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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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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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"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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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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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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