but the highest ranking officials, since their vote won’t affect anything. So the
two politically active tribes devoted more and more resources for voting while everyone else just
ignored the whole fuzz and went on with their lives.
On the elected officials side, things quickly degraded to a complete chaos. Since any clerk can be
voted out of their position at any second, why bother to do any work? Especially since you were
voted here not because of any professional qualities but because you’re a loyal party member. And
as such you may often hold more positions than you can remember, let alone manage. This lead to
essential collapse of all governmental organizations – sure, higher ranking officials may still be kind
of competent and giving orders and laws, but everyone below is far too disorganized to execute
them. After a tough but short period of nothing working, private companies popped up to fill in the
niche. Not for free of course, but people had spare money since nobody bothered to pay taxes
which none was collecting or counting. Replacing post service and libraries with private companies
was trivial, medicine and currency emission took more work, but eventually the sophisticated
solutions were developed to make even law enforcement and national defense managed by private
organizations. At the end everything worked out quite well, with a politically active minority firmly
preoccupied with fighting for now-nominal positions and having no effect on anything of
importance, and everyone else just minding they own business.
One of the unsolved problems remained that of the national symbols – they are something that is
almost by definition decided by the government officials or voting, so they kept changing
unpredictably. But the other countries still needed something stable to represent Aviolletta in user
interfaces and atlases and such. Eventually everyone just ended up using a simple flag in the colors
of two major parties locked in their eternal senseless competition – a flag of yellow and black.
 taxevasion says:
June 17, 2020 at 8:37 pm ~new~
Did you make that entire post solely for that joke?
 AlexOfUrals says:
June 17, 2020 at 9:57 pm ~new~
No, not for that, for another one.

16. pjiq says:

June 17, 2020 at 2:06 pm ~new~
How about, as maybe the opposite of clamzoria, “no $$ or parties democracy?”
-donating to politicians/ receiving donations as a politician is illegal/ treated like getting bribes/
bribing a cop. No political ads/ parties.
– anyone who wants to run for office registers on a special “democracy” website after getting, say,
100 friends to publicly back his or her campaign. You can only back 1 person, and if you run you
can’t back anyone, so max # candidates n/101.
– candidates running have to answer, say, 20 questions regarding policy and present themselves in
a 5 minute video clip (edited for content, of course)- where they say who they are.
– to narrow down the potentially massive list of candidates, the first round of voting simply
consists of voting citizens being shown 2 candidates profiles randomly, and they have to choose
which one they prefer. Those candidates in the bottom 20% of this process are eliminated then the
process goes again. Repeat till down to, say, 25 candidates.
– then have debates, then use ranked choice voting to narrow down the field to 2 candidates.
– more debates, then people vote between these 2 candidates. Still no advertisements, billboards,
fliers, etc.
– so I guess basically still representative democracy but hoping to get rid of some of the circus/
corruption involved. Under the umbrella of “democracy, free speech, and human rights” there are
many options, hopefully some of which are more ideal/ admirable than the current US political
landscape.
17. Donald Hobson says:

June 17, 2020 at 2:10 pm ~new~
Compuvaria is a Recursive Representative democracy. They decided that representative democracy
was all very well, but who chooses the candidates?

The entire voting population is grouped into level 1 counsels based on local area. Each counsel
consists of about 5 to 7 people. The counsel votes on one of their members to be a level 1
representative.
Around 5 to 7 level one counsels are grouped into a level 2 counsel based on area. The level 1
representatives vote on a level 2 representative from among their number. The process is repeated
until a single level 9 representative is chosen. It used to be a level 8 representative, fortunately the
constitution was written with population growth in mind. All representatives are paid about £10 per
year for each person they represent directly and each layer of indirection halves that.
Some issues are decided by the highest level representative, whereas others are decided more
locally by representatives or by votes of lower level counsels. All powers reside with the head
counsel until delegated to lower layers. But they don’t want to make every little decision, so they
delegate to lower level counsels. (The constitution limits their ability to delegate to anyone other
than a lower counsel)
While Compuvaria has a separate investigative system to decide on the facts of a criminal case.
Counsels can vote to excuse people of crimes if they feel that the legal penalty is unfairly harsh in
a particular case, or that there are extenuating circumstances. Minor crimes might face level 2
counsels, while more serious crimes face level 3 or even 4. Criminals always face the counsel that
contains their representative.

