SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Simple math can help scheming politicians manipulate district maps and cruise to victory. But it can also help identify and fix the problem.
Imagine fighting a war on 10 battlefields. You and your opponent each have 200 soldiers, and your aim is to win as many battles as possible. How would you deploy your troops? If you spread them out evenly, sending 20 to each battlefield, your opponent could concentrate their own troops and easily win a majority of the fights. You could try to overwhelm several locations yourself, but there's no guarantee you'll win, and you'll leave the remaining battlefields poorly defended. Devising a winning strategy isn't easy, but as long as neither side knows the other's plan in advance, it's a fair fight.
Now imagine your opponent has the power to deploy your troops as well as their own. Even if you get more troops, you can't win.
In the war of politics, this power to deploy forces comes from gerrymandering, the age-old practice of manipulating voting districts for partisan gain. By determining who votes where, politicians can tilt the odds in their favor and defeat their opponents before the battle even begins.
Anyone for a game of RISK?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @01:57AM (11 children)
The means by which a contract is enforced are necessarily specified in the contract itself.
Law by contracts is an iterative process, where each iteration produces a more robust system of agreement in advance of interaction; enforcement is just another service in the market.
There is profit in well defined interaction; that's why people drive on the same side of the road—not because it's mandated by law, but because people want to arrive at a destination without dying.
To behave in a way that is not well defined is to take a very large risk; the consequences are unknown and possibly disastrous. There is an incentive to come to agreement, if only through an implicit agreement such as a common culture ("When in Rome...").
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday October 23 2017, @04:10AM (1 child)
Bro, do you even game theory...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 23 2017, @05:52AM
Which theory is he supposed to game? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @04:23AM (1 child)
Do you really want to run around negotiating and signing 8+ billion contracts? How in the world would you find time to do anything else?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:37AM
Don't waste my time with stupid questions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Mykl on Monday October 23 2017, @04:29AM (6 children)
Got it. So people just agree to the terms of the contract, even if they disadvantage them, because another term in the contract says that they have to. Right.
I'll tell you how things work out in your Libertarian paradise. It takes just one powerful psychopath in all of your society to make Pablo Escobar look like a teddy bear. If I don't like your contract terms, I'll just shoot you in the head.
What's that you say? That's against the terms of the contract? You mean the one I just wiped your brain off my jacket with? Oh well, someone will come and see me about that, I'm sure. Although, our contract was nobody else's business, so I suppose everyone will just shrug and get on with their own selfish lives instead.
Oh, but we agreed to engage the services of an 'enforcement group' beforehand? I suppose I could just bribe them. After all, how are they going to collect their fee from you when you're already dead and I've
stolenclaimed all of your money for myself?(Score: 2) by rylyeh on Monday October 23 2017, @05:57AM
Think Blade Runner!
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @11:44AM (4 children)
Not only are you failing to describe law-by-contracts, but you're ignoring the fact that such a problem already exists: Indeed, your law-by-legislation "government" idea is founded on that very principle of "do-as-I-say" coercion rather than "do-as-we-agreed" voluntary interaction.
You've solved nothing.
Why would you want to established a blessed, ordained monopoly on such violence? That's absurd. Clearly, it would be better to construct checks and balances, the most robust form of which is competition (after all, consider that the world is composed of separate governments, not one world government, and thank goodness for that!)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @03:30PM (3 children)
Hey dummy, they were trying to "solve" your naivety. Your series of voluntary contracts will boil down to one group with more power and they absolutely will renege on the co tractual terms as soon as they can make their coup. But you're too blind and throw all your problems into "naturally evolves to the optimal balance." It is like you're not even human...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @05:34PM (2 children)
You've explained exactly why there's One World Government for the entire planet. Thanks for the insight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 23 2017, @06:46PM (1 child)
Except there is not OWG, but there should be. Nations should become more like states, with limits on their abilities to violate human rights. It is a shame upon our entire planet that places exist like North Korea, Somalia, and other bastions of dictatorship and abuse.
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Monday October 23 2017, @08:27PM
...as defined by whom, exactly?
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"