Direct Democracy

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Direct Democracy

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Been reading about a few organisations on the internet that are in favour of a direct democracy, similar to Switzerland's current model.

It seems to have a lot going for it, no matter your political beliefs - everyone gets to vote on whatever is interesting to them, and with an equal vote they can affect direct parliamentary change without the need of a cabinet, elected politicans, massively reduced corruption, and overcoming disenfranchisment of the common sentiment that people feel after engaging in politics for awhile, ala "The next government will undo the previous government's changes, I have little say, I'm voting for someone who I only partially agree with, the person who speaks most for me."

Under Direct Democracy people vote on any issue that is considered important - enough people (how many is a good question) raise an issue, such as capital punishment, legalisation of substances, etc. and then a discussion, and then a set time later, a vote. If the vote is passed it becomes law.

While it is true that people can be idiots, if the decision turns an unfavourable outcome, then it can be voted on again with sufficient interest in the issue (which of course, there would be).

There would be quick, efficent change, and problems would be solved without the hindrance of lobbyists, who, while still being able to influence the population, would be seen through and many people are harder to corrupt than an individual, no matter his position in society.

This is just a brief overview of a possible alternative to the RED VS BLUE dogfight that politics seems at the moment, and it would be interesting to see either additional information, points of contradiction towards the system, and how we could best implement it.

The DD system could also be used to radically reform the judicial process, ensuring a fairer trial, without people who have the most money getting the best lawyer/solicitor, and perhaps the removal of the capitalist bail system that is in place.

Edit:

Direct Democracy as it's been done in the past has failed, and this is largely due to as another poster made - people cba with going to a local meeting to vote on what day the bins get emptied.

The reason it can work now is the thing we're using. The Internet.

Experts in their fields are interested in their fields, from plumbers and museum curators to economists and publicans.

They sign up to their fields voting forum, ala Reddit, and vote and propose motions - changing what pipe to connect to pipe b when a new pipe is invented or whatever.

People could sign up to whatever forums they wanted, and have a voice that would be responded to by anyone else. A lot of people do this out of interest, and the best people would be in a position to enact swift and efficient motions.

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.

Desdinova fucked around with this message at 01:30 on Jun 18, 2020

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 02:56

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 03:44

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

No, but I get what you mean.

Still, by group discussion within a timeframe and then voting change would be enacted, and if wrong could be undone at the next vote.

# ¿ Jun 16, 2020 18:44

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

cant cook creole bream posted:

The big problem with direct democracy is that most people would not really be knowledgeable
about the necessary decisions.
How about a system where the voters can put people in charge who are sort of experts in certain relevant fields? That sounds like something which might work.

Honestly, Swiss democracy sucks and gets racist about every topic.

Direct Democracy as it's been done in the past has failed, and this is largely due to as another poster made - people cba with going to a local meeting to vote on what day the bins get emptied.

The reason it can work now is the thing we're using. The Internet.

Experts in their fields are interested in their fields, from plumbers and museum curators to economists and publicans.

They sign up to their fields voting forum, ala Reddit, and vote and propose motions - changing what pipe to connect to pipe b when a new pipe is invented or whatever.

People could sign up to whatever forums they wanted, and have a voice that would be responded to by anyone else. A lot of people do this out of interest, and the best people would be in a position to enact swift and efficient motions.

The people (like me) who know gently caress all about plumbing, wouldn't choose to vote, leaving a collection of mainly plumbers running the plumbing of a country, and eventually, this would work internationally. ALSO IN A GALACTIC SPACE FEDERATION! Ahem.

Drone_Fragger posted:

direct democracy is complete poo poo, all you have to see is Switzerland nearly torpedoing their entire economy because joe bloggs on the street doesn't understand that voting to ban free movement with the EU also means all the equivalent treaties you've got with the EU that allow your country to function at all will also be torn up at the exact same time because of the reciprocity arrangements.

You need to elect people to understand the bigger picture and understand the effects. the average person on the street is too dumb, lazy or don't care enough to do that research. Which is why we elect and pay other people to do it for us.

The UK voted for Brexit by a narrow margin. While I agree with (hopefully the majority) that lack of freedom of movement is a bad thing, if people chose to discuss this important issue and discuss it on a forum designed to decide a country's response to an issue, a lot of people would comment, discuss with others, and then vote. Popular viewpoints on both sides could be displayed with common responses both positive and negative would cut down on repetition and getting lost in a sea of billions of posts. Similar to another debate forum, forgot the name atm. This would deal with the valid issue DrSunshine mentioned.

Peanut President posted:

Direct democracy loving blows. California has a limited form of it and they voted to ban gay marriage twice.

Bet this was because there are only a minority of gays compared to fundamentalist religious types and homophobics. The majority aren't bothered, but if you got a $ or two every time you voted, most people would probably vote for a dollar as well as vote yes as it doesn't effect them. Then again maybe I'm giving people too much credit.

