Or was two the magic number? After two shuttle explosions, we can't have any more pride? Who set this number? Was it you? What are your credentials?
Credentials? Oh please. I think its rather obvious that it is just my opinion. Feeling a bit defensive?
And no I don't believe two is the magic number. Still, I think that this incident has highlighted that the shuttle program is not nearly the same shining example of American ingenuity anymore.
For the record, I'm predicting that the shuttle will never fly again, and every day that goes by that they don't know for sure what happened, I think its more likely I'll be correct.
For much the same reason the twin towers will not simply be rebuilt (as everyone thought they would soon after sept 11), people will realize that this whole thing just isn't worth the money. But again, this is just my opinion.
What do the astronauts want? How about the taxpayers?
The thing is, when astronauts die with all the world watching, it's not just their loss. It is a big black eye for the country. The shuttle is no longer something we can have the same level of pride in as a symbol of American technical expertise, it is something that will always be seen as "pretty unsafe" and a bit of a failure.
Ultimately, we are going to have to decide if this is worth the money, regardless of whether astronauts are willing to die for science or not. I'd happily go up in the shuttle today and take the risk, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will, but that isn't really the issue.
Is there something wrong with someone standing up for principles? I think you should be able to buy hardware without buying software (and iBooks don't accomplish this) , regardless of how little it turns out to be when you work out the math. I'm told that MS makes most of their windows-license money from new PC's, so it certainly is not an insignificant amount ($25 is much less than I have heard from other sources)
Part of his goal, I'm sure, is to have a cool place to work near where the talent lives. I know several of the people in the CG industry in the bay area, and they tend to like living and working in the city. It's far more interesting place than Marin.
However, South of Market, while probably cheap, would be way too gritty and ugly for a company as prestigious as Lucasfilm (say what you will about the Phantom Menace sucking, blah blah blah....:) ). How can you spend your days laboring over the tiniest detail in a shot, when you've trained yourself to ignore all the ugliness and grime of your surroundings?
Remember that the Presidio is a park as of only a few years ago, it was a military base before that. A lot of military bases in the bay area are being turned into parks, but it costs a lot to maintain them.
So they decided to do something with it that would do good for the city and would not suck up a bunch of money. I don't see what is wrong with that.
There are lots of CGI houses around here (Pixar and PDI are some of the bigger ones), and people in the industry move around from company to company a lot as jobs come and go. This is going to be far more of a special effects and CGI house than a full movie studio, and SF is a certainly as central a place for that as anywhere.
Well, I guess this topic is getting old enough there's not much point in carrying on the debate here. (although, if you have any interest in discussing it further feel free to email me at catbutt at yahoo.com )
I'll leave it at this: for me, the whole reason for getting away from plurality is the opposite of what you suggest...plurality tends to polarize because it encourages parties to form. While the parties don't represent the extreme, they aren't in the center either. (one article I cited compared it to driving a car whose steering wheel had only two positions, right and left)
And I'm all for extreme views being excluded...that's sort of the whole point of democracy, settle on a compromise, not an extreme. I would prefer a system that tended to find an equilibrium at the candidates that are more toward the center. I do not think our system (i.e. US) is particularly stable, as partisanship causes immense distraction to actually running the country (think Monica-gate: I doubt anyone would have really cared -- or ever even found out -- what was going on in the Oval office if not for partisanship). I believe that a system that minimized this effect would be a lot more effective.
BTW, you seem to suggest that I was proposing a system that could result in "no candidate elected". I think any system that would ever do that would be hopelessly broken. Yes, I understand that there is not always a Condorcet winner, but that doesn't mean that you have to give up and have no candidate chosen in such a case. Instead, there are various strategies for choosing among those who tie for Condorcet winner, all of which are reasonable (if somewhat imperfect according to Arrow's Theorem).
Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing some references to those people who think that plurality is better at finding compromises than other systems. I've done a lot of Google searches and maybe I'm just searching on the wrong thing, but most of what I see agrees that plurality is particularly bad at finding compromises in real-world elections. If you don't believe it, watch the votes in Congress and how they all tend to follow party lines so closely....is that really good?
Nader is not "more centrist" he is just "middle ranked". There is a world of difference between the two.
Well, he is the compromise. If my wording was sloppy, I apologize. (of course, he is only a compromise in your contrived universe where Nader is more acceptable than Gore to all people who most prefered Bush -- I don't think that was the real world of the 2000 election though).
