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Nurge posted:My point is that the idea behind representative democracy is that your elected representatives at least should be more knowledgeable than you in extremely complex political situations because that's their entire job. Your average voter has absolutely no idea what the EU even is in practice. I would suggest that that is because the EU is a structure built by decades of representative governments. So it isn't really surprising to suggest that it is only really understandable to them (if at all) and also that this is indicative of a problem with representative governments, because how can you meaningfully vote for a representative if the thing you are voting for them to do is completely incomprehensible to you? How would you ensure they are knowledgeable or have your best interests in mind if you have no understanding of their job? But all that means is that direct democracy would require different structures, to operate in different environments. Which again I think is a thing worth pursuing. To say that it cannot simply be plugged into the large scale elements of our representative political system and therefore it's bad is to ignore its potential utility in circumstances that are more conducive to it, and also to entirely dismiss the possibility of working to create those circumstances in more places.
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Jun 20, 2020 16:53
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OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that that is because the EU is a structure built by decades of representative governments. So it isn't really surprising to suggest that it is only really understandable to them (if at all) and also that this is indicative of a problem with representative governments, because how can you meaningfully vote for a representative if the thing you are voting for them to do is completely incomprehensible to you? How would you ensure they are knowledgeable or have your best interests in mind if you have no understanding of their job? I agree that it would work just fine in a lot of situations. Tearing down the representative structures isn't something that's realistically going to happen in the foreseeable future though. There could be a tiered system where say international and budgetary issues etc. would be handled by representation and a lot of the more mundane issues could be up to popular vote. But who is going to decide what's too complex for people to vote on directly? I honestly wouldn't be surprised if something like this eventually happens (or possibly even full direct representation on a long enough timeline), but it's not without its problems.
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Jun 20, 2020 17:01
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As I said I think a worthwhile goal would be to attempt to restructure the economy and political system more along the lines of many largely self sufficient municipalities where possible, so that people can understand and take a direct role in the things that underpin their lives. And that is a thing that can be done gradually and also as a part of trying to alleviate poverty and improve ecological outcomes. And it's not something that has to be all or nothing either, the more control you can give people over their own lives the better, I think. And the more economically resiliant you can make their homes, the better. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Jun 20, 2020 |
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Jun 20, 2020 17:07
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Desdinova posted:If the people could debate with themselves how to deal with Brexit, with a back and forth between the EU and a British Direct Democracy (or Online Direct Democracy, or ODD) we would have negotiated after debating things like "hey, maybe we should pay in to our larger than national system to get back a benefit from a group collective, but X euros is a bit much considering how beneficial we are to other countries" Desdinova posted:People do this all the time, regardless of the political system. If we have a direct democracy, people can repeat the propoganda they've been fed, and when it comes to the discussion stage they are shot down by the evidence that shows it to be what it is - propoganda designed to promote an emotionally negative response. Desdinova posted:Millions of people, in various circumstances would still be able to debate an issue healthily within an Online Direct Democracy. Most people who vote Labour or Conservative, Democrats or Republicans, don't want troops in Afghanistan, therefore after some small discussion, the troops get pulled out, rather than doing so after thousands of deaths and business deals enacted. Desdinova posted:Edit: Been reading a few Direct Democracy reddits and a lot of people are supporting Liquid Democracy, which is basically the same but you can choose to delegate your vote on certain issues to someone who you think represents your viewpoints in issues where you have either little interest, little knowledge, or little effort to be spared upon the topic.
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Jun 20, 2020 17:54
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I feel like perhaps a more relevant question to ask would be whether it would be possible to invade afghanistan to begin with with a more distributed political system.
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Jun 20, 2020 18:09
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OwlFancier posted:I feel like perhaps a more relevant question to ask would be whether it would be possible to invade afghanistan to begin with with a more distributed political system. 88% of Americans supported a war in Afghanistan in October 2001, so unless I'm missing your point, I'd say the answer is a resounding "yes." However, that's really not a more relevant question, because you can sub "removing troops from Afghanistan" for any other action that would have severe and long-lasting knock-on effects.