o DavidFriedman says:
June 17, 2020 at 3:09 pm ~new~
There is a medieval Muslim story along those lines, I think in al Tanukhi. It involves a new ruler
somewhere in India who wants an opinion from the people on his rule.
Each village selects its wisest man. The ten wisest men from each ten villages select the wisest of
them. It goes on until there are a total of ten wisest men. They, with ten courtiers, go in to advise
the king.
o 10240 says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:47 pm ~new~
Some dictatorships (e.g. China) have had rigged versions of this system (albeit with fewer levels).
It makes it easy for one party to be in total control, even with a moderate amount of rigging: even
if people occasionally manage to vote an opposition candidate or two into the lowest level councils,
they typically won’t have the majority, so the second level will be 100% or near 100% pro-
government; the third level even more so.

18. TheMidniteWolf says:

June 17, 2020 at 2:20 pm ~new~
The Representative for Minarchy only makes sense if it’s countered by a Representative for
Totalitarianism that votes “yes” on anything that increases government power. Since totalitarian
philosophers are hard to come by, it would probably just be filled by a SocDem who enjoys spiting
libertarians.
o Ttar says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:21 pm ~new~

totalitarian philosophers are hard to come by
This is why there is no Representative for Totalitarianism, only for Minarchy.
o John Richards says:
June 17, 2020 at 7:04 pm ~new~
Create an opportunity for a job as a political leader, and you’ll soon see a rise in numbers of
totalitarian philosophers.
o Jerden says:
June 17, 2020 at 11:39 pm ~new~
I’d assume that the council is in favour of more power by default, so a representative to counter
that seems reasonable.

o eric23 says:
June 18, 2020 at 2:59 am ~new~
No point in having two representatives whose votes will always offset each other.
19. teneditica says:

June 17, 2020 at 2:33 pm ~new~
Another problem with the acausal democracy is that demagogoues would start railing against that
system, organizing revolutions, riots, etc.., rather then trying get their share of the loot within it.
20. Ninety-Three says:

June 17, 2020 at 4:07 pm ~new~
I was expecting Clamzoria to fall when its citizens realized there was no incentive for them to
connect their vote to their actual opinion of the official and it all turned into some kind of elaborate
fraud scheme to maximize bond payouts.

21. Rusty says:
June 17, 2020 at 4:12 pm ~new~
It seems vaguely relevant so I’ll mention here that I did a podcast with David Friedman on his book
Legal Systems Very Different from Ours. https://overcast.fm/+OtIL7NQew