Edit: Updating the OP.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 01:29

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Zachack posted:

If this works the way I think you envision the best outcome is that you wind up in a technocracy, and the more likely outcomes are either the Plumbing Forum gets brigaded by a specific industry/cartel that can now literally and directly write the laws without any impediment, or the Plumbing Forum gets invaded by the retired/insane that bog everything down (or worse, are successful), or a literal goon invasion where every pipe connector has to have a gold ring painted on one side for Lord Goatse. And that's for the dry subjects like plumbing - wait until you get in the vaccines or fluoridation or blue/black dress forum.

The best in the field would be motioning votes that would be mainly voted on by them, but also could be undone if the vote doesn't improve things as thought. The system as it is has someone who may be educated in an entirely different field voting on issues that he/she barely understands and only signs documents without reading them for a paycheque. Downvoting insane comments and even commenting on other users is something that could be effective, again on a trial basis to see the best way of running the group of forums.

There's a lot of people out there who get all :tinfoil:

about fluoridation, but they are in an echo chamber with each other for the most part, and while most people have no interest in the issue and wouldn't comment, some people out there would point out evidence and tests that have been done to show that it isn't causing the frogs to turn gay (jk), and when it comes to the vote the evidence would have been responded to and commented, and eventually even hard boiled views can change with enough information.

# ¿ Jun 18, 2020 11:34

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Drone_Fragger posted:

We had literal 24 hour coverage of brexit, with the people championing remain explaining all of these problems. said people were then told they were out-of-touch, didn't understand the average englishments problems (racism and a huge chip on the shoulder) and additionally were sneering down their wine drinking noses at the common people by the equivilent of your mate barry down the pub, which of course worked completely in a lot of cases because of a growing distrust in the UK's political system.

Direct democracy simply doesn't work unless you're going to train everyone in the country to be as informed about the macro effects of things as politicians, (alledgedly) are. It's not my job to understand how leaving the EU will upset the UK's cabotage rights and end up with an EU enforced quota, hence decimating the UK trucking industry and resulting in food prices shooting up for several years, for instance. And trying to explain this to people is a waste of time because they have better things to spend their time on, such as their lives.

We can learn about the effects of things (if we don't already) and if it was more than a LEAVE EU YES OR NO vote than we would have been able to vote on what we wanted to get out of potentially leaving the EU. As it stood, people had to decide on whether on the whole the EU was worth staying with or not, rather than this part of the EU I agree with, this part I don't. With an Online Direct Democracy we would be able to vote for (or against) freedom of entry to EU nationals, inspection of food at border arrival etc. If this would have taken place it seems we would have remained in the EU, on our terms, with the majority still having their way. If the people have no interest, they don't vote, their loss.

Oh, and I remembered the name of the site where the pros and cons of an issue are debated to try and reach a consensus: Kialo

# ¿ Jun 19, 2020 00:35

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

cant cook creole bream posted:

Yeah no, this is not true at all.
Part of the problem with Brexit was exactly that. People were thinking you could just cherry pick the parts of the EU you like and discard the rest. In such a theoretical specific vote, the Britons would have overwhelmingly voted against any payment to the EU, and would have denied freedom of movement, any sort of EU regulations and would have insisted to stay in the trade union. I.e. exactly the kind of unicorn dream Brexit Boris was preaching all along.

You can't just have an internal vote on specific agreements which involve another side. The Brexit negotiations between the EU and Great Britain are running along awfully and it looks like the country is running against a hard wall at the end of the year. Imagine how well that would go, if there was not even a person in between and each trade offer had to go through a process of a public vote and somehow each proposed change as well, until Britain has a new proposal which suits their majority internally. The only way Britains would agree with a new proposal would be if it again heavily favors them. But such a deal would be ridiculous bad for the EU and they'd throw it away within seconds.

The concept of direct democracy is incredibly bad and inefficient in negotiations. you basically need some intermediate who could broker an agreement, which could then be voted on. But then British voters would complain that this negotiator has to much power and that their specific idea of Brexit (All the good things, none of the bad) did not even make it to public vote.

And that example still assumes that the EU has competent leadership. A negotiation between two sides with a government of mob mentalities would absolutely go to war, rather than ever having a chance to find an agreement.

Good points here.

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"

Labelling all voters as the mob is literally the way that we put each other down and think of our neighbours as stupid and ignorant. Not that we're not.

cant cook creole bream posted:

Powerful people lying to the mob to fill their own pockets is like the central essence of direct democracy.

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.
e.g.
Voter 1 motions: "The Daily Mail says Pakis come here to eat our swans! Ban all Pakis!"

Voters 2 - 9804985078: "There are no recorded instances of Pakistani people trying to gain access to Britain to consume swans.

Motion is denied.

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.

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.

Definitely agree on reducing disparity, especially in the U.S. where it seems (according to a TED talk) that only 0.02% of voters have any influence under the lobbying and campaign SuperPACs that sway politicians.

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.

One suggestion was to enact a local forum for voters to vote on, a national one, and eventually, an international forum for various issues which are voted on according to importance at their level.

DrSunshine posted:

So how does a hypothetical digital direct democracy deal with the ever persistent threat of cyber actors? Why is it that cybersecurity experts have consistently warned against holding elections using computer technology? I could see