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Jun 20, 2020 18:55
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DrSunshine posted:That's just a few of the possible reforms that could be taken. I'm aware that for a country as large as China or the USA, that this would create legislatures with tens or hundreds of thousands of representatives, but there's no other way that we can ensure that democracy doesn't chug under its own mass as in a direct democracy, or become captured by a crooked political elite. I'm curious if there is any history of big parliamentary bodies. The biggest elected ones are all a few hundred now. Seems tough to make it work, with 10,000 members each able to propose laws.
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Jun 20, 2020 19:52
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The country's average knowledge about the issues is already laughable and that's with lobbying groups hardly bothering to target the masses because it's the politicians running things that have the power to give them what they want, yet half the country is literally this guy. If you want to see a quantum leap in the science of corporate propaganda then go ahead and give direct democracy a try. The business world will pour entire economies worth of money into brainwashing the population. No one's going to listen to a handful of unkempt college professors who can barely give a speech (BECAUSE THEY'RE RESEARCH SCIENTISTS NOT TEACHERS,) because they'll be drowned out by the army of "experts" that wall street has cloned from Captain America's DNA, and raised to be the most affable, genial, tall, attractive, authoritative PhD's to have their education paid for by corporate sponsor since grade school.
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Jun 20, 2020 20:57
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People should have more input into the broad goals of the government and society generally. Giving them up down votes on specific pieces of legislation is a terrible idea because the world is loving complicated. The idea of a "citizen-legislator" who works half time then goes back to the farm or whatever is and always has been bullshit in that legislating effectively is not something you can do half-time, it is and should be a full-time job with a support staff of people who likewise do it for a living, supported by reliable institutional sources of information. Other people have said this, but basically every problem that direct democracy would solve could be solved by making legislatures more representative and giving them more resources. Direct democracy is basically a ONE WEIRD TRICK that attempts to get around the unsexy and boring work of actually building good institutions. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 03:39
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I'm a little surprised that posters here are so gung-ho about direct democracy, given that the party-line SA politics poster political platform is really not that popular in the United States.
silence_kit fucked around with this message at 13:40 on Jun 21, 2020 |
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Jun 21, 2020 13:35
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I wonder if that could be because there is a huge and noisy political class which exercises a wildly disproportionate control on the political preferences of the public.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:39
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silence_kit posted:I'm a little surprised that posters here are so gung-ho about direct democracy, given that the party-line SA politics poster political opinions are not that popular in the United States. There’s the OP and one(?) other person. Why are you talking as if there’s some overwhelming consensus?
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Jun 21, 2020 13:40
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OwlFancier posted:I wonder if that could be because there is a huge and noisy political class which exercises a wildly disproportionate control on the political preferences of the public. Well, if the majority of the general public has not seen the light because they have been tricked by The Bad Men, that still doesn't bode well for using direct democracy to achieve SA politics posters' political goals.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:44
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Representational politics disproportionately selects for people who are wealthy to be the representatives, and even if they are not, upon becoming representatives, they gain access to a different tier of society, they become part of the elite, the bourgeoisie if you want to get marxist about it. They pander to rich people to get money to get elected and once in office they take money to pass legislation favourable to the wealthy. However you describe it they form a group with their own interests which are different, and opposed, to the interests of the majority of people who are not part of that group. And that group, by virtue of being representatives, have disproportionate platforms provided by the press, and wouldn't you know the weird thing about the people who own the press outlets? They're also rich. So you have rich people getting elected to pass laws for rich people and set the political agenda on the rich people's media. Can you perhaps see why this is a problem for people who are not rich? And how it might perhaps limit the range of political thought in a country? If all three of those things were state controlled you would rightly suggest that you were living in a stalinist hellhole. Thus, to dismantle that system you've got to get rid of all of the things that uphold it, and representative democracy is one of them, it takes power away from people and tells them that they only way they can effect change in their circumstances is if their elected official thinks it's good. And weirdly elected officials don't often think things that help the working class are good because it is often at odds with what they want as rich assholes, or what the rich assholes who fund their campaigns and make helpful "donations" to them want.
