Constitutional Reforms

Restrict the franchise

We don't have universal suffrage, and no-one is advocating it. Therefore there's a choice that has to be made, and a legitimate question is Who should vote?

I believe that people who derive their main form of income from the state (yes, including teachers) should not be given the vote. Either we accept the libertarian position of state as monster, or we treat it as a consensual collective that generates welfare-enhancing policy. In which case the relationship between customer and employee needs to be refined:

• Ford employees shouldn't determine Ford's production levels: they should participate in developing efficient responses to consumer-defined production

A Clarke Tax

Might a Clarke Tax be used as an effective "preference-revealer"? According to Zhaofeng Xue:

Clarke tax is a voting system where everyone express their preference in form of money amount and only the voter whose money amount changes the voting result ... pays.

Papers on this: "A Clarke Tax Algorithm".pdf, "The Clarke Tax as a Consesus Mechansim Among Austomate Agents".pdf, "A secure and private clarke tax voting protocol without trusted authorities"; "Sufficient conditions for a vanishing Clarke tax — a note";

But see the special edition of Public Choice that looks at demand-revealing voting mechanisms. The problem with a Clarke Tax is that:

voters might collude and over express their preference. So doing would make any single member of the colluding group free from paying the clarke tax -- since his voting does not change the result, while the aggregate effect of the vote of the entire group does change the result.

Does this fear hold up though?

Method of Marks

Popularised (and dismissed) by famous political scientist Charles Dodgeson (aka Lewis Carroll), the Method of Marks is a simple way to demonstrate the weight of a preference ordering.

Voters are given a "budget" of votes to distribute between the candidates as they wish.

The only criticism of this seems to be that it's undermined by strategic voting (in a similar way to a Clarke Tax being undermined by possible collusion), but as James Buchanan (rightly) says "All voting is Strategic".pdf

Set up Government for tender

I believe that Buchanan and Wagner fundamentally undermined the Keynesian justification for fiscal policy:

at the margin politicians preferred easy choices to hard ones, and this meant lower taxes and higher spending. Thus, whatever the merits of Keynesian economics in using government fiscal policy to "balance" the forces of inflation and deflation and employment and unemployment in an economy, its application in a democratic setting had severe problems of incentive compatibility; that is, there was a bias toward deficit finance

In short the elementary insights of Public Choice demonstrate how deficits are an inevitable consequence of the incentive structures generated by democratic control of the public purse.
But there is an institutional arrangement that deals with this problem - tenders. The Labour party has "acute cash flow problems" and the Conservatives are also effectively bankrupt. Neither party have demonstrated sensible in house financial management, and to permit them to control the Treasury is ludicrous. So why not force political parties to submit spending plans prior to an election, and make them cover shortfalls or miscalcultions from their own party funds?

...and finally

It's no coincidence that I've linked to so many Political Scientists associated with GMU, and the person with the deepest originality and innovation in this field will follow suit.

UPDATE: Thanks to all those who've
commented on this, although I'm disappointed the main focus has been on the restriciton of the franchise. The response actually undermines the possibility of having a rational debate on constitutionalism, which is a shame. People seem unwilling to run the thought experiment, dismissing it out of hand. Fair play to Jim though, who makes an interesting point: Anthony's blog suggests an ever-larger state and an ever-smaller electorate.

So check out Chris Dillow's take, and also the comments section in both his post and this one.

Comments

[Alex Gregory]

Why does working for the state mean that you can't also be a "customer"?

[dearieme]

Yup, no votes for schoolteachers nor for those living on "benefits". Also, no votes for anyone under, say, 35 - we start life drawing wealth from parents and state and only in our mid-thirties (I guess) do we become net payers. How about no votes for those whose life expectancy lies this side of the next general Election? Probably not worth the fuss. But useful though reform of the franchise is, it's not enough. A bit of Reaction is probably required: how about zero pay for MPs? I'd suggest a written constitution to restrict government, but the US one does such a poor job that I'm none too sure.

[Jim]

"I believe that people who derive their main form of income from the state (yes, including teachers) should not be given the vote."

Banning people who derive income from the state from voting is like banning people who derive income from Ford from buying a Ford.

