Vote Sizing Institute

Vote sizing philosophy leans heavily on G.W.F. Hegel's theory that everything in the universe evolves through triads; thesis-antithesis-synthesis. Hegel was the first philosopher to notice that human society evolves over time, at each stage of development pursuing Geist - the manifestations of more freedoms. He noticed that the in order to achieve these freedoms the connection between the individual and the world had to change through social development; in other words, we evolve communally and democratically. In general, his outlook was that as humans demand more freedom and control over their environment, they'd develop a more progressive social structures which then in turn modified the environment to suit their needs.

Karl Marx, like many of his time, was dissatisfied with Hegel's one-sided view of this triad. He is said to have stood Hegel on his head by noticing that humans evolve to what their environment can supply them with and that it is not the communal relations that drive society but the capital ones.

In the broadest terms, Hegel was fixated on power and Marx on wealth. It was by studying these two philosophers that the idea of vote sizing came into being. Rather than immediately trying to reconcile them the question was asked: "What is power?" and "What is wealth?" The conclusion is that power is the way humans enforce their will and change their environment and wealth is the way humans take from the environment and become changed.

Already it is becoming apparent that this change occurs both on the social and the personal level. To distill the ideas power is "out", wealth is "in", social is "big", and personal is "small". A new dimension introduced by vote sizing is that both wealth and power go "up" and "down" in that structures and attitudes are built and distributed. So what we are left with is a 3 x 3 algorithm - power (out) is built by democracy (votes) and distributed through rule of law (punishment). Wealth (in) is built through capitalism (opportunity) and distributed through currency (money).

According these Hegelian triads, one would expect to see a world in which the government exerts its power to the minimal degree necessary and the market produces the least amount of undesirable goods in undesirable ways. In such a situation there is a rather large comfort zone between what is allowed and what is desirable. So, basically everyone has their needs met.

To add one more layer of complexity it has to be noted that in the real world, things don't function so elegantly. The reason being that there are both healthy and unhealthy components of every part of our algorithm. So it is very possible to have a government oppressing it's people and/or a market producing worthless goods and services in destructive ways (or both) - leaving us in a situation where the comfort zone does not ceases to exist and instead the majority of us have to get by on very little, working in harsh conditions, and surrounded by junk, while at the other end wealthy and powerful people desire only the prohibited goods.

This leaves us with a 4 x 4 algorithm. On the social level, institutions can be healthy or dysfunctional; on a personal level we can become healthy or sick. We can exhibit genuine love for each other, be respectful and merciful with each other and ourselves or else we can be cruel, disdainful, and short-sighted. Our banks and governments can serve us or else they can make life more difficult. There are plenty of thesis-antithesis' to go around.

Two things should be noted here: the first is that the disharmony does not exist by itself. The disharmony exists when two things come together in a natural way. The antithesis between "in" and "out" (wealth and power), "up" or "down" (how things are built or distributed) must maintain their integrity in order to be valid. If the antithesis is simply a concentration, to the exclusion of other factors, the result is corruption. Being dysfunctional or sick is a result of different value systems interfering with each other.

Specifically, a harmonious society has its economic institutions separated from its political institutions. Within its economic and political intuitions is the separation between how things are built and how things are distributed. In the real world this looks like honest leaders being elected, a just legal system, opportunity for everyone to reach their highest calling, and a respectable way of life. In a corrupt system, things merge together so you have brutal dictators, callous businessmen, oppression, and discontent.

According to vote sizing, either cycle begins with the vote and the way that power structures are built. A broken government will never fix the economy because it does not represent the people. Nothing of real long-term value will be produced without some kind of proper regulation.

If we are going to fix the vote, we need to fix it in such a way that it addresses the problem. Which, is the concentration, or overlap, between wealth and power. This means at the individual level, people have to distinguish between how much wealth and how much power they want. Simply put, if you have a lot of one you shouldn't have a lot of the other. There are no cut-and-dried solutions to this but the goal has to be a separation of these different values, so that individually people are free of corruption. This personal choosing between wealth and power which is what we call as "fair choice".

Hopefully this personal change across the board will result out of in institutional changes - there is no reason why someone with money should not be happy if government is working to serve the interests of the other without interfering with the market. There is also no reason why people without a lot of money shouldn't be happy if it has they have a government insuring such things as a healthy workplace, a clean environment, freedom of expression, access to enlightening information, etc. The idea behind vote sizing is that people can make choices, are better for it, and those choices will then be reflected upwards into the institutional level. This alone makes it radically different from all the other reforms being proposed.

Vote Sizing Symmetry