Centerfield

Electing the Doge of Venice: analysis of a 13th Century protocol

Miranda Mowbray and Dieter Gollmann, of HP Labs Bristol, have done some fascinating work analyzing the election protocols used to elect the Doges of Venice (hat tip to Bruce Schneier

Venice had a republican election system to select its Doge (Duke), from sometime before 750 AD to 1797 (ending with its conquest by Napoleon), over 1000 years, an incredibly long period of stability, especially for a city-state, as it was between 803 and 1797.

Venice grew very wealthy, and powerful enough to sack Constantinople in 1204 in the Fourth Crusade. It was a triumph of pragmatic rule rather than popular, though. Doges were elected for life, their electorate was limited to the nobility, and the protocol featured plenty of distrust of said electorate.

The protocol analyzed as used between 1268 and 1797, and it worked well enough that Venice's hardest problems were those of success. It involved ten (!) rounds, nine selecting the next electoral college for the next round, the final the doge. Selection methods alternated between election and random lot.

Good properties included a high incidence of reasonable minority-party candidates reaching dogeship, a high chance that negotiation would be needed (meaning more involvement and protection of non-Doge-winning parties than we see in our winner-take-all system). Like our system, it's delivered only two sons of Doges as Doge themselves, in 75 Doge elections vs our 54 Presidential elections. It had all sorts of other good stuff.

It's occurred to me that this protocol would've come in handy a decade ago for solving Internet Domain Name Service top-level governance questions. There was a need for somebody trusted and given broad power, as Jon Postel used to be, but after him, nobody trusted anybody, because of the $millions involved. This kind of protocol could've solved that, I think.

Open Fortunate Mistakes Thread

Bring out yer favorite mistakes!

Do you have any mistakes in history you're particularly glad of?

I'll start it out with General Lee invading the North, leading to Gettysburg. It was hopeless, of course. Lee thought he could make it through the better-resourced Union to hurt some city important enough to turn Northern opinion, at least, because the North kept sending big army after big army into Virginia against him and losing to his smaller army. He thought that meant Northerners were bad at fighting, or maybe badly commanded.

Lee's immediate inferior officer, General Longstreet, saw it differently, and was against the invasion. He thought, rightly, that the Northern invasions had failed because it was an age when the defensive has the advantage in any fight. In some ages, the offensive has the advantage (when Hitler, Napoleon, and Alexander were picking up turf). in other ages, the defensive has the advantage - the Civil War and WWI were in such a time, because bullets could be fired fast enough stop any attempt to take turf bloodily, and nothing to stop those bullets had been invented yet.

If another Lee subordinate, "Stonewall" Jackson, had still been alive, he might've felt the same way and had enough prestige to stop the invasion, because of several actions he was given high credit for. One piece of evidence that he did see the defensive as important is that his command invented the WWI-style trench.

The Mac is Back!?!

I found myself giddy after reading this. I have been looking to support the John McCain of 2000, only to find a tired old pol propped up by a Karl Rove-like political campaign... you know, the kind that called him a traitor against his own country, and accused him of fathering a black child out of wedlock in South Carolina.

The media has been wrong all along about McCain. They said Kerry was dead in 2004, and Bob Dole was dead in 1996, and Clinton was dead in 1992, and Reagan was dead in 1980, etc., etc... and it was a broke enough to fly commercial, finally see the light, fire everybody in sight type of turn around that sparked their paths to the nomination. What is that Richard Nixon once said about not being able to see how truly magnificent it is on the highest mountain, until you have been in the lowest valley?

Furthermore, they are also wrong about the issues. It isn't the Iraq War that killed McCain. In fact, it probably helped with Republicans, and although general election voters probably disagree, I am willing to bet that most independents found McCain's stance courageous. I did.

This was about immigration, and if Bush had the poll numbers to make the party faithful hold their nose as they did with "No Child Left Behind" and the Medicare bill, it wouldn't have mattered. McCain's problem is that he has been doing his best to get in the good graces of a failed President since he lost South Carolina in 2000. Don't get me wrong, I support McCain-Kennedy, but the Senator was doing the President's bidding without the political capital to do so. His effort was a profile in courage, but the political landscape was wrong. It was the right position, at the wrong moment in history. However, there is time.

General Patreus may give McCain yet another chance to show unwavering support for the cause in September, and IMO this helps with the party base. McCain's best answers in the debates have been about men and women in uniform. He is going to get another shot at it in New Hampshire on September 17th, and I have a hunch the You Tube format actually helps McCain which is why he isn't ducking the challenge like Romney and Giuliani.

