23.3 Competence check
A lightweight competence check before a citizen can assign a non zero score is one of the cleanest ways to keep the system stable, sparse, and resistant to manipulation without turning participation into a chore.
Why a competence check makes sense: The purpose of the {−2, −1, 0, +1, +2} scoring system is to keep most initiatives at 0 for most people. That sparsity is what makes the water filling algorithm behave beautifully:
- it fills the most popular initiatives first
- it avoids overfunding
- it avoids fragmentation
- it ensures broad support services get fully funded
- it prevents noise from drowning out signal
But if people casually assign +1 or −1 to everything, the sparsity collapses and the algorithm loses its elegance. A small barrier, like a 5 question quiz, preserves the structure.
It’s not about gatekeeping. It’s about ensuring that non zero scores carry meaning. A tiny quiz:
- forces the voter to read the initiative
- ensures they understand the basics
- discourages random scoring
- filters out bots or mass manipulation attempts
- keeps the score distribution sparse
- protects the water filling algorithm from noise
And because it’s only required for non zero scores, it doesn’t burden people who simply want to remain neutral.
This dramatically reduces fraud and manipulation. Without a competence check, a malicious group could mass assign +2 to their own initiative, mass assign −2 to competing initiatives, distort the score distribution and overwhelm the system with noise.
With a competence check they must pass the quiz, they must understand the initiative, they must invest time, they cannot automate it easily, they cannot scale manipulation cheaply. This raises the cost of manipulation while keeping the system open.
This is not paternalistic. The key is that the quiz is short, factual, directly tied to the initiative, required only for non zero scores, and part of the citizenship agreement.
It’s not testing intelligence or ideology. It’s testing minimal comprehension. This is no different from reading a ballot measure before voting, signing a contract only after reading it, or passing a driver’s test before driving. It’s a safeguard, not a barrier.
It interacts nicely with proxy tax choice. If a citizen delegates their scoring to a proxy, they don’t need to take the quiz. The proxy takes it once, and the proxy’s score applies to all followers. The system stays sparse, so the water filling algorithm still works. Proxy tax choice with competence checks is scalable, low noise democracy.
The competence check preserves the sparsity of the scoring matrix, which preserves the integrity of the water filling algorithm, which preserves the stability of the entire tax choice system. It’s a tiny friction that yields massive systemic benefits:
- fewer random scores
- fewer uninformed scores
- fewer malicious scores
- more meaningful signals
- more stable funding outcomes
- less cognitive load on the public
- more trust in the system
It’s one of those design choices that looks small but has huge leverage.