And quite apart from that, I think you're missing an obvious potential for strategic abuse of such a 'system', as one set of voters could elect a government which promised to nationalise - and thus disenfranchise the employees of - a particular sector. Sounds like a recipe for an ever-expanding state and an ever-decreasing electorate - The Road to Serfdom indeed!

Incidentally, I presume your definition of someone who derives income from the state includes anyone who sells their services to the state, such as management consultants, taxi-drivers and toilet cleaners?

[AJE]

Why does working for the state mean that you can't also be a "customer"?

Because someone, eventually, will have to pick up the bill and pay for it.

Banning people who derive income from the state from voting is like banning people who derive income from Ford from buying a Ford.

No it's not. It's like banning Ford employees from forcing Toyota customers to also buy a Ford.

one set of voters could elect a government which promised to nationalise - and thus disenfranchise the employees of - a particular sector

Interesting point, but i'm not at all convinced. I'll think about wether that's empirically/theoretically likely. My instinct says it isn't.

I presume your definition of someone who derives income from the state includes anyone who sells their services to the state, such as management consultants, taxi-drivers and toilet cleaners?

Correct.

[Thon Brocket]

I advocate the separation of powers of spending (=legislation) and taxation by constituting two separately-elected legislature - one to legislate, and one to tax.

The legislature would function pretty much like the House of Commons, but without the power to tax. That power would pass to a taxing chamber whose job it is to raise tax at the Commons' request to cover necessary expenditure engendered by legislation. Taxing chamber members would run on their taxation promises alone, and legislators would lack the power themselves to raise taxes to cover any election promises; they would need to persuade the taxers of the merits of the legislation before it became law.

So bribe-em-with-their-own-money politics would be very nearly impossible; lobbyists would go extinct; and nobody loses his vote - indeed everybody now has two votes. Call it Double Democracy.

[Joe Otten]

Simple 'economic' question. How much money is right to vote worth the typical teacher or soldier?

This is how much extra it would cost to attract the same calibre of people into those careers.

Er, why do we want to spend that much extra, again?

[Jim]

"Because someone, eventually, will have to pick up the bill and pay for it."

I mean customer in the sense of someone who is or isn't able to choose their provider. Ford employees can choose who to buy their car from, so why can't state employees help choose who is in government?

"It's like banning Ford employees from forcing Toyota customers to also buy a Ford."

Well the idea with national government is that you just have one at a time, isn't it? If you don't like that idea, you should really say so up front. And of course if people don't like the government in their area they can always leave - nobody's 'forcing' them to stay there. I seem to remember you extolling the virtues of government-less Somalia, for example, so why not try there?

"I'll think about wether that's empirically/theoretically likely. My instinct says it isn't."

Suddenly you care about empirical likelihood? How empirically likely is it that anyone who gets income from the government will vote to disenfranchise themselves? Or was the idea that a select group of free-market economists (obviously not government employed) would seize power and rule with a benevolent omniscience instead?

"Correct."

Hotels, stationary suppliers, phone companies, software companies, university staff, any independent providers to the BBC, thousands of housing associations and private landlords, private healthcare providers, private construction companies ...

[AJE]

I mean customer in the sense of someone who is or isn't able to choose their provider

Since when could an individual choose their provider?

why can't state employees help choose who is in government?

Don't ask me! It's never been that way, and it never will be!

If you don't like that idea, you should really say so up front

I don't like that idea.

if people don't like the government in their area they can always leave

So I can legally cash in my assets, pay off my debts, and move to Somalia could I?

How empirically likely is it that anyone who gets income from the government will vote to disenfranchise themselves?

Why does likelihood matter? This was a post about constitutional theory, not policy forecasting.

benevolent omniscience

Cheers Jim... That's underhand and you can do better than that.

Hotels, stationary suppliers, phone companies, software companies, university staff, any independent providers to the BBC, thousands of housing associations and private landlords, private healthcare providers, private construction companies ...

Correct...

[Joe Otten]

How about the wives of civil servants? Should they be allowed to vote?

If so, they are probably the largest single voting group left after all working people with tenuous links to the state have been disenfranchised.

You almost need two currencies to implement the idea: taking this pound will disenfranchise you, taking that one won't. Then some bright spark will set up an exchange and we'll be back to square one.

The idea that you can say where a particular quantity of money comes from seems to rely on a dodgy reification of money.