Talk:Cumulative voting

Critics argue that this simply reduces a voting system to a market system, a criticism applicable to cumulative voting as a whole.

Specifically, which critics? Before putting this back in, please elaborate on the theory. It seems to me budget allocation via cumulative voting, let alone candidate selection, is very different from a market system. DanKeshet 19:55 Jan 19, 2003 (UTC)

Seems very straightforward, and if you want to meet the critics, suggest using a cumulative voting system in an election! In any room of ten people someone will compare it to a market system and tell you they don't want to spend multiple votes like they spend dollars. There may be critics in academia who say the same thing, and it's quite clear that a market of some sort is being created, but most academics who study market systems claim that voting systems are market systems anyway. Read work of Robin Hanson[?] in this regard. Problem with article as it now stands is that it seems to say 'this is a real nice flexible system' without pointing out that it's on the edge of a quite different paradigm of decision making - with its own problems, and some, e.g. Jane Jacobs, would say, it's own ethics. I believe both Jacobs (on the nay side) and Hanson (on the yea side) have compared cumulative voting to market systems, and Hanson is active in prediction market[?] reserach, which is essentially cumulative voting of mock-money on what futures to consider real. It's hard to explain all this complex stuff in the article, so make up your own mind about what to quote. Article on Jacobs particularly recommended - I've heard her say in talks that some voting systems confuse spending with voting, and that this is confusing the Trader Ethic and Guardian Ethic. Not sure if she published that. Also read tolerances versus preferences if you haven't already, this is a very general debate, and thus worth noting here. --142

On the one hand, you say it's straightforward, but on the other hand, you say it's too complicated to explain. You mention both Hanson and Jacobs, but it is unclear from your text whether either of them has ever specifically addressed cumulative voting, or whether they have merely talked about the relationship between markets and voting. I have done a moderate amount of chasing down papers by Hanson, and a little of chasing down papers by Jacobs and have not found anything by either of them specifically addressing cumulative voting. We cannot put this in the article unless we have at least one reproducible reference to one person specifically addressing cumulative voting. DanKeshet