No irrationality involved. It just turns out to be the best way for them to get what they want.
Sorry, no, as you represented it, it does not get them what they want, it -- in your words -- "breaks the system" and elects their least favorite candiate. How does that get them what they want? Unless all Bush people really preferred Nader over Gore, in which case I suppose Nader really deserved to be elected.
I read the page regarding Kenneth Arrow's thereom (and have read his stuff before), and I don't see anything in it that contradicts the notion that some form of ranking is far preferable to simple plurality. (keep in mind Arrow's conclusion is that the perfect solution is a dictatorship!) Ranking systems may not be perfect (which is all he proves, and I never stated otherwise), but they are a heck of a lot better, and you've provided nothing indicating otherwise.
I can tell you that in the election methods mailing list , where people debate the differences between all these different systems day in and day out (I don't participate, but I've followed it for a while), there is *no* question that ranking is way better than plurality. If you want to argue that ranking is more flawed than plurality there, you'd have a real tough audience. BTW, see this or this or this which all discuss Arrow's theorem and all conclude that that plurality is bad, and either Borda count or Approval (both ranking based systems) is best.
I think you have to make very contrived examples to break such a system. (I also think other systems hold up better than instant runoff, but I certainly prefer instant runoff to plurality). Plurality fails in much more situations, and it fails worse. By its nature, it has less information to work on than ranking.
I actually agree that weighting votes is an additional improvement. Although I think the UI of such a system would present quite a challenge. (I have far more experience with weighting UI's than ranking ones, see http://hypermatch.com/demo/ if you have java)
Still, I stand by the idea that ranking is far better than plurality for reducing the distortions caused by people who are torn between strategy and conscience, and in reducing the mathematical tendency toward parties. Give people the ability to actually weight their votes...even better...but to me that gets too complex for too little benefit beyond ranking (except in the most contrived situations).
So in your seenario, you assume that a whole lot of Bush people really prefered Nader (actually I think you assume ALL of them do), which I don't accept is true, but lets say it was. Then Nader would be more centrist than Gore, and even though he doesn't get the most #1 votes, he is the most acceptable to the most people. So he won. Good, I think the system picked the best choice.
But if you are considering that people are voting irrationally, choosing by neither concience nor strategy (and doing it all in synch, rather than some going irrationally one way and some another), then all bets are off. I'm suggesting a system that passes the "rational" test, which our current system certainly doesn't, and a Condorcet/ranking system does.
Nader wins Nader vs Gore (8 votes to 7) Nader wins Nader vs Bush (8 votes to 7)
Nader wins the election.
You are saying that there were more people who prefered Nader to Gore? Now I'm pretty sure you know that was not even close to the case in that election. If that is true, though, you may be right that Nader would have won, but that's ok, because under your scenario Nader really is the most popular candidate (or at least a lot more popular than any poll indicated).
What will the Bush voters do? If they vote their preferences then Gore will win so they will vote Bush, Nader, Gore, and break the system -
This is assuming that people, instead of voting in a way that will advance their interests (i.e. they may have lost their favorite candidate, but why shouldn't they vote against their least favorite candidate? Out of spite? ) . I don't buy it. That is not strategic, it is irrational.
Australia is smarter than us then. Is Australia very bipartisan like the US? I would expect they would have less partisanship, or many more parties, than us, if they really do all elections using ranking.
People will sometime vote for the guy that they like best, and sometimes against the guy who has the best chance of beating the guy they like best,
That is exactly what happens in our plurality system, some people go one way, some the other, even if they feel the same way regarding the candidates (e.g. vote for Nader because you prefer him regardless of his chance of winning, vs. vote for Gore because you hate Bush). This significantly distorts the results, and does an illogical thing (produces a win for Bush when more people prefered Gore over Bush, if those were the only two choices)
In a Condorcet/Ranking system, the only rational thing for a 1:Nader/2:Gore/3:Bush person to do would be rank them as he really feels. In fact, that would do both of what you say, voting for the person who has the best chance of beating the least favorite candidate (by putting him ahead of the least favorite....there is no strategic value in putting him first) while also voting for your favorite candidate as the first choice.
If that person was to instead vote Gore in first place, just to hurt Bush, he would be acting irrationally, as it would have no effect on the Gore vs. Bush outcome (Gore would still win his vote), it would only hurt Nader (although that is irrelevant to the outcome since Nader still loses).
