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Preparing to make three 10-minute-or-less presentations at the Massachusetts Green Convention next weekend, I’m thinking I might show half a dozen slides summarizing the common good bank plan, based on existing web pages and/or video segments. In particular, I want to show where CGBs fit in the landscape of alternative economic systems AND in the landscape of alternative decision systems. I was pleased with how the “Spectrum of Economic Systems” chart came out, so I spent some time creating a similar chart for the spectrum of democratic systems.
Here’s what I have so far for the ultra-short presentation:
- a two sentence overview (with the graphic shown here)
- how CGBs are different (list 10 ways or show the video)
- where CGBs fit in the spectrum of economic systems
- where CGBs fit in the spectrum of democratic systems
- where we are in the process (graphic yet to be developed)
4 Comments
Christine, best wishes on the Trado! You might want to base its value on something static, like the Terra (www.terratrc.org, if it exists by the time you start) or Kilowatt Hours (www.kilowattcards.com).
For a US-based bank, here are a few ideas: Shorebank, New Resource Bank, Self Help Credit Union, Wainwright Bank. See the Spectrum of Economic Systems page (commongoodbank.com/philosophyanddesign/influences.html) for other ideas.
Thanks Dan,
Yes, range voting is excellent and is an important influence on the design of the common good bank democratic system. In fact, the proposed CGB ballots are entirely compatible with range voting, so an Community Division could easily choose to use range voting instead of Condorcet.
We lean toward Condorcet because (we believe) it is the fairest and most effective system if everyone votes honestly and it still works pretty well even if many people vote strategically (and dishonestly). In Condorcet, everyone’s vote is weighted equally, whether they vote honestly or not.
In range voting, those who express the strongest feelings have more say in the outcome, so people are encouraged to (dishonestly) express strong feelings whether they feel strongly or not. Our combined system makes it difficult to see any clear strategy for manipulating the vote. So most people won’t. AND the results can be concurrently tabulated as a range vote as a double check on the soundness of the decision made.
In any case, if there are many dissatisfied voters (high Bayesian Regret), the decision stands, but Division Advisors will arrange additional discussion meetings and ultimately a revote.
Dan, thanks for the link. Great info and the only thing MISSING is the software download, we’ve got a lot to vote on.
And William, very nice new page, your graphics are great and it saves a lot of work being able to link to it.
I decided to get started now with a combo of PayPal competition and new currency, the Trado.
Obviously, we’ll need to bank somewhere and need an account for the funds members transfer from their bank. I bank at Downey (in trouble) and Compass (I’ve sued them a few times). So I’m looking for recommendations for a bank that will be around, but isn’t one of the big banks I want to put out of business (Chase, Citi, WF, HSBC …)
Don’t I wish the CGB was open.
I noticed that you are planning to use a Condorcet method to resolve elections. I was wondering if you ever looked at the information on rangevoting.org? According to this site, ironically, Condorcet methods actually may fail to elect the honest Condorcet winner in the presence of strategic (dishonest) voting, while range voting is more likely to pick the honest Condorcet winner even in the presence of strategic voting! (Of course, Condorcet methods are still much better than the more popular methods like IRV or plurality.) A number of computer simulations were run in order to demonstrate this. See http://rangevoting.org/StratHonMix.html for a stark demonstration.
The “penny vote” for budgeting issues is an interesting idea which is not addressed on rangevoting.org. I wonder how it would do in computer simulations against other potential methods of determining budgets (such as allocating proportionally based on a straight approval vote or range vote, with various variations such as minimum approval thresholds and vetos)?