Furthermore, the Republican Party is lost. There is a reason that "none of the above" is leading in the polls." The average Republican is bored with its own leadership, which leaves McCain an opening to do what he does best by lecturing those in his own party. It is time he start talking about what is wrong with George W. Bush, and stop talking about where he agrees with him.

The difference between now and 2000 is that most Republicans agree with McCain that the party has lost its way, and they are longing for the small government, budget hawk, strong defense, free trade rhetoric of Ronald Reagan. Nobody produces that better then Barry Goldwater's predecessor.

There are no rose colored glasses here. It is a long shot, but a reasonable one. That been said, I am glad the Senator has gotten some spring back in his step, and at least there is a reason to watch with some interest.

Importance of The AKP Victory: Turkey needs an Islamic Democratic Party

...just like many European countries have Christian Democratic Parties. A healthy democracy must represent all common points of view in a population. Every healthy democracy has both either parties or coalitions of the people or liberal politics and parties/coalitions of the wealthy or conservative. Something like both our Democrats and Republicans can be in any healthy democacy now or in history (though they're coalitions in Parliamentary democracies instead of parties).

In Turkey, many of the conservative would, of course, believe that Islam-inspired culture is a good thing, support their mosques, etc.. Until the AKP came to power, run by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's generals haven't allowed any politicians with any religious tinges to become Prime Minister. And now they've even let him have a second term after winning reelection today. But they're still hinting strongly that they'll prevent AKP candidates from becoming President (Turkey's head of state). And the generals had their ad moments during the AKP's first term. So there's a ways to go here still.

Don't get any ideas that I have AKP sympathies. I'm a liberal atheist, But I think Turkey needs free expression of the will of its voters more than eternally secular leadership. Turkey's big need is for a real multiparty democracy with a full competitive dynamic. In fact, the brief reign of the AKP has done far more for Turkish liberalism than has been done in ages, through its pursuit of EU membership and the consequent rights upgrades (presumably to upgrade the economy, a frequent conservative/wealthy-party goal). If the AKP were Islamofascist, they would never have contemplated that.

When Mustafa Kemal Ataturk took power and founded Turkey, he created it as a deliberately secular state. He created a legislature in the new capital, Ankara, and passed many anti-religious laws, and didn't allow any parties with religious tinges to come to power, and put high walls in place for new parties. Like Japan in this thread, it's an unhealthy democracy. It's another spot where human rights are behind.

Another good sign is the DTP, the Kurdish moderate party figuring out how how to get into Parliament and get better representation for the region.

Ataturk's excuse for keeping power in his hands and for having an explicitly secular state was that the Turkish people were too religious to form a European-style free and democratic state.

I think that's an excuse, since the Ottoman Empire's great strength for centuries was its tolerance. And it's hard to see how that could've been done without most Turks being tolerant as well. Certainly, Istanbul is pretty tolerant, as it's mostly been since the Turks took the town; but we didn't visit the rest of Turkey.

P.S.: Interestingly, Churchill couldn't get over the Constantinople->Istanbul rename, even though it'd happened centuries before. In WWII, he told his government to call it Constantinople(!). Though, after a course and tons of books on the Byzantine Empire, I kept doing the same thing when I was there. I didn't stop until it was about time to leave.

P.P.S.: If you ever visit Istanbul, my suggestion for vital supplies that I didn't have is a neck brace. Looking at the very cool ceilings of Hagia Sophia and tons of huge (tall) mosques took alot of upward looking, I reinjured a sore spot and made it much worse. getting bad neck twinges even today.

It's open! It's a thread!

And the sum of A and B is....

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona And Politicized Science

What he said (hat tip, Instapundit).

Congress on The Internet: This Is Leadership?

In the last few days, Congress has shown its mettle and leadership in dealing with the Internet.

Let's take a look at these thoughtful new initiatives. Senate Majority Leader Reid introduced yet another plan sponsored by media companies to try and repeal technology by legislation. They want to require universities to install technology to stop illegal downloads. Never mind that no such thing has been developed. Some people are trying to sell products that claim to stop media downloads, but the open nature of the Internet makes it pretty easy to get around such things. I could implement a workaround in an hour using standard and trivial tools. Similarly, there is no software that can even vaguely accurately figure out how many illegal downloads have happened, so you have be pretty skeptical about any figures you see on that subject.

