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Thanks for visiting and hope you enjoy reading!

-Kannan

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Politics: Linear Programming and Why Karmarkar's Algorithm Will Not Work In Democracies



Getting stuck with extreme idealistic unattainable or impractical expectations and positions on too many issues with one possible single vote every few years with so many others with differing opinions and interests is the big folly in the politics of democracy. Idealism is not bad in itself, but carried beyond practicality is foolish and futile.

Older people with repeated experience of disappointments tend to become a bit more pragmatic, but not all do.

Of course, we all have to be thankful to fate when something or someone better than we have a right to expect or demand comes along and actually acts to improve the situation in a democracy in big significant leaps. Mostly the trend has been in leaders leaving the system worse off than when they come to power.

Leave alone achieving an ideal government with all ideal polices on all issue through the democratic process, it is not even possible to achieve in one step (one shot) as in an election the best-possible-optimal  solution that exists like in linear programming with hundreds of millions of variables (each voter being one)  People that understand linear programming can relate to this (not that humans are even linear in their thinking or reasoning). The best we can hope for is a quick and dirty sub-optimal result which is what we usually get. Even a brilliant algorithm like Karmarkar's, requires more than one step and the variables and factors change between one election and the next!!


Copyright (c) Kannan Narayanamurthy 2019
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