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Jun 21, 2020 13:57
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OwlFancier posted:I mean I think I clearly demonstrated that it's a central tenet of representative democracy as well, though I would also concur with the general sentiment that direct democracy is not suitable for the governance of nation states composed of millions of people in wildly differing circumstances. But I would go on to suggest that neither is representative democracy, or dictatorship, or quite possibly anything, and that the lesson to draw from that is that if you want a well functioning democratic society you probably need to reduce the scale and the disparity of the society as much as possible. OwlFancier posted:Representational politics disproportionately selects for people who are wealthy to be the representatives, and even if they are not, upon becoming representatives, they gain access to a different tier of society, they become part of the elite, the bourgeoisie if you want to get marxist about it. They pander to rich people to get money to get elected and once in office they take money to pass legislation favourable to the wealthy. However you describe it they form a group with their own interests which are different, and opposed, to the interests of the majority of people who are not part of that group. And that group, by virtue of being representatives, have disproportionate platforms provided by the press, and wouldn't you know the weird thing about the people who own the press outlets? They're also rich. So you have rich people getting elected to pass laws for rich people and set the political agenda on the rich people's media. Can you perhaps see why this is a problem for people who are not rich? And how it might perhaps limit the range of political thought in a country? If all three of those things were state controlled you would rightly suggest that you were living in a stalinist hellhole. 'first, let's have radical change in the social relations of the means of production, in which no collective inequalities which could require statefulness can occur, so that we can have a level society in which the stateless utopia can flourish' suffers from the straightforward problem: it's not the statelessness doing the argumentative work, it's the level society  under the radically different society where social relations over the MoP are already radically transformed, representative democracy via an assembly of delegates nominated by the soviets doesn't effect different outcomes from the stateless alternative the statelessness doesn't play any role in it at all (in part because they have no zero-sum conflicts by construction and therefore nothing interesting to argue about, but that's a theoretical flaw for another day)
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Jun 21, 2020 14:32
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Congratulations you have observed that it is difficult to dismantle a large system which is self sustaining, very insightful.
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Jun 21, 2020 14:44
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it's not that it's difficult inasmuch as, once achieved, it doesn't present any distinctions between direct democracy and delegate representatives the directness isn't playing any theoretical role at all - the enumerated flaws of representation are pinned on things other than representation (inequality, economic interdependence, etc) so proposing to remove those things doesn't actually say anything about direct democracy
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Jun 21, 2020 14:50
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If you solved all the other problems but kept representative democracy as the only form of political expression you are creating a ruling class again. I see zero reason why that would not trend back towards centralization of power and the reinstatement of all the other systems of control and disenfranchisement. Further I thought I was quite clear that I think you can push for direct political involvement right now and that that can be a vehicle for dismantling the other problem elements of society. That is the basis of left wing politics. Or at least any form of it worth its salt that isn't just "hope the nice liberals will decide to sort everything out for you" The working class coming together to directly wield force against the political system and its representatives is a good thing and gets things done.
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Jun 21, 2020 14:56
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"direct democracy" and "direct action" are not synonyms. I can see why one would argue that one leads to the other. But they seem conceptually distinct enough to me that this argument would actually have to be made, not assumed referendums and other ballots of the entire electorate can and do produce results contradictory to direct action (esp with niceties like secret votes)
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Jun 21, 2020 15:05
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Which is why I placed the emphasis on small scale direct democracy and for the levelling of economic inequality, so that it is more likely to be personal, it is something you do with your peers.