The other initiative is yet another attempt to Protect The Children From the Evil Internet (attempt #3, I think). The Senators tell us yet again that the Internet Is Dangerous, and that the Children Must Be Protected. At least they've finally noticed out that the courts were so annoyingly fastidious about that 1st Amendment thing on their previous tries. This time, they're just handing out money to find out stuff that's already been found out about filtering tech for parents.

I suppose when I'm old, Congress will repeatedly be trying to pass legislation to save the computer industry from the ravages of nanotech (who's gonna want a PC when the direct brain-connected machine is smaller, more convenient, almost as powerful, and has much better communication?), and come up with some fear angle to try and scare up votes.

Both links courtesy of slashdot.

Magical Economy in Harry Potter (No Spoilers)

It's amazing how impressions differ. Jane Galt / Megan McArdle sees a lack of magic rarity and plausible economic backing in Harry Potter.

That's the opposite of my reaction. I was pleased by the magical economy, thought it was better-done than most fictional magical economies , and thought some effort had gone into it. Now, it's true she doesn't directly explain it, but that would be boring and hopeless for the kids that are the target market of the book. OK, I'd buy it, and probably Ms Galt and maybe five other people.

A big thing I like about the books is that they don't ignore economics. Unlike most other fantasy novels set in the present, they neither wistfully look away from money nor fluff it, but use it to extend magical possibilities as you'd expect; you can buy magical items and services from a globalized economy. Scarcity works exactly the same way as in our economy - scarce things that cost many Galleons, and common things like candy are cheap.

In economic terms, there must be scarcity: magical power must be a finite resource.

There is. We only see certain spells. And, like running a computer program in our world, spells don't just do exactly what you want done. Anytime they do anything, they have to decide what they can do that gets them closest to their goals, and spend time, effort, and often money to make their plan happen. There are no spells that'll simply stop Voldemort, just as there are no location spells in Lord of the Ring, for Sauron to cast to find the Ring.

Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it,

No. There are limits to what the spells we see can do. Few things can be created outright by magic. Magical objects can be made, but only from preexisting objects. Much less can you create new real estate. The Weasleys have to shell out for expensive English real estate just like other British public servants, probably pay for the Floo connection somehow, etc., and so on. The Weasleys do it for the same reasons as civil servants in our world take underpaying and bureaucratic jobs.

Well, all to our tastes - she liked Hart's Hope, and it drove me up the wall both times I failed to make it through.

Open Thread

The kid is in a growth spurt right now. That means the Profesora is back to getting only slightly more sleep than when he was born, sigh (really, amazingly little).

We're rereading Harry Potter to remember what happened. Since I'm reading it in competition with Churchill, and the Profesora is reading it each time the kid eats, she's WAY ahead of me. Going backward from the end, I'm 1/3 through v6, and she's on v3, having skipped to v1 before 2 and 3.

So, if you were on the Whole Foods' board, and faced with the task of deciding what to about CEO John Mackey, admitted stock-sockpuppet-commenter, what would you do? He's brought the company up from an, er, tiny sprout, to its current imperial status. OTOH, he's spoiled its reputation and at least brought an SEC investigation.

Excuses For Putin's Extra Terms?

What excuse do you think Putin will use to get the extra terms as President that the Russian Constitution currently denies him?

Of course, he's denied tbat he'll take them, but there's plenty of precedent for that, going back at least to Julius Caesar refusing kingship twice before accepting it the third time.

There is the possibility that he'll instead rule over more turf, though I've gotta wonder how happy a dictator would be running an international organization; something of a stepdown, unless it's more like an empire, which somehow seems unlikely, as empires rarely expand wihout force.

My guess is that he'll promise to save Russia from the dangerous, nasty Estonian threat (Estonia pop 1.3M, Russia pop 141.4M).

Microsoft Packs Standards Committee

...and still failed to get a vote across that they wanted.

This decision was about passing a Microsoft XML document standard, OOXML, on to a more reputable body, ANSI with a recommendation. The OOXML format description is very long, badly designed, and incomplete.

Microsoft started to push OOXML as a standard after the state of Massachussetts came close to adopting a non=Microsoft format, the newly-standard ODF, as a format to move to. Reasons for that included because MA and MA citizens reading the formats were paying alot more for the proprietary Office than they would for ODF, supported by the free OpenOffice, and freedom for worry over the MA AG using MS programs to write documents to sue MS with.

MA ended up not going for ODF after the man heading that effort conveniently became the target of scurrilous Boston Globe articles and had to resign. A subsequent investigation failed to find any real dirt.

The standards committee MS submitted OOXML to is an obscure choice, possibly chosen for smallness and ease of packing.