22. VampyFlameo says:

June 17, 2020 at 4:13 pm ~new~
The nation of Jestadad never has a majority in Parliament. Each election cycle, a given district is
required to send three individuals to Parliament, all belonging to a different party. As a result, the
largest a party can ever get is one third of Parliament, and if they ever decide to pass legislation,
they must cooperate with another party to get it passed. The first Prime Minister was selected by
lot, and was allowed to hold his office for 10 years maximum, followed by a Prime Minister from a
different party, decided by which party in Parliament had gone the longest without holding the
office. This precedent in their history meant that from then on, the longest a party can hold the
office is 10 years. When he selects his cabinet, the Prime Minister must pick the members in
proportion to the makeup of Parliament, which means that the largest hold of the cabinet a party
can get is one third, plus the Prime Minister.
For decades, Jestadad had a vibrant culture of debating different ideas, until slowly the country’s
political culture turned into a three party system. The largest and third largest parties decided to
agree on all legislation, effectively cutting out the second largest party, since all parties had a third
of Parliament, and two thirds majority was sufficient to pass all legislation. This lasted for two
decades, until Neville No-Nonsense of the second party took the Prime Minister’s office and sought
to pass groundbreaking legislation. When neither of the other parties wanted to lose their power
and voted down the legislation, No-Nonsense led a military coup, and added one amendment to the
constitution, wherein any two parties that agree on legislation at least 80% of the time must
become a united party at the beginning of the next term, and new members of Parliament would
take their place.
Unfortunately, for No-Nonsense’s first term, the first and third parties wanted to hold onto their
power, and introduced meaningless legislation about changing the names of streets, both parties
“disagreeing” about what to do with the bill, and the bill either passing or not depending on the
second party. This resulted in enough meaningless legislation to be passed that the first and third
parties could maintain their hold of Parliament, while also wasting enough time to not be forced to
give up their seats.
No-Nonsense, tired of all the nonsense, led another military coup at the beginning of his second
term, and decided to limit the percentage of allowed agreement to “important legislation”, which
would take a supermajority to recognize as important. This meant that, in theory, the second party
could now have a say in what Jestadad’s Parliament could actually pass, and hampered the first
and third parties’ ability to control the government. And yet, the first and third parties voted all the
legislation they actually wanted to pass as “unimportant”, and the two parties could then proceed
to pass what they wanted unencumbered. Since a Prime Minister’s term is 5 years long, Neville No-
Nonsense had to retire from office, and the third party took control.
Twenty years later, Neville’s son, Ronald Really-Means-No-Nonsense, became the Prime Minister of
Jestadad as part of the second party, and led yet another coup, requiring that all legislation must
be passed with a majority proportionate to the makeup of Parliament, with a 10% margin of error
allowed when perfect proportionality could not happen. This ended the half-century rule of the first
and third parties, known in Jestadad as the “Reign of Redundancy”, since the second party fell into
redundancy and fought for 50 years to be a relevant part of Parliament.

o sustrik says:
June 17, 2020 at 6:08 pm ~new~
This is, to some extent, how it works in Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_formula

23. John Schilling says:

June 17, 2020 at 4:41 pm ~new~
Kobyashimaruistan is nominally a representative democracy, but the election system is carefully
designed so that no valid vote can ever be cast for any candidate.
24. Eric Rall says:

June 17, 2020 at 5:15 pm ~new~
The Metaconstitutional Republic of Jeffersonia was founded on a stringent interpretation of Social
Contract theory. The fundamental document underlying the country’s government, the
Metaconstitution, provides that laws will be enacted and executed by a government operating
under a constitution written by a popular convention and ratified by a majority of all adult citizens.
It further provides that all laws automatically sunset once it becomes the case that a majority of
current citizens had been ineligible to vote in the elections that lead to the law’s ratification. This
principle also extends to constitutions: the entire constition and all laws and offices under it
become void automatically if a majority of the population hadn’t been eligible to vote in the last
constitutional referedum. Governments generally acted to avoid an interregnum by organizing a
new convention and ratification vote a few years in advance of when the Metaconstitution would
force a dissolution of the old Constitution.
Jeffersonia eventually collapsed into a decades-long civil war after an outgoing government refused
to step down on the grounds that the Framers of the Metaconstitution were all long dead, and thus
by its own logic the Metaconstitution was now void.

25. sustrik says:

June 17, 2020 at 6:34 pm ~new~
The republic of Upper Keratonia had a rule that the winning party is, after election, forcefully split
into two parties. The two strongest leaders of the original party headed the new parties. This led to
bitter intra-party conflict. The leader of the strongest party was trying to subvert his own party so
that it scored second in the elections. The second strongest member of the party was secretly
trying to make the party win.
This led to almost universal strategic voting and utter unpredictability of the election results.
In mid XX. century, Upper Keratonians decided to simplify the system and replace it by choosing
the officials at random.

o bullseye says:
June 17, 2020 at 7:15 pm ~new~
The system in your last paragraph is called “sortition”, and actually saw some use in Ancient
Greece. It was considered more democratic than popular elections, because it tended to pick
regular guys instead of skilled public speakers.