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Jun 21, 2020 15:08
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still don't see how that leads to an inference on representative vs direct democracy your peer group can decide that someone should monitor the entz kitty, that someone should keep the to-do list updated, and that someone should do roll call. There - you've got your treasurer, gen sec, and chairperson for your hobby club exco when the only political decisions to be made are writ this small, balloting everyone vs having someone make the day-to-day decisions doesn't change outcomes much, simply because the space of possible outcomes is assumed to be that narrow to begin with
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Jun 21, 2020 15:30
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Baronash posted:You are describing representational democracy. quote:Liquid democracy lies between direct and representative democracy. In direct democracy, participants must vote personally on all issues, while in representative democracy participants vote for representatives once in certain election cycles. The term "liquid" speaks to the ability to fluidly adapt to changing circumstance. For instance, revoking trust when and where necessary. quote:Meanwhile, liquid democracy does not depend on representatives but rather on a weighted and transitory delegation of votes. Liquid democracy through elections can empower individuals to become sole interpreters of the interests of the nation. It allows for citizens to vote directly on policy issues, delegate their votes on one or multiple policy areas to delegates of their choosing, delegate votes to one or more people, delegated to them as a weighted voter, or get rid of their votes' delegations whenever they please. The challenge lies in implementation. A technical and social challenge. Jam2 fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Jun 22, 2020 |
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Jun 22, 2020 08:32
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Main Paineframe posted:The more likely result is that wealthy people with particular interests in the plumbing industry would flood the general populace with propaganda claiming that a given plumbing motion will have a sweeping negative impact on the lives of just about everyone, leading the actual plumbing experts to get overwhelmingly outvoted by a stampede of laymen. Since the experts are outnumbered by the general populace, the winning move will always be to try to manipulate the general populace rather than bothering with trying to convince the experts. This is one of the problems we are facing under the current system, and it is difficult to overcome. When the media companies and the lobbyists are literally paying to buy the views of politicians, and the U.S. states are gerrymandered to be a very high percentage of safe votes for either the Blues or the Reds, the power of the representative vote is miniscule, if not even lower. A TED talk points out this flaw better than I did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE This was from 2015 and is still as relevant as ever. To be fair, I am only believing what this apparently knowledgeable person is saying, he could be producing anti-U.S. propoganda for all I know, as I am not from/living in the U.S. yet it seems believable. I agree entirely about the control of the information, and it should travel as freely as possible, even if offensive or false. I know this is quite a sweeping statement, but the people shut down holocaust revisionists when they crop up on history discussions with a list of facts and evidence (Actually, just realised that most online places ban them, but this seems a better method of improving discussions while not getting sidetracked from the same points that have been raised repeatedly, validly thought as they may have been. We have very few companies controlling what is considered mainstream media, and they have a much bigger voice than the various people (or experts) on various smaller, more independent sites. Under a Open Source Online Direct Democracy, everyone would have equal access to the same software, and be able to vote on various updates to the site that would improve the political software, while remaining transparent as a safety net from corruption. This wouldn't eliminate corruption immediately, but seems an improvement to the current system. So if we all have access to the same resources online, we can link to sources to backup our arguments, and people would be swayed by the evidence as they do now. As was mentioned before, Fake News is a difficult topic to be certain about. OwlFancier posted:That is why the ballots are kept under surveillance by multiple people until they are counted, and they are also not unmarked, your ballot can be traced back to you personally, but the means to do so are sealed unless there is an accusation of voter fraud, in which case they can be unsealed and checked to make sure each vote matches up with a voter. The reason pencil is used rather than pen is becaus a pencil mark cannot be completely erased, whereas a pen could hypothetically be loaded with ink which fades shortly after use. Genuinely curious, how can a pencil mark not be completely erased as opposed to a pen? Surely they both leave indentations, and even then I remember rubbing loads of