Ah, Quadratic Voting, very cool stuff. Forget all the stuff about the bees, that's just stuff and nonsense. Democracy, I think, really only matter when each individual is heterogeneous.<p>Here's some more on QV (ugh, such a horrible name):<p><a href="http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic-voting.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/01/collusion-in-quadratic...</a><p><a href="http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-thoughts-on-quadratic-voting-and-politics-as-education.html" rel="nofollow">http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/01/my-...</a><p>and finally an academic paper:<p><a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531" rel="nofollow">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2003531</a><p>Random thought, what about exponential voting blocks? Everyone gets 100 votes, but you have to spend them in smaller and smaller chunks namely: 50, 25, 12, 6, 3, 2, 1, & 1.
<i>Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know.</i><p>Two problems with this. Most importantly, if bees have the same genetic interests (it's a bit complicated but see The Selfish Gene for Dawkin's explanation of why bees are genetically programmed not to have different interests than their hives) then there is no reason for a bee to want credit. Second, has any reward for the scouts ever been observed?
> <i>Of course, every bee wants credit for their own find. So there needs to be a countervailing costly mechanism to prevent bees from simply over-promoting any pollen source they know. Bees must spend a lot of energy to bring their fellows around.</i><p>That is wrong. Bee spends lot of energy with promotion, but what really decides is snow-ball effects. When other bees try that source, they will start dancing as well.
This period there was a monumental shift from a moralistic view of human relations as passions which were largely detested to a view that self-interest, read avarice, could be used to tame the other passions, the problem with the bees is the bees are not human with all the vices and wants that go with our being, so attempting to apply simplistic ideas like that to human governance you will undoubtedly lose resolution.<p>Regarding a complex system of governance that is required for modern society, voting pre-dates the above shift in conception, but it's use was spurred on by the idea that our self-interest can be used to the keep more dangerous vices in check, the problem with this is that avarice is a vice and if you promote it throughout society as being the main force for taming of humanity, you will inevitably fall under it's wheels, this will probably be seen in rising inequality, where virtues, patience, kindness... are marginalised, for the benefit of this one vice.<p>I'm sorry I don't have an answer, I do think we have gone a long way down a dead end, I can only hope we have not done exactly the same to pride.
Doing Democracy right? I recall that worker bees will kill a co-worker if the co-worker doesn't do a good enough dance that tells where pollen can be found.<p>I'd hate to think what would have happened to some of my co-workers based on the code they checked in. Or maybe the guy has a point...