Stuff:Votorola/p/nBE:Guidance of expense budgeting

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This page describes an expense budgeting practice for organizations that are participatory, such as governments or collectively owned enterprises. The practice begins with a budget primary that runs in parallel with an executive primary.1 Participants vote into account pipes, such as Ay in figure BP. Each account pipe is dedicated to a particular purpose, such as an office, program or service.

primary.png
[BP] Budget primary. A budget primary (left) is running in parallel with an executive primary (cf. figure SN). Each nominated office (O to S) upstream of the leading root candidate Cx is provided with an account pipe (Ao to As), through which budget votes flow to the root account Ag. The view is restricted to a single vote path descending from the leaf account Ay (52 votes received). Many other leaf accounts (such as Az) exist, making the tree far bushier than shown. The total of votes received is 18,416,530 (R). legend

Nominated officers of the executive primary act as pipe minders in the budget primary. They create and maintain the account pipes (leaf, office and root). The pipe minder for an office account (such as As) is the candidate (Cs) who was last nominated for that office (S) within the currently nominated power structure of the executive primary (Cx to Cs).2 The pipe minder for a leaf account (Ay) is the same as that of the downstream office account (As). The pipe minder for the root account (Ag) is the same as that of the account of the chief financial office, i.e. the currently nominated chief financial officer.

Participants shift their votes to ensure that the accounts most important to them are sufficiently funded. Snapshots of the continuous results are taken at intervals. Eventually the finance office releases an offical budget. The offical budget specifies which of the primary snapshots it is based on. Otherwise, if none is specified, then it is based on the last snapshot not later than 3 months prior to the budget date.3 Given these, and a specific primary account, equation (1) is expected to hold:

              E Ra
 (1)  Ea  =  ------
               R

      Ea: Budgeted expenditures for the account  (official)
       E: Budgeted expenditures in total
      Ra: Votes received in the account         (primary)
       R: Votes received in total

Consider that the official budget may also force expenditures (Fa) on an account without regard to primary votes. For example, a minimum of expenditures might be required on that account by law. Therefore let primary votes be taken as alotting additional funds over any that are forced. Consider also that the official budget may cancel accounts. Therefore let votes received in cancelled accounts (C) also be cancelled as though they were never cast. Adding these considerations:

                   (E - F) Ra
 (2)  Ea - Fa  =  ------------
                    (R - C)

      Fa: Forced expenditures for the account  (official)
       F: Forced expenditures in total
       C: Cancelled votes in total            (primary)

Rearranging to calculate the expected expenditures (Ea') for a given account:

              (E - F) Ra
 (3)  Ea' =  ------------ + Fa
               (R - C)

If the expenditures actually budgeted (Ea) are less than Ea', then the wishes of the primary participants are not met in the budget. This may result in the budget being rejected by the ultimate authority. In the case of a government budget, this is the legislative assembly. The rejection of a budget by a parliamentary assembly will normally bring down the government, resulting in a new election. If the assembly instead upholds the offical budget at the expense of the primary budgest, then the participants may respond by shifting their votes in the assembly primary in preparation for the next election.

See also

Property settings

Notes

  1. ^ See Stuff:Broad-based decision guidance.
  2. ^ The account pipe minder stays put until another is assigned owing to a change of nomination for the office. The change may occur for one of two reasons: either an alteration of lead at the root of the power stucture, as if Dx in figure SN were to take the lead from Cx; or a change of nomination by a downstream super-candidate, as if Co were to switch the nomination from Cp to the other candidate. In both cases, the nominations of all upstream offices would change. Where a new candidate is nominated to a particular office in the executive primary, that candidate becomes the new account pipe minder in the budget primary. But where a nomination is merely withdrawn, the account pipe minder is not reassigned until a new candidate is subsequently nominated.
  3. ^ Care should be taken in extracting official snapshots or decisions from a continuous primary. See the discussion here for a possible solution based on random selection: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-March/031647.html
  4. ^ The guiding distribution of votes is formed within the expense primary as described here.
  5. ^ Guidance from the expense primary enters the finance office across the system gap as described here. Or it enters indirectly via a budget primary, making the expense primary a kind of overguideway.
© 2013 Michael Allan, please do not copy