stuff out at school that seemed vanished. This is why the idea of a open source website similar to Wikipedia as well as Kialo could be of benefit - anyone can see the source code and it could be possible to check for subversions at any stage of the process? There's nerds out there that could argue if it would or work or not better than I, but I would add that Estonia has had no reported issues with their online voting system, and that is closed source. OwlFancier posted:I would suggest that that is because the EU is a structure built by decades of representative governments. So it isn't really surprising to suggest that it is only really understandable to them (if at all) and also that this is indicative of a problem with representative governments, because how can you meaningfully vote for a representative if the thing you are voting for them to do is completely incomprehensible to you? How would you ensure they are knowledgeable or have your best interests in mind if you have no understanding of their job? Under a Liquid Democracy we could take our vote for a Environmental person (like David Attenborough, or your teacher from school, or the hippie down the road), a Science person (like Brian Cox or Ed Nye) and so on, and this could be then subdivided into different voted issues. Dave agrees with me about the bins being emptied on a Tuesday, I can't be bothered to vote, I'll let him vote, or delegate his view to another guy on the street. Not suggesting this is better than Direct Democracy, or worse, but it seems worth considering. Expecting one politician to have so much knowledge in various areas that he/she votes on, without bringing in the corruption aspect, seems inferior to voting for either a specific expert who you agree with, or a direct vote on an issue you understand some things about. I don't know much about in-depth economics, but I believe the current interest rates means people won't save any money, which if I was interested enough, I could post on the voting forum as a con to lowering interest rates, while several more knowledgeable people would then vote for or against my belief, which could change my mind as I'm not that interested in that field compared to others. -Blackadder- posted:The country's average knowledge about the issues is already laughable and that's with lobbying groups hardly bothering to target the masses because it's the politicians running things that have the power to give them what they want, yet half the country is literally this guy. We already have lies from politicians, corporations, and the mass media that they already are using all this propoganda - but maybe with an Online Direct Democracy we can discuss celebrity viewpoints as more of a collection, I like to think some of us are pretty decent at pointing out the BS that we could have got drowned in. Apologies if any of this is obvious to everyone, strange time of the night/morn to put the world to rights.
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Jun 26, 2020 01:13
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Jam2 posted:The term "liquid" speaks to the ability to fluidly adapt to changing circumstance. For instance, revoking trust when and where necessary. In addition to this, a person could add or remove their representative's endorsement at any time, rather than every four years or how everlong the general elections last wherever. Edit: double post 
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Jun 26, 2020 01:14
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silence_kit posted:Well, if the majority of the general public has not seen the light because they have been tricked by The Bad Men, that still doesn't bode well for using direct democracy to achieve SA politics posters' political goals. The vast majority of the full US populous is broadly supportive of instituing European style social welfare programs, just as an example, so I think this is less true than you believe.
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Jun 26, 2020 04:23
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-Blackadder- posted:The country's average knowledge about the issues is already laughable and that's with lobbying groups hardly bothering to target the masses because it's the politicians running things that have the power to give them what they want, yet half the country is literally this guy. Is this an argument for cutting corporate costs by ensuring they only have to focus their lobbying efforts on a small number of people???
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Jun 26, 2020 04:27
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Desdinova posted:Genuinely curious, how can a pencil mark not be completely erased as opposed to a pen? Surely they both leave indentations, and even then I remember rubbing loads of stuff out at school that seemed vanished. The idea is an older one, but basically if you press down with a pencil you can't really erase it without leaving some evidence and also you would need to actually tamper with the ballots using an eraser which is harder when they're under surveillance all the time, whereas as stated an ink could be devised to become transparent afterwards without any intervention. You could organize a bunch of people to vote early then send people in with replacement pens for the booths and make the rest of the ballots void, so the reasoning goes.