My Thinking and Grumbling on Health Care Plans

To me, there's one most important change to make that'd make all the difference in the world. That is that we should spread the legislative special harbors that we grant corporations when negotiating insurance to individuals. Companies can negotiate for plans that insure regardless of prior problems. Individuals should be able to do the same thing. That'd mean that the tens (hundreds?) of millions of patients unhappy of Blue Cross / Blue Shield or some other employer package, but basically stuck there by prior-condition or affordability worries, could switch, creating a much more vigorous insurance market.

This is vital, I think, to having a healthy health system. Right now, probably most people on BCBS (and other employer-negotiated health policies) have had service problems. I've had to wait 20 minutes for my BCBS insurance to be dalt with, and felt guilty bringing it places because of all the extra work it brings. That's because competition is weak in health insurance; to change insurance, you have both pay yourself (some employers are happy to negotiate this), and have no preexisting conditions (e.g., be young). We'd probably also see family-plan premiums go down.

Now, this WOULD have one disadvantage: it'd in effect eliminate the lower-cost special market of those who don't have prior problems, a real problem since they're the youngest and thus poorest.

I'm also pro-universal health care, and would like to see something like the Mass system all over. Except it's very complicated, so I'd like to see this play out in the "laboratories of democracy" for a bit.

One thing that hurts the universal insurance debate badly is that, as BK grumbled about the MA system, politicians keep lying and saying it'll pay for itself, or can be done within projected surpluses. The debate would be alot better if they'd tell the truth. I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes to get universal coverage. I've been too poor to afford health insurance a few times. I'm under no illusions that it couldn't happen again. And it'll probably happen to my son, too, if nothing changes, because he'll be young and poor, too.

Dept of Homeland Security Spreading Insecurity

What he said.

Open Thread: Openin' It Up NOW

Lady Bird Johnson's death was big news here; she's been living in the area a LONG time, and had worked in particular to encourage wildflower and local plant spread and to get Austin a good downtown park system.

The formerly-locally-reputetable Whole Foods CEO, John Mackey, got caught with his hand in the sock-puppetry cookie jar, talking a takeover target down and himself and the company up, mostly on Yahoo Finance. I suspect he may have a little more trouble getting good deals here in the future. Tch tch tch tch!

I've been finished upgrading my operating system to Ubuntu Linux's latest and greatest, Feisty. I wasn't so happy with this upgrade. I was hoping to get it done with only minor pain by doing it incrementally, via's Ubuntu's normally-pretty-good upgrade process, but it died horribly on me. I had to install from scratch and redo and fix a bunch of stuff.

Military Politics

In the May issue of The Atlantic, Andrew Bacevich discusses what he considers a dangerous trend toward active-duty military to "lobby" for particular policies. What is interesting in this regard is that, although Bacevich is a critic of the Bush Administration and the Iraq War, the example he cites in the article involves enlisted service members petitioning Congress to end the war. Even though he presumably agrees with the goal, he thinks that the military should stay out of active politicing. So, he is intellectually honest enough to oppose political activism regardless of whether he agrees with the particular policy. In a later issue, he responds to a letter writer critical of his view by noting the formation of another group within the military advocating what he thinks is censorship of critics of the war. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Will Hitler Be The Last Great Conqueror?

William Shirer's Rise And Fall of the Third Reich starts out suggesting that Hitler is likely to be the last great conqueror-adventurer, ending the trail of footsteps followed by Cyrus I, Alexander, Caesar, Temujin, and Napoleon.

He definitely had some good points. On the other hand, never is a long time.

Certainly, Hitler had one particular set of advantages that's rare. He had a special talent, for conquest of various sorts (except romantic), and to get people to trust him despite his lifetime of untrustworthy deeds and action. He lived in a widely resentful democracy with a new, weak, and widely unregarded constitution, which both gave his armies the high-tech strength of democratic armies and Hitler an experience dealing with democratic politicians that he put to good use in his foreign relations. And he lived in a a Great Power in a multipolar era, in which there were several Great Powers, uninclined to meddle.

Since Hitler's time, a combination of deterrence, security guarantees and coalitions of big powers reversing land grabs have kept the borders from moving too much. Do you think that pattern will continue, and for how long?

Do you think we'll ever get that kind of combination of talent and opportunity again?

U.S. vs Them

Marcus had an idea for a post that I like: comparing free nations.

So, let us know how you feel: how do you think about the US vs the rest of the free world?

My feeling is that most of the developed free world isn't so different. Earnings and unemployment aren't all that far from each other. They largely have pretty good rights setups. Each has unique strengths and weaknesses.

