Michael Mignano on the end of social media: “[The] shifts towards algorithmic feeds over friend feeds make sense. Platforms like the massively popular (and still growing) TikTok and YouTube put far less emphasis on friends and social graphs in favor of carefully curated, magical algorithmic experiences that match the perfect content for the right people at the exact right time. This is recommendation media, and it’s the new standard for content distribution on the internet.
Economist on quadratic voting: “In its simplest version, each voter would be given a budget of “marks” as Carroll might call them or “voice credits” as Mr Weyl calls them. Voters could use these credits to “buy” votes for a candidate or proposal. The first vote for a candidate costs one credit. But casting two votes for a single candidate costs four credits (ie, two squared); casting three costs nine (three squared), and so on. Under this scheme, people buy votes with their credits just as countries “earn” votes with their populations in Penrose’s imagined assembly. In both cases, the aim is to give voters as much sway as their population or passion warrants. But no more so. Compared with the method of marks, QV makes it harder to “lump”’ votes. That is because each additional vote for a single candidate costs more than the last one did. (A second vote costs an additional three credits; a third vote costs an additional five.) Thus instead of buying increasingly expensive votes for their number-one choice, voters are nudged to cast some relatively cheap votes for second- or third-choice options. In this way, the method encourages compromise.”
Anticipating the Unintended: “The incentive of political parties…is to win elections. Everything else follows only after you have the keys to power. And elections in democracies are a permanent affair. There’s a key election of some kind happening every other year. Will a political party craft a policy that’s painful in the short run but good in the long run? They do, but it requires a combination of inspiring leadership or ideology, a looming crisis and a powerful communication strategy to walk on this difficult path. That’s rare. Instead, what you have is parties taking the easy, opportunistic way out while hoping it will somehow make sense in the long run.”