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Jun 26, 2020 10:40
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"Liquid democracy" is literally just normal representative democracy with referendums and recalls once you scale it up to anything beyond the hyper-local level. Again, you can't ONE WEIRD TRICK your way out of the principle-agent problem. Sooner or later you, the citizen, have to delegate authority to someone. Crumbskull posted:The vast majority of the full US populous is broadly supportive of instituing European style social welfare programs, just as an example, so I think this is less true than you believe. Letting the population vote on, and have a contest between, parties with differing postions on "should we have a bigger welfare state" (in a way that accurately represents every citizen, such as proportional representation) is good. Having them vote on every specific minutia of said welfare state is bad. Fill Baptismal fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Jun 27, 2020 |
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Jun 27, 2020 10:09
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I think the best and only argument needed against a system of "Online Direct Democracy" wherein people come together to express either their support or opposition to someone else's idea is simply this.
-Blackadder- fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Jun 29, 2020 |
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Jun 29, 2020 02:29
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I think a good and intresting model for direct democracy is the one found in "Towards a new socialism" by W. Paul Cockshott(nice) and Allin F. Cottrell. The book rejects representative democracy as inherently undemocratic. Instead, the authors describe a mix between councils and direct vote. Councils would be created for mainstay day to day work but it would work like Jury duty. You might be drafted into "local water management council" or "board of state road infrastructure". Along with the people drafted from the general public, experts will be drafted who assist with the process: Health care professionals for the medical system council, engineers for infrastructure. Councils then put out suggestions and plans, and if nobody objects they get put into action by the appropriate ministry. Citizens can vote on major proposals and can override the council decisions in a form of direct democracy. (the original book is from the 1993 and thus predates the internet, and suggest a system of "TV's and Voting phones" to be provided to all ) Vote results are thus essentially are open to all. On a national level there is a national council creating different proposals for budgets which are then voted on by the public. Of course it's socialist book so most of the book talks about the need and how to of structuring a planned economy, dealing with scarcity for example. The whole thing is available online for free, chapter 13 regarding direct democracy is a short read: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/socialism_book/new_socialism.pdf White Rock fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 11:20
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White Rock posted:I think a good and intresting model for direct democracy is the one found in "Towards a new socialism" by W. Paul Cockshott(nice) and Allin F. Cottrell. This is some serious "What if the best ruler is the one who doesn't want to rule" bullshit. You're taking folks with little interest in a topic and forcing them to engage with it on a part-time basis for a comically short period of time. At best, they'll be rubber stamping the efforts of the professionals who actually work in the departments they oversee. At worst, you'll have a mess of shifting priorities, corporate influence, and grift that will halt progress in its tracks. And yeah, I'm sure someone is gonna quote that last line and lay some sick burn about how that's the state of the country today. "Yes it sucks, but so does X" isn't a very strong argument in favor of direct democracy. I want a representative government run by professional legislators who use full-time support staff to seek out the best information from experts in order to make informed decisions. In turn, I want well-funded government agencies that rely on the combined experience of their staff to carry out those decisions.
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Jun 30, 2020 15:15
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So instead we should deliberately put the people who are there for the grift in charge, rather than sometimes getting one by random chance
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Jun 30, 2020 15:33
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Baronash posted:This is some serious "What if the best ruler is the one who doesn't want to rule" bullshit. You're taking folks with little interest in a topic and forcing them to engage with it on a part-time basis for a comically short period of time. At best, they'll be rubber stamping the efforts of the professionals who actually work in the departments they oversee. At worst, you'll have a mess of shifting priorities, corporate influence, and grift that will halt progress in its tracks. It's been a long time since i read the book and re-reading the chapter it seems i misrepresented quite heavily: quote:
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Also i couldn't find the mention of the term limits. Anyway i don't see how a a random selection of people is in any way grift friendly, in fact a random selection is the least grift friendly system there is.
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Jun 30, 2020 16:14
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White Rock posted:Also i couldn't find the mention of the term limits. Jury democracy has the same issue that having strict term limits does: the representatives are so inexperienced that they are inadequate to their role and heavily reliant on outside expertise. Either they are rubber-stamping an inefficient technocracy or they become mouthpieces for corporate and political interests. It's extremely grifty. Kaal fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 16:27
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Any system wherein money is correlated to getting into and remaining in office is going to be more vulnerable to grift and graft than a system in which there's no relationship between money and getting into office. That logic is ironclad.
