Robin Hood Voting

Introduction: Voting and Democracy

I found recently the wonderful groupincome initiative, where greg has been thinking and writing about voting systems and why they are so important especially in blockchain Basic Income systems. His articles approach the subject from one vote / one person point of view, and are very good in depth general introductions to the subject:

https://groupincome.org/2016/06/what-makes-a-good-voting-system/

https://groupincome.org/2016/09/misconceptions-about-majority-rule/

https://groupincome.org/2016/09/deprecating-mays-theorem/

Corrupt Politics and The Corrupt Party 

We know that the political system is ruled by money and totally corrupt. Some time ago I started to half jokingly think about political party that would be openly corrupt and advertize it's corruption as it's only campaign promise. The only promise of The Corrupt Party that it's representatives will auction their votes for the highest bidder. So, what if we wanted to make the joke into real political party? Legal considerations vary from country to country, here in Finland the auctioning of votes would have to go through legal entity called 'Foundation Close to the Party', and easiest - and most fun! - way to do that would be that representatives and party officials would never by any means touch the money given to the Foundation. 

How would the system work in the practice? Foundation would establish two accounts for each bill, in favour and against, and obviously, the account that receives more donations wins. But what to do with all the money that would be pouring in? This is the idea the blew the bank: 1) Send money from the losing account back to the senders and 2) distribute money from the winning account equally between all members. 

WOW! Political party that does not beg for donations from members and supporters to corrupt politicians, but instead functions as Robin Hood co-op!!! Political party that does not ask money from people, but gives money to people!!!

CryptoAnarchy and Robin Hood Voting System

Soon I realized that this Robin Hood voting system could be ideal for blockchain voting where members vote with coins and/or other tokens, perhaps most ideally for blockchain based basic income systems which understand the socio-economic importance of a good value of GINI-coefficient for sustainable long term development and value. 

Groupincome papers discuss various tweakeble parameters for localized voting systems, such as required (super)majorities, voter participation tresholds etc., and Robin Hood token voting could be as included as one option among others. Without going further into details, some form of Robin Hood voting might not be a bad idea for Steemit either, if there are plans to make this self-governing democracy. Whales could maintain their voting power probably for a long time, but gradually the system as a whole would be moving towards better and more inclusive equilibrium.

As a final thought experiment, let's look at the picture above. Where there's strong majority for either against or for in favour, probably not much voting power would be needed  to find out what is the consensus. On the other hand, to win a tight 50-50 situation would generally require using most voting power. In Robin Hood voting the winners would end up losing their voting power and losers would gain more voting power for the next round, possibly ending up in classical ko-fight situation. In that situation the real winners would be the passive "pacifists" who don't engage the fight on either side. 

All in all, I believe the thought experiment shows that Robin Hood democracy would in the long run prevent over-eager regulating by control maniacs and encourage more harmonious consensus building.

 Disclaimer:  You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.