Quadratic Voting
Quadratic Voting, also known as Secondary voting in Japanese, is a proposed method for Updating Democracy. It was introduced by glenweyl, the founder of RadicalxChange. The concept of Quadratic Voting is explained in an article titled Radical Democracy - About Quadratic Voting to Achieve Revolutionary Democracy | ALIS, which unfortunately cannot be found anymore.
One of the main challenges with the current voting system is that minority groups can easily be persecuted by the majority through majority rule. Another issue is the lack of weighting for individual votes, which leads to problems like Beauty Contest. To better understand the concept of Beauty Contest, it is necessary to refer to the related topic of Problems with democracy. While the first challenge is understandable, the concept of Beauty Contest in the second challenge is not clear.
QV is a voting system that addresses these challenges. Here is how it works:
1. A certain amount of credits is distributed to everyone.
2. These credits can be used to purchase votes.
3. The cost of purchasing x votes is proportional to x^2.
https://gyazo.com/95fe7a1e567e4032cc1074b3618e7fae
The image shows the relationship between the number of votes purchased, the credits consumed, and the additional cost compared to purchasing one less vote. For example, if someone wants to buy three votes, it would cost them 9 credits, which is 5 credits more than buying two votes.
Why does QV work effectively in democracy?
In a traditional voting system like [Pure one person, one vote] and Voting by majority, there is a problem known as Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which states that a fair voting system cannot exist when there are two or more participants and three or more choices. This theorem has been Proof that the Mechanism Cannot Work, highlighting the need to explore alternative methods.
Therefore, the idea behind QV is to introduce Market principle into politics and solve this problem. Market is a system that reflects preferences through prices, and this system is desired in the political arena as well. However, it is important to note that simply giving decision-making power to the highest bidder, like in a market, is not ideal.
This is where QV comes in. Instead of giving decision-making power to the highest bidder, QV proposes that individuals should share the total cost imposed by their decisions with others. For example, when deciding how much air pollution to tolerate from a power plant, the border line can be determined based on the level of concern among individuals. In the current Voting by majority system, minorities often suffer from the decisions made. Therefore, it is necessary to measure How big of a problem it is for the person involved. This can be done by asking the question, "How much cost are you willing to pay to avoid air pollution?" https://gyazo.com/364104f17c9edbc5d6186531673e24c3. The solid line in the graph represents the demand for pollution, which is the economic value generated by electricity production. The lower the cost, the better for the seller, who is the power plant operator. On the other hand, for the user, represented by Nills-san, the more pollution there is, the worse it is.
By utilizing QV, minorities have the potential to improve overall welfare in topics that are of less interest to the majority.