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Or alernatively, you need to restructure society to the point that it is more understandable to the average person.
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Jun 18, 2020 00:47
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mobby_6kl posted:Imagine what would happen if chuds ever got 50%+1, that's the downside of direct democracy. One might suggest they currently manage that quite well with less than 50%.
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Jun 18, 2020 01:27
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The brexit referendum is an odd case in that it represents decades of the british representational government blaming the EU for all its problems combined with a major misinformation campaign by wealthy assholes and the media being unable and unwilling to present the factual reality of the situation if it wasn't actively cheering for the worst outcome. And the entire thing was called to settle a factional squabble within the government and as a result of a pledge by them in their election campaign. So to call it a failure of direct democracy is, I think, wrong, in that it is more like a massive success of representational and oligarchical government in that people absorbed exactly the message the elite institutions had put out for decades and repeated it back to them, the same people who pushed for it won a very good election victory on it several years later, and are currently set to deliberately drop the economy off a cliff for fun so they can make even more money off the crash and likely use it as a vehicle to further dismantle public services. All in all an excellent result for top down governance, they get to do exactly what they want and get rich off it too. You could also get into the question of how making one of the very few direct democratic decisions we get a simple stay/leave question as regards an extremely complicated set of international agreements, allowed the representative government to basically make up its own idea of what brexit means and tie it rhetorically back to the referendum regardless of whether that was actually what a majority voted for. Further cementing its role as essentially manufacturing consent for representative governance rather than actually being a good example of direct democracy. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jun 19, 2020 |
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Jun 19, 2020 06:59
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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. So it follows that you could consider trying to give smaller regions greater autonomy, not just poltiically but economically too, combined with some method of reducing and ideally eliminating wealth inequality, which would create a better environment, I think, for direct democracy.
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Jun 19, 2020 08:16
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Desdinova posted:Online voting is better than like how I last voted in the UK: With an erasable pencil on a piece of paper with no other markings. Like, no way that can be altered to suit those currently in power. 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. Whereas electronic voting doesn't have any of that, the vote could be intercepted at any point, or changed on the central server, and nobody would know, because there is no record and nobody is watched the inner workings of the computer. You're assuming all the software works as designed and hasn't been subverted at any point.
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Jun 20, 2020 04:38
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:It seems like society is able to use computers for everything else just fine. Billionaires are fine trusting electricity to store or move their billions with no major issue. And if voter fraud happened on the scale of financial fraud I think you would question the ability of the system to perform its function? And the outcome of financial fraud does not determine who controls the USA, financial transactions are not advertised internationally with a multi year run up. And billionaires do not want to disrupt the entire basis of the system by which they exercise power, i.e the financial system, but I guarantee you they would absolutely love to be able to control the legislature more than they already do, so that's exactly the sort of people you need to secure your electoral system against. Nurge posted:Joining and leaving the EU is a good example of a situation where direct democracy fails hard. Even politicians, who ostensibly get selected for their ability in understanding complicated political and economic situations barely had any idea what would happen after joining. Popular referendums for something no normal person has a hope of understanding are a really terrible idea, and direct democracy would just make that same poo poo happen in every complex situation. I again find it extremely weird to suggest that representative governments doing both of those things is somehow a problem with direct democracy...
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Jun 20, 2020 16:11
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I personally would suggest that electing our preferred big brave Leader to fight the entrenched power of wealth and information control isn't exactly a very good system in the long run. Or even an accurate description of how we live now. More useful I think to view elected representatives, the media, and capital as different arms of the same system, wealth controls media, media controls votes, votes control representation, representation protects wealth. And the activity of voting and consuming media and working and spending and supporting parties all serves to give people the appearance of power, and to serve as a release valve for discontent in a way that stands minimal chance of disrupting the power structure.
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Jul 4, 2020 20:25
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SalamInsurrection posted:Of course it being used by white supremacists to disenfranchise minorities was abhorrent, everyone agrees on that point. But if it's used by the minorities to disenfranchise the white supremacists instead, I don't see any moral issues. I consider the who it was used by and against the problem, not the method itself. You may not call it fair, but it would be just, which is much more important for a healthy society. I think the point is that if it were possible to do that then it would necessarily not be minorities doing it, as the ability to disenfranchise others is sort of a litmus test for whether you are on the giving or receiving end of the power disparity.
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Jul 4, 2020 20:30
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I suspect a purely rational mind would be so alien to humans that they would reject its conclusions.
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Sep 1, 2020 00:19
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I would probably suggest that making workers subject to the arbitrary whims of a legislature and company they cannot change is very much not direct democracy, IMO.
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Sep 15, 2020 22:41
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 20:36 |
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Like you can observe that twitter is often bad but not think that is an argument against direct democracy. For like, any decision making process you need to understand the decision you're making, care about the outcome, and have like a basic ability to reason. Indirect democracy creates problems with all of those because necessarily people don't understand the decisions they're making (because they're actually making a decision about a media personality they want to make decisions for them) they don't care about the outcome (because the governing process is so abstracted from your life that you probably can't even tell how it affects you if you even believe it does at all) and it interferes with people's ability to reason because the first two conditions create an incentive to entirely cut out reason from the process and try to get people to treat politics like some kind of team sport where you just cheer for the people wearing the right colours. And I don't think it's wrong to suggest that all of that is a result of the political structure we have, like that's not just representational politics working badly, that's a pretty logical outgrowth of how representational politics works, you might not want it to do that but it seems to do it regardless in much the same way a ball will roll down a hill however much you might want it not to, it's an effect of the shape of the ball, as our current political dysfunction is an effect of the shape and structure of our politics. And it might also suggest some pretty severe upper limits on the effectiveness of democracy as a political system (as in, it starts to fall apart at the point it becomes indirect, to the extent that it escapes the limits of your knowledge, your care, or your ability to understand.) But I think that it is still a pretty good argument against representative democracy and for the necessity of structuring society to maximise people's ability to have a kind of immediate collective autonomy over their lives, their homes, and their places of work.
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Sep 25, 2020 21:29
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