breathing earth

"A map of the world showing a real-time simulation of the CO2 emissions level of every country in the world, as well as each countries birth and death rates."

link. via metafilter

(Try comparing our death and birth rates v. our neighbors.)

design of democracy (5) notes on the size of v

The standard market paradigm we have for elections is that candidates are the sellers (supply) and the voters are the buyers (demand). Our ideal is that candidates-as-sellers try to get the voters-as-buyers to choose them based on "sellable qualities" -that is: their ideas (electoral platforms and promises), reputation and track record as leaders. What the voters are buying is a promise of good government or good leadership. In essence, the candidates signal the quality of their product -through their campaign communications. (In this post, again, I will use "buy" or "sell" votes in a value neutral sense. It can refer to the selling of and buy-in to ideas or it may actual financial transactions between the parties.)

This is well and good but it assumes that voters-as-buyers have direct information about the sellers. The market paradigm encounters problems in elections that involve a large electorate (v). The size of v creates problems of information asymmetry, particularly in modern societies. Where the candidates and campaigns are armed to the teeth with polling data and sample tested communication strategies, the voter must rely on second hand information (often not even from third party reports) about the candidate. When the voting population reaches into the hundred thousands and into the millions - all information is second hand - filtered -by media, by image managers. (With an electorate size of 50M -the candidate will have to appear to 2 crowds of more than 250K each for everyday of the 90 day campaign period just to make sure every voter sees them in the flesh. Clearly that is unrealistic.)

My contention is that the inherent information asymmetry is so one sided so that we essentially have a market failure. More so, the information asymmetry actually reverses the relationship to: candidates-as-buyers and voters-as-suppliers. (caveat: I am not an economist.)

In contests involving large electorates, the game belongs to the candidate who can assemble the majority (or plurality). The candidate is, in effect, buying votes in bulk volumes, while the voter produces a single widget - their vote. The campaigns basically say "sell your widget to me - I will give you the best value for your widget." From the voter's perspective - the widget maker -the promised payment is better government (or actual financial payoff) if you "sell" to the right bulk buyer

Because the market is so large -there is a need for middle-men -whose job is to aggregate the produce - to assemble the needed volumes of widgets for the buyers who will only buy in bulk. Hence the power of the media, and the campaign professionals and the message shapers and the spinmeisters. They, in essence, aggregate the singular widgets into a majority (or plurality) vote. The vast majority of the widget makers will never meet the bulk buyer in person (they may see them in real life a large rally) but their selection will be based on the pitch given by the various layers of aggregators (the middle men). The malignant side of this condition (the need for aggregators) is vote cheating by volume (i.e. -dagdag bawas).

(The one act given to the widget maker - making a choice between buyers -is further clouded by our synchronized electoral system that makes them choose a president, a vp, 12 senators, a congressman, a provincial governor, several councillors, a mayor, several city or town councillors, etc. )

A large v marginalizes the effect of each individual vote, inverts the economic relationship and gives power to the middle men. It also necessitates a more complex electoral machine: The large v requires multiple layers of counting - multiple layers of safeguards - scaling in complexity the larger the size of the electorate gets.

Next: Effects of a small v

Image credit: "Middle Men" by Clifford Bailey.

wanted: phil. property tax expert

I know, I know. I owe you the next post on "design of democracy" -it's in the works. But, my day job has gotten really hectic. Plus, since I am an INTP (very strong on the N, strong on the T and the P), I've got so many threads started for this blog.

Here's another one: I want to have a dialogue with someone who is an expert on property/land taxation in the Philippines. I want to explore how our tax system shapes our cities.

If you are one, or you know of someone who would be a good resource, please email me: urbanodelacruz at gmail.

(BTW, it's a bit bizaare to have my blog posts discussed in MLQ's blog instead of here but at least I know i have some readers. And thanks MLQ for the mentions!)

Image credit: Cartoon by Corky Trinidad

cities for our children

Quick time out from the "design of democracy" series to plug this book:

Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth is a practical manual on how to conceptualize, structure and facilitate the participation of young people in the community development process. It is an important tool for urban planners, municipal officials, community development staff, non-governmental organizations, educators, youth-serving agencies, youth advocates, and others who are involved in the community development process. It offers inspiration to all who believe in the value of community education and empowerment as a fundamental building block of a vibrant and resilient civil society.

Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth
A MANUAL FOR PARTICIPATION
David Driskell
in collaboration with members of the Growing Up in Cities Project
UNESCO PUBLISHING | EARTHSCAN PUBLICATIONS

More about the book -including table of contents here. This from the foreword:

"Children and youth are seldom involved in the construction of their environment. They are considered too inexperienced, too unrealistic, too unqualified. Yet their fresh perspectives may be exactly what is needed to see clearly into the realm of new possibilities. It is my strong conviction that tapping into young people’s ideas and reflections is essential to improving our cities. Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth can help us move in that direction."

More about UNESCO's Growing up in Cities program.

Growing Up in Cities

We live in an urbanizing world, in which more and more children and young people live in cities. In industrialized countries, a half to three-quarters of all children live in urban areas; in the developing world, the majority of children and youth will be urban in the next few decades. Yet across a wide range of indicators, cities are failing to meet the needs of young people and their families.

• What does the process of urbanization mean in the lives of young people?
• From young people’s own perspectives, what makes an urban neighborhood a good place in which to grow up?
• Can cities be positive places for young people-places that support and nurture their development as constructive, contributing members of a civil society?

Growing Up in Cities is a global effort to understand and respond to these and other questions, and to help address the issues affecting urban children and youth. It is a collaborative undertaking of the MOST Programme of UNESCO and interdisciplinary teams of municipal officials, urban professionals, and child advocates around the world, working with young people themselves to create communities that are better places in which to grow up-and therefore, better places for us all.

Enlisting the Creativity and Energy of Children and Youth

Growing Up in Cities enlists the energy, ideas, and hope of young people to evaluate their own circumstances, define priorities, and create change. It also enables municipal governments and child advocates to implement the participation principles of the Habitat Agenda, Agenda 21, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It provides models of interdisciplinary, intersectoral collaboration for listening to the voices of young people and creating more responsive urban policies and practices.

design of democracy (4) numerator and denominator

LTNE. No comments since last time so either 1) i'm making sense or 2) no one gets it or 3) no one's reading. I'll err on the latter and push on to see where this design exercise leads me.

I left the last post with this key equation:

v/r=c

The numerator (v) is the number of voters. The denominator (r) is the amount of resources a candidate has invested into getting (re)elected. The quotient (c) is the acquisition cost per voter. (OK, for the math purists, we can call them dividend and divisor.)

Jay W. Forrester, used to say that people know intuitively where the leverage points are in a system -and that a lot of attention is put on pushing that leverage point, but often in the wrong direction.

Our electoral system is no exception. We know that overaccumulations of r is detrimental to our system. Our ideal is that candidates stand and are judged on the basis of their ideas or proposal. The reality is, they get elected based on name recall and on meticulously crafted media images.

We have thrown regulation after rule after law to try to corral r -trying to limit it by imposing ceilings on campaign expenses, or trying to balance it by providing government subsidies. We try to wrestle the positive feedback gain so that it doesn't become an advantage. In design terms, we have spent the better part of our energy trying to collar this factor using external controls.

Acting on r -the denominator - is pushing in the wrong direction. What we have not considered is the numerator. We have not considered the size of v nor have we considered managing v to moderate r.

Think about it: our democracy (as all democracies) were designed for much smaller populations. (Athenian democracy ran at the city level.) It did not foresee elections with millions of voters -nor did it comprehend the power of mass media.

If anything, we have let v get away without any controls whatsover. We delineate v not based on population size -but on geography. It doesn't matter whether one district has triple the number of voters of another district -they still both get one representative. The geographic boundaries are totally arbitrary. The district outlines are artificial -and have no grounding on population flows.

We ignore the effects of the size of v in our system to our detriment.

Compare the relative effect of spending P1M vs. P13M* on a campaign with a universe of 50M votes. The cost of acquisition per voter (c) for the candidate spending P1M is 50 -while it is only 4 for the candidate spending P13M. A cost difference of 46M.

But what if v=2,500? The difference in c between a candidate who spent P62,500 vs. a candidate who spent P8M is 0.0397 (corrected thanks to Willy Priles) - that is to say, almost negligible!

Our work should be on the numerator -and the size of the denominator will almost be insignificant. That is to say, work on the size of the voting population and the amount of resources one candidate will have (how much name recall they have or how big their political/social network is) will probably not matter.

NEXT: The advantages of a system built on a low v.

Image credit: Aqui-ali's flickr stream.

*i'm using peso values as stand-ins