Thoughts at Random

The main idea: the area under an assumed linear demand curve is a far better approximation of utility gains than current GDP accounting practices.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This post was originally posted on 04.11.2021, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1 The Nominal 1.1 I was inspired to think of this when reading this post (h/t Astral Codex Ten ). All of the relevant critique of the post itself can be found in the comments, but it helped me realize there is something off with real GDP as a measure of standard of life. I will take the opposite view of Less Wrong though, and state that real GDP accounting overestimates gains in standard of life. 1.2 Let's take a simple economy that only produces and consumes widgets. I am not interested in nominal – real distinctions here, so I need not assume any more than one product class, and will stick to inflation not being a thi...

The main idea: proposing a duel of Russian Roulette as an improvement over the historical version that presents more balanced trade-offs to the participants.   0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 20.09.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1.1 I am among those who look forward to the day in which the practice of the honorable duel will return, but the next time around we’d better have a new and improved version that suffers from fewer of the issues of the original. 1.2 It was easy to attack the practice as a mindless squander of youthful talent, a mere codification of the practice of vendetta from a time when the state did not rule over the aristocracy. 1.3 To this I’ll add that the practice as carried out amounted to a license of those quick of hand to libel as much as they liked. They could win every duel, and had de facto freedom to ch...

The main idea: the volume of play involved in a fair lottery is indicative of either too much or too little money in circulation.  0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 09.10.2023, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.  1.1 If you want to leave money creation to the market, you need to establish some sort of feedback loop whereas people don’t just create money ad infinitum, but grope (in their totality) toward some efficient volume. 1.2 I think I have solved this issue to a satisfactory degree, but for a long time I had been thinking of an alternative design which I could never finalise in theory. Although this has now been overtaken by the coupled currencies design, still worth laying out the main intuition.  1.3 Imagine you offer a lottery of fair odds to all comers, whereas you can invest any amount denominated in the currency being managed and eit...

 The main idea: various amendments to the democratic procedure that may be of interest. 0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 11.12.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form. I will keep adding new relevant ideas to this post as I go. 0.1 Whilst I have little faith in a possibly less shonky version of democracy to be attempted once ours crashes, such faith is still non-zero, so see below some ideas related to better electorate selection algorithms and other design changes to be considered for such a system. Goes without saying, that any such system would uphold the sovereignty of the legislature, enough of this judicial review nonsense. All these I consider inferior in promise to Gohlke's  idea on this matter. 1.1 First, everyone votes, but voting rights are issued well in advance of an election (probably right after any election, valid for the next one...

The main idea: Proportional Westminster government by way of either parallel voting or random ballot.   0. Posts on this blog are ranked in decreasing order of likeability to myself. This entry was originally posted on 22.09.2022, and the current version may have been updated several times from its original form.   1 Business as usual 1.1 A rather obvious and low-risk way of making a Westminster design more proportional is to elect the vast majority of the House through single-winner ridings, and a small minority (a fifth to a quarter) from a nation-wide party-list. Such a small top-up is more than enough to ensure good (not perfect) proportionality. Avoiding the notorious decoy list issues that such systems face is easy if you rely on one vote only but you need not: you can still issue each voter two linked ballots, one for their riding (with the whole country allocated into ridings) and a nation-wide ballot listing parties only. 1.2 Those competing in the single-w...