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Jun 30, 2020 16:28
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VitalSigns posted:So instead we should deliberately put the people who are there for the grift in charge, rather than sometimes getting one by random chance That is where reforms to our current system come in: Publicly-funded, ranked-choice elections where folks with a serious interest in public service promote their agenda to a reasonably-sized district, with the winners of those elections then subject to strict standards upheld by a strong oversight agency. If you insist on framing it this way, however, I would ask if you have ever trusted anyone to act on your behalf? Do you have a bank? Have you ever used an accountant? Have you ever sent a college or employer private information, including your SSN? Do you perhaps work at a company that trusts you with funds, equipment, or product with a value that is far in excess of what they pay you? Each of use trusts dozens if not hundreds of individuals to act on our behalf throughout our lives. A worthwhile cooperative system can't exist without trust. The best we can do is reduce the drivers of graft and other violations of the social contract, (primarily inequity, but also out-sized opportunity and improper oversight) and ensure adequate consequences are in place for those who take advantage of that trust.
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Jun 30, 2020 17:15
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modern states are of course not 19th century states the annual budget statement of a modern first-world Western government is about 20% armed forces and 20% public services (there's a lot of variance here but these are representative amounts). The remaining 60% - a majority - is transfer spending - that is, massive transfers between communities of people who are by and large imagined communities of people who do not know each other and generally never interact on a personal basis ever this is, appropriately, maybe half of what the rage and fury of modern politics reflects - agony over the magnitudes and directions of transfers: who pays? who receives? And how much? the other great struggle being kulturkampf - things which are not only grave moral or personal evils in your personal community, worthy of social ostracism or worse, but which should also be grave evils in other communities and be duly recognized as such neither of these are well answered by federated control of local executive government. At the same time, deep federation does not itself give any obvious answers on how to negotiate transfers between communities, or defining shared codes of procedural justice that will apply also to communities that may wholly reject them. If anything it renders both considerably worse by encouraging a veto mandate. local executive government is, by and large, not a deeply contested exercise. Most people do not have deeply-seated opinions about which of a set of competing industry standards should be selected (never mind expertise - hard to develop insight without interest).... if a new opinion does develop, it's often because there is a new stakeholder who is impacted that was not previously considered a stakeholder, or feels they have insufficient weight. This is naturally a difficult problem to construct a radical sectoral federalism around. e.g. virtually every facet of modern industrial life generates 'pollution' as a vague side effect - Co2 for instance - does this immediately render virtually any new activity subject to vetos by the randomly-selected delegates of non-locals? Should it? In fact, who decides? Perhaps a duly elected assembly of representatives? and that's just the 'exterior' stuff - how each set of responsibilities is defined so that it can interact independently and sovereignly with other interests. The 'interior' stuff is tricky too. Sortition requires large numbers to suppress variance. If one has hundreds of little juries of handfuls of people - enough to form the new upper management tier over every facet of life that the modern regulatory industrial state touches - it would be a certainty that a substantial number of them will be totally controlled by crazy people. You know, the same crazy one-third of your_country_here that vote for your_enemy_party_here reliably no matter what; now they just vote for whatever set of policies that party advises as its slate, and no actual democratic discourse takes place we do already see how the 1970s/1980s fascination with deliberative democracy as a concept has impacted actually-existing politics. e.g., this foundational belief: quote:If people were to participate directly in the running of the state, we would not see the cynicism and apathy which characterise the typical modern voter... led directly to the widespread embrace of community consultation/engagement as a prerequisite stage in the planning processes of many developed countries. Community engagement has proven effective at detecting completely unforeseen backlashes, and forcing special interest groups to "put up or shut up" rather than merely harass a few select officials, but otherwise an entire cottage industry has grown up around allowing local governments everywhere to effectively translate awareness budgets into manufactured approval. Apathy prevails; it just costs more. Most political questions of interest have turned out not to be highway revolts. quote:For a while now the micro-theorists [focused on 