For me, the US is the best place because its strengths are giving the best encouragement to the computer networking industry of any country in the world. But it certainly has plenty of weaknesses, too.

There is one big asterisk that I'd make to that picture: Japan. It's a one-party democracy, and thus unsurprisingly behind in certain things: racism, sexism, rights vs the police, and the temporary economic boost that made so big in the last century, and is now giving long-term malaise.

OPEN THAT THREAD!

Well, it IS Friday...

Why This Freedom Thing Is Good

A few selected reasons why freedom is good.

No kings. This is good, because, for all we like to laugh at our Presidents and other elected leaders, they're much better than monarchy or dictatorship. Only half of kings were up to the job; only a third were, I'd say, up to our average Presidents.

Partisan mocking aside, NONE of our Presidents were stupid. Some look weak because they were elected for unusual purposes (e.g., Carter's honesty after Watergate), or because they failed to address major problems obvious in retrospect, but every one I've read much about understood the ballgame and played it pretty well. That's more than can be said for about half the monarchs in history.

Rulers caring about people. Democratic governments actively work to improve their citizens' lives. If they don't, or if they make bad mistakes, they get tossed out. If Bush II was a King, he'd still be claiming everything is hunky-dory in Iraq. He's been forced to confront failure at least enough to put a different occupation plan into place. We don't know if it'll succeed, but it is more change than we'd see under a monarchy.

Brown-nosing and good birth aren't the only paths to success. This is one of the less-understood advantages. But if you read books from unfree times and places, half the book is purple praise of the book's patron, the regime, and the official religion. Half the energy that elites spend goes to praising the powerful instead moving things forward. In fact, they tended to agree: many dark-age and medieval scholars felt classical-era works, produced in much freer eras, were better. Though, if the idea of freedom causing such superiority ever occurred to them, they either laughed at it or were smart enough not to challenge authority by mentioning it.

Healthy business and technology. There are many reasons why you don't see too many companies like Google, Apple, or IBM being started and growing in unfree places. One is that entrepreneurialism is discouraged in more than a few such places. It's easier in unfree societies for the powerful to put in place strangling laws keeping them at the top of the heap (that happens here, too, of course, it's just harder). That allows us to have alot more, better, and cheaper goodies than otherwise.

Healthy media. Media are much less censored here. And it's easier for a healthy market to develop, letting professionals develop independently.

Gordon Brown - Blogging

Gordon Brown is the new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replacing Tony Blair. So, what sort of man is he? Well, I've been reading a ton of Economist articles about him, and thought I'd fill the gap in US coverage about it a bit.

Blair and Brown were comtemporary leaders of the Labour Third Way movement, in effect postsocialist Labour. They formed a team to spread their form of Labour politics and reach office as PM. Basically, Blair was the beauty and Brown the brains. That can be oversold, though, because Blair certainly isn't stupid, and Brown has won election and frequent reelection to a Parliamentary seat.

Brown showed up on the news a few years ago because he's been decidedly jealous for Blair's job. He says he and Blair had an agreement to swap places as PM on intervening terms. Blair can't seem to remember any such agreement.

Also, there are some unhappy ex-employees of his Treasury Department who grumble about him to the media alot, but I think ex-employees (unless there are hordes of them, in which case you hafta start wondering) are only slightly more reliable character witnesses than ex-wives.

My guess is that his political rule will be comparable to our Bush I. I think that, after some initial discomfort, he'll politic fine and win one election, govern corruptly with the already-corrupted Blair administration personnel (which includes himself), and be kicked out after that.

I think he'll continue the antiprivacy and increasingly Mommy-like reach of the state before that fall. On the other hand, because he's a bigger thinker, there's a good chance he'll clean up at least one raw edge in Blair's British constitutional reform.

Friday open thread

What is on your mind? Libby? British terror plots? Fourth of July fun? Inquiring minds want to know.

Long-Term Military Trends

Over the long term, there are several trends that are long-term persistent. The shadow of collateral damage in total war has risen so far that we can't afford them anymore. On the other hand, individual soldiers' death chances have gone down alot, and lengths of 'hot engagement' parts of wars are under the shrinker.

On the other hand, the effectiveness of individual soldiers is on the rise. Because we have the most powerful military, all we need is a big enough military to stay at that status. That's let us shrink our armed forces to the point where we can do without the draft even in wartime, an amazing and very helpful luxury. We civvies like it because the draft is, let's face it, an evil. The Pentagon is at least as happy because everybody there chose to enter the military, which means a much more engaged and less sullen military.

Here are some stats on American wars.