 B_Epstein says:
June 17, 2020 at 10:59 pm ~new~
They even paid people who were chosen at random for their participation, so that poor people
would not be penalized by losing a work’s day. Some used this as a source of potential income,
trying to get early into the candidate lists (and were then mocked by Aristophanes).
26. 10240 says:

June 17, 2020 at 10:55 pm ~new~
The Representative For Theocracy is the leader of the Governing Council, and gets not only her own
vote but a special vote to break any ties. She is chosen at random from a lottery of all adult citizens,
on the grounds that God may pick whoever He pleases to represent Himself.
Incidentally, she is also the representative for sortition, which sort of justifies her double vote.
27. Trofim_Lysenko says:

June 18, 2020 at 1:19 am ~new~
Errr…I’d actually sort of like to see the Meta-Republican model experimented with. Maybe it’s just
because I’ve seen the creation of better systems of government to be the exercise of balancing
opposing interests against each other and structuring the incentives, checks, and balances right,
but it appeals to me.

28. Forlorn Hopes says:

June 18, 2020 at 1:28 am ~new~
Surely in Clamzoria a candidate could promise a wealth of tax-cuts and public spending in their last
year of office to pump up their approval rating.

29. James Green says:

June 18, 2020 at 2:15 am ~new~
Republicanism isn’t a form of government.
It essentially indicates who theoretically owns a country, in the case of a republic the that would be
the whole population. In the case of a typical monarchy the monarch owns the country. In my own
country of New Zealand the Queen owns the country but the government is decided by democracy.
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Slate Star Codex

1. Paul Crowley says:

value of the currency caused by the leader’s policies?

June 17, 2020 at 11:05 am ~new~

bitcoin / US$ or this world’s equivalents.

June 17, 2020 at 10:51 am ~new~

o Scott Alexander says:

June 17, 2020 at 11:02 am ~new~

Right, you’d have to have a realistic wealth-measurement metric.

bell on the day of the election to boost himself above Bezos.

only works in situations where one doesn’t want to be the “winner”.

 Scott Alexander says:

have an incentive to pay tax in case of a future run for representative.

Or select by lots above a certain threshold of wealth, however defined.

 Some Troll's Serious Discussion Alt says:

seat and successfully hacking the market is a display of competence.

 No One In Particular says:

Plus it could be a revenue source.

It’s like you haven’t even read The Machinery of Freedom.

June 17, 2020 at 4:33 pm ~new~

Representative for the term.

3. Paul the Fossil says:

June 17, 2020 at 10:54 am ~new~

some other options such as are described here.

o No One In Particular says:

June 17, 2020 at 4:52 pm ~new~

I think you’re misunderstanding the quote.

June 17, 2020 at 10:08 pm ~new~

someone manages to become dictator.

I’m not sure there *is* an “anything else”.

systems of government whose details I forget.

o Forlorn Hopes says:

June 18, 2020 at 1:38 am ~new~

and functional government on the continent.

5. a real dog says:

lot of ideas in this series.

bought at closer to $1!

o Scott Alexander says:

June 17, 2020 at 11:18 am ~new~

Refund all trades in the losing candidates.

Thus attempting to bid up a candidate to win costs nothing if it fails?

market could win.

volume to prevent this stuff.

 Donald Hobson says:

off in pairs as well, sell for about $0.99

The antibond pays off based on the number of dissatisfied voters.

 Long Disc says:

arbitrage opportunities that reduce prediction quality.

and of his eventual approval rating.

elected and how well they do.

on a platform that includes [some policy] can ever win.

Bonds (/anti-bonds) may only be sold jointly with an I-ll-pay-you-back-the-amount-you-just-paid-

o Scott Alexander says:

June 17, 2020 at 11:20 am ~new~

underestimate the chances of demagogues rather than the opposite.

among all rich people that is extremely fragile.

Or it expects rich people to have similar preferences.

more likely to prefer that candidate to the other.

wealth. But we can reasonably expect that to be a minority.

and so rival him.

from betting on B.)

June 17, 2020 at 9:46 pm ~new~

I’m not sure there is an “anything else”.