Likewise, anyone who preferred Gore over Nader (and Bush 3rd) would want to express that in their vote, as it would have no effect on the ability of either Nader or Gore to beat Bush.
In fact the system you propose could easily have handed the election to Nader.
I cannot imagine a scenario where people attempting to vote strategically (and rationally) could help Nader in a ranking system that chose the Condorcet winner. Please give an example because I am missing how that could happen.
I agree that our current system enforces political parties (causing them to exist by giving massive advantages to those who collaborate to remove "similar" candidates before the actual election), but I don't think the electoral college is the reason. The reason is simply the plurality system, where you are not able to fully express your full preference (for instance, saying that you prefer Nader, but would prefer Gore to Bush). Notice that even in state and local elections parties exist, in the absence of the electoral college. (although in places where there are runoff elections when any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote, political parties do not have as much influence)
That's not to say that the electoral college is bad. Some people say it gives advantages to small states (making people's votes in a small population state count more than the vote of a person in a large state), but the more dramatic effect is to make people's votes in a balanced state (i.e "swing state": one with nearly the same number of voters for each candidate) count much more than the vote of someone in a state that is tipped one way or the other.
Regardless of whether it is possible or not to have a "perfect" system, most everyone who understands the problem recognizes that our current system is one of the worst. There are many people who debate over what is the "best" system, but any decent system should do a heck of a lot better than simple plurality.
(an alternative to ranking is having run-off elections, but that is not only a big waste of peoples time to go and vote twice, but it is certainly not one of the better solutions to the problem)
My own preference would be one that chose the Condorcet winner, if one exists. The way you'd figure that is to run each candidate against each other candidate, assuming that a higher rank counts as a single vote (that is, someone who voted for Nader, Gore, Bush would count as 1 vote for Gore in the Gore vs. Bush "sub-election", and 1 vote for Nader in the Nader vs. Bush sub-election). A Condorcet winner would be the candidate who beat every other candidate. There is the possibility (although it tends to be rare in real world elections) where there is no Condorcet winner, but it's not hard to come up with a formula to deal break ties in this possibility. Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be much, much, much better than simple plurality? Absolutely.
The point is to eliminate the current situation, where people are forced to choose between voting strategically and voting honestly. When you have done that, you would see less and less influence of parties, less need for primaries/conventions/etc to eliminate choices beforehand, and more centrist candidates in office. And I'd predict a lot more real work would happen, rather than all the partisan bickering.
A system like this could potentially mitigate the huge distortions of a plurality system.
Although a better solution would be for voters to rank their choices, then use one of several formulas to tabulate it. Then Nader voters could have voted both honestly and strategically -- i.e. 1. Nader, 2. Gore, 3. Bush -- which would have expressed their true preference for Nader while not hurting Gore (vs. simply voting for Gore).
I hope that the need for vote-swapping systems helps to call attention to the flaws of a plurality voting. These flaws do immense damage, by causing political parties to exist, which polarizes (and paralyzes) our government.
(Parties form because under a plurality system because candidates gain massive advantages by concentrating votes by eliminating similar candidates before the election takes place. Ranking-style voting completely eliminates this effect.)
Well an out of control car can be a bad thing on a steep hill too. Segways have systems in place to prevent this. They don't roll freely down hills, their natural state going down a hill is turning the engine to charge the battery, so there is plenty of resistance, all controlled by redundant microprocessors. Human error cannot cause this, only product failure. And I think that ists safe to assume they have gone to a lot of effort to make sure that that kind of error doesn't happen, because they'd be out of business real quick if they did.
Actually they aren't brakes per se. Regardless, yes, that is the point....Segways can be stopped on a dime, and can otherwise move in ways similar to a pedestrian (turn in place, etc). They are inherently stable (at least if you believe the marketing, and most of the people who have used them). Skateboards, "razor scooters" and rollerblades are not nearly as stable and require much more skill to control ones speed.
You think people will ignore the fact that they are illegal to use when they shell out $5000 for one? I sure wouldn't buy something that expensive that I'm not really allowed to use (or at least, not allowed to use as it is designed, which is to be on sidewalks intermingling with pedestrians).
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That is so cool that e. coli is named after my favorite Escher print!
Except apparently it's not..... it's named for Theodor Escherich. ( http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0817668.html )
Bummer.