'small' governance measures like citizen's juries convened for specific mandates] have been winning the day, with empirical literature focusing more on deliberative experiments such as citizens' juries, planning cells and deliberation days than on macro deliberation in the public sphere. Such micro-deliberative experiments have tended overwhelmingly to be consultative rather than binding upon policy officials (Ryfe, 2005: 61), and empirical studies have shown overwhelmingly that contextual variables are highly significant in determining the advantages and disadvantages of deliberation in these micro settings (Delli Carpini et al., 2004). This growth in the academic analysis of micro experiments is also matched by the growth of a 'consultation industry' and a 'deliberative profession' with its conferences, training and formal networks. (Carson and Hendriks, 2008: 300-2) Carson and Hendriks (2008: 294) highlight the commercialisation and professionalisation of deliberative practice, particularly micro deliberation, and write that 'Along with other community consultation activities, deliberative procedures have become a market commodity that are bought and sold by governments and political organizations.' It is this disillusionment which then led onto the embrace of referendums to override contentious representatives - silent majorities and all that - but as of late there is a return of fashionability to citizen's assemblies. You know, calmly guided and educated citizens who have patiently sat through a few crash course of experts explaining the problem. Canada and Ireland seem to be starting experiments with these... ronya fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jun 30, 2020 |
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Jun 30, 2020 19:28
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-Blackadder- posted:I think the best and only argument needed against a system of "Online Direct Democracy" wherein people come together to express either their support or opposition to someone else's idea is simply this. You could have just typed Reddit Baronash posted:This is some serious "What if the best ruler is the one who doesn't want to rule" bullshit. You're taking folks with little interest in a topic and forcing them to engage with it on a part-time basis for a comically short period of time. At best, they'll be rubber stamping the efforts of the professionals who actually work in the departments they oversee. At worst, you'll have a mess of shifting priorities, corporate influence, and grift that will halt progress in its tracks. How about having the experts post their views and recommendations to a public forum where those interested debate and vote on it, rather than the potentially much more easily corruptable politicians? You can't bribe everybody, right? Paying people to be on a council of transport or health for six months or so is quite the improvement over the current representative system, especially if it allows voluntary members to join in or leave at any time.
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Jul 1, 2020 21:20
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Still Dismal posted:"Liquid democracy" is literally just normal representative democracy with referendums and recalls once you scale it up to anything beyond the hyper-local level. As someone who sits on the board of a large food cooperative whose staff collective of over 100 people makes most decisions through a full consensus process: yeah, I agree. I was just challenging the assertion that direct democracy is bad because people don't support the right stuff. Also, literal representative democracy which meaningful refferendum and recall processes sounds pretty good to me actually, though I agree calling it Liquid Democracy is very annoying.
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Jul 1, 2020 22:03
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Desdinova posted:How about having the experts post their views and recommendations to a public forum where those interested debate and vote on it, rather than the potentially much more easily corruptable politicians? You can't bribe everybody, right? You keep coming back to this despite everyone telling you the million reasons it wouldn’t work. Experts are not going to spend their lives responding to every inane point made by some rando on the Internet. Even if they did, large companies/industries are just going to flood your system with their own “experts” pushing their brand of junk science. Forget the experts for a moment, it’s almost laughable to think that a meaningful debate could happen between (potentially) tens of thousands of individuals. D&D is hard enough to remain on top of, and there are probably only a couple hundred regular posters here with active moderation. But this has been stated before, which leads me to wonder if you are actually bothering to read your own thread. Desdinova posted:Paying people to be on a council of transport or health for six months or so is quite the improvement over the current representative system, especially if it allows voluntary members to join in or leave at any time. In what way is it an improvement? You’re putting folks with little to no experience into a position, then hamstringing them with a term limit that prevents them from actually getting good at the job they’re being asked to do.
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Jul 4, 2020 03:18
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