I'm adding you to my foes list so that when a shuttle takes off, I can let you know that you were wrong, okay?
;)
Cool, thanks, and I'll add you to mine!
Or was two the magic number? After two shuttle explosions, we can't have any more pride? Who set this number? Was it you? What are your credentials?
Credentials? Oh please. I think its rather obvious that it is just my opinion. Feeling a bit defensive?
And no I don't believe two is the magic number. Still, I think that this incident has highlighted that the shuttle program is not nearly the same shining example of American ingenuity anymore.
For the record, I'm predicting that the shuttle will never fly again, and every day that goes by that they don't know for sure what happened, I think its more likely I'll be correct.
For much the same reason the twin towers will not simply be rebuilt (as everyone thought they would soon after sept 11), people will realize that this whole thing just isn't worth the money. But again, this is just my opinion.
What do the astronauts want? How about the taxpayers?
The thing is, when astronauts die with all the world watching, it's not just their loss. It is a big black eye for the country. The shuttle is no longer something we can have the same level of pride in as a symbol of American technical expertise, it is something that will always be seen as "pretty unsafe" and a bit of a failure.
Ultimately, we are going to have to decide if this is worth the money, regardless of whether astronauts are willing to die for science or not. I'd happily go up in the shuttle today and take the risk, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will, but that isn't really the issue.
But it seems awful naive to think they'd do such a thing.
Just pay the extra $25 dollars.
Is there something wrong with someone standing up for principles? I think you should be able to buy hardware without buying software (and iBooks don't accomplish this) , regardless of how little it turns out to be when you work out the math. I'm told that MS makes most of their windows-license money from new PC's, so it certainly is not an insignificant amount ($25 is much less than I have heard from other sources)
Part of his goal, I'm sure, is to have a cool place to work near where the talent lives. I know several of the people in the CG industry in the bay area, and they tend to like living and working in the city. It's far more interesting place than Marin.
:) ). How can you spend your days laboring over the tiniest detail in a shot, when you've trained yourself to ignore all the ugliness and grime of your surroundings?
However, South of Market, while probably cheap, would be way too gritty and ugly for a company as prestigious as Lucasfilm (say what you will about the Phantom Menace sucking, blah blah blah....
So that's why George Lucas should probably do what he seems to do best these days, which is special effects.
Remember that the Presidio is a park as of only a few years ago, it was a military base before that. A lot of military bases in the bay area are being turned into parks, but it costs a lot to maintain them.
So they decided to do something with it that would do good for the city and would not suck up a bunch of money. I don't see what is wrong with that.
There are lots of CGI houses around here (Pixar and PDI are some of the bigger ones), and people in the industry move around from company to company a lot as jobs come and go. This is going to be far more of a special effects and CGI house than a full movie studio, and SF is a certainly as central a place for that as anywhere.
Well, I guess this topic is getting old enough there's not much point in carrying on the debate here. (although, if you have any interest in discussing it further feel free to email me at catbutt at yahoo.com )
I'll leave it at this: for me, the whole reason for getting away from plurality is the opposite of what you suggest...plurality tends to polarize because it encourages parties to form. While the parties don't represent the extreme, they aren't in the center either. (one article I cited compared it to driving a car whose steering wheel had only two positions, right and left)
And I'm all for extreme views being excluded...that's sort of the whole point of democracy, settle on a compromise, not an extreme. I would prefer a system that tended to find an equilibrium at the candidates that are more toward the center. I do not think our system (i.e. US) is particularly stable, as partisanship causes immense distraction to actually running the country (think Monica-gate: I doubt anyone would have really cared -- or ever even found out -- what was going on in the Oval office if not for partisanship). I believe that a system that minimized this effect would be a lot more effective.
BTW, you seem to suggest that I was proposing a system that could result in "no candidate elected". I think any system that would ever do that would be hopelessly broken. Yes, I understand that there is not always a Condorcet winner, but that doesn't mean that you have to give up and have no candidate chosen in such a case. Instead, there are various strategies for choosing among those who tie for Condorcet winner, all of which are reasonable (if somewhat imperfect according to Arrow's Theorem).
Anyway, I'd be interested in seeing some references to those people who think that plurality is better at finding compromises than other systems. I've done a lot of Google searches and maybe I'm just searching on the wrong thing, but most of what I see agrees that plurality is particularly bad at finding compromises in real-world elections. If you don't believe it, watch the votes in Congress and how they all tend to follow party lines so closely....is that really good?
Nader is not "more centrist" he is just "middle ranked". There is a world of difference between the two.
Well, he is the compromise. If my wording was sloppy, I apologize. (of course, he is only a compromise in your contrived universe where Nader is more acceptable than Gore to all people who most prefered Bush -- I don't think that was the real world of the 2000 election though).
No irrationality involved. It just turns out to be the best way for them to get what they want.
Sorry, no, as you represented it, it does not get them what they want, it -- in your words -- "breaks the system" and elects their least favorite candiate. How does that get them what they want? Unless all Bush people really preferred Nader over Gore, in which case I suppose Nader really deserved to be elected.
I read the page regarding Kenneth Arrow's thereom (and have read his stuff before), and I don't see anything in it that contradicts the notion that some form of ranking is far preferable to simple plurality. (keep in mind Arrow's conclusion is that the perfect solution is a dictatorship!) Ranking systems may not be perfect (which is all he proves, and I never stated otherwise), but they are a heck of a lot better, and you've provided nothing indicating otherwise.
I can tell you that in the election methods mailing list , where people debate the differences between all these different systems day in and day out (I don't participate, but I've followed it for a while), there is *no* question that ranking is way better than plurality. If you want to argue that ranking is more flawed than plurality there, you'd have a real tough audience. BTW, see this or this or this which all discuss Arrow's theorem and all conclude that that plurality is bad, and either Borda count or Approval (both ranking based systems) is best.
I just found this, which makes the case much better than I can.
I think you have to make very contrived examples to break such a system. (I also think other systems hold up better than instant runoff, but I certainly prefer instant runoff to plurality). Plurality fails in much more situations, and it fails worse. By its nature, it has less information to work on than ranking.
I actually agree that weighting votes is an additional improvement. Although I think the UI of such a system would present quite a challenge. (I have far more experience with weighting UI's than ranking ones, see http://hypermatch.com/demo/ if you have java)
Still, I stand by the idea that ranking is far better than plurality for reducing the distortions caused by people who are torn between strategy and conscience, and in reducing the mathematical tendency toward parties. Give people the ability to actually weight their votes...even better...but to me that gets too complex for too little benefit beyond ranking (except in the most contrived situations).
So in your seenario, you assume that a whole lot of Bush people really prefered Nader (actually I think you assume ALL of them do), which I don't accept is true, but lets say it was. Then Nader would be more centrist than Gore, and even though he doesn't get the most #1 votes, he is the most acceptable to the most people. So he won. Good, I think the system picked the best choice.
But if you are considering that people are voting irrationally, choosing by neither concience nor strategy (and doing it all in synch, rather than some going irrationally one way and some another), then all bets are off. I'm suggesting a system that passes the "rational" test, which our current system certainly doesn't, and a Condorcet/ranking system does.
You are saying that there were more people who prefered Nader to Gore? Now I'm pretty sure you know that was not even close to the case in that election. If that is true, though, you may be right that Nader would have won, but that's ok, because under your scenario Nader really is the most popular candidate (or at least a lot more popular than any poll indicated).
This is assuming that people, instead of voting in a way that will advance their interests (i.e. they may have lost their favorite candidate, but why shouldn't they vote against their least favorite candidate? Out of spite? ) . I don't buy it. That is not strategic, it is irrational.
Australia is smarter than us then. Is Australia very bipartisan like the US? I would expect they would have less partisanship, or many more parties, than us, if they really do all elections using ranking.
That is exactly what happens in our plurality system, some people go one way, some the other, even if they feel the same way regarding the candidates (e.g. vote for Nader because you prefer him regardless of his chance of winning, vs. vote for Gore because you hate Bush). This significantly distorts the results, and does an illogical thing (produces a win for Bush when more people prefered Gore over Bush, if those were the only two choices)
In a Condorcet/Ranking system, the only rational thing for a 1:Nader/2:Gore/3:Bush person to do would be rank them as he really feels. In fact, that would do both of what you say, voting for the person who has the best chance of beating the least favorite candidate (by putting him ahead of the least favorite....there is no strategic value in putting him first) while also voting for your favorite candidate as the first choice.
If that person was to instead vote Gore in first place, just to hurt Bush, he would be acting irrationally, as it would have no effect on the Gore vs. Bush outcome (Gore would still win his vote), it would only hurt Nader (although that is irrelevant to the outcome since Nader still loses).
Likewise, anyone who preferred Gore over Nader (and Bush 3rd) would want to express that in their vote, as it would have no effect on the ability of either Nader or Gore to beat Bush.
I cannot imagine a scenario where people attempting to vote strategically (and rationally) could help Nader in a ranking system that chose the Condorcet winner. Please give an example because I am missing how that could happen.
I agree that our current system enforces political parties (causing them to exist by giving massive advantages to those who collaborate to remove "similar" candidates before the actual election), but I don't think the electoral college is the reason. The reason is simply the plurality system, where you are not able to fully express your full preference (for instance, saying that you prefer Nader, but would prefer Gore to Bush). Notice that even in state and local elections parties exist, in the absence of the electoral college. (although in places where there are runoff elections when any candidate gets less than 50% of the vote, political parties do not have as much influence)
That's not to say that the electoral college is bad. Some people say it gives advantages to small states (making people's votes in a small population state count more than the vote of a person in a large state), but the more dramatic effect is to make people's votes in a balanced state (i.e "swing state": one with nearly the same number of voters for each candidate) count much more than the vote of someone in a state that is tipped one way or the other.
Regardless of whether it is possible or not to have a "perfect" system, most everyone who understands the problem recognizes that our current system is one of the worst. There are many people who debate over what is the "best" system, but any decent system should do a heck of a lot better than simple plurality.
(an alternative to ranking is having run-off elections, but that is not only a big waste of peoples time to go and vote twice, but it is certainly not one of the better solutions to the problem)
My own preference would be one that chose the Condorcet winner, if one exists. The way you'd figure that is to run each candidate against each other candidate, assuming that a higher rank counts as a single vote (that is, someone who voted for Nader, Gore, Bush would count as 1 vote for Gore in the Gore vs. Bush "sub-election", and 1 vote for Nader in the Nader vs. Bush sub-election). A Condorcet winner would be the candidate who beat every other candidate. There is the possibility (although it tends to be rare in real world elections) where there is no Condorcet winner, but it's not hard to come up with a formula to deal break ties in this possibility. Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be much, much, much better than simple plurality? Absolutely.
The point is to eliminate the current situation, where people are forced to choose between voting strategically and voting honestly. When you have done that, you would see less and less influence of parties, less need for primaries/conventions/etc to eliminate choices beforehand, and more centrist candidates in office. And I'd predict a lot more real work would happen, rather than all the partisan bickering.
A system like this could potentially mitigate the huge distortions of a plurality system.
Although a better solution would be for voters to rank their choices, then use one of several formulas to tabulate it. Then Nader voters could have voted both honestly and strategically -- i.e. 1. Nader, 2. Gore, 3. Bush -- which would have expressed their true preference for Nader while not hurting Gore (vs. simply voting for Gore).
I hope that the need for vote-swapping systems helps to call attention to the flaws of a plurality voting. These flaws do immense damage, by causing political parties to exist, which polarizes (and paralyzes) our government.
(Parties form because under a plurality system because candidates gain massive advantages by concentrating votes by eliminating similar candidates before the election takes place. Ranking-style voting completely eliminates this effect.)
Well if I got spammed fewer times than I've gotten murdered, I'd be happy.
Well an out of control car can be a bad thing on a steep hill too. Segways have systems in place to prevent this. They don't roll freely down hills, their natural state going down a hill is turning the engine to charge the battery, so there is plenty of resistance, all controlled by redundant microprocessors. Human error cannot cause this, only product failure. And I think that ists safe to assume they have gone to a lot of effort to make sure that that kind of error doesn't happen, because they'd be out of business real quick if they did.
Actually they aren't brakes per se. Regardless, yes, that is the point....Segways can be stopped on a dime, and can otherwise move in ways similar to a pedestrian (turn in place, etc). They are inherently stable (at least if you believe the marketing, and most of the people who have used them). Skateboards, "razor scooters" and rollerblades are not nearly as stable and require much more skill to control ones speed.
You think people will ignore the fact that they are illegal to use when they shell out $5000 for one? I sure wouldn't buy something that expensive that I'm not really allowed to use (or at least, not allowed to use as it is designed, which is to be on sidewalks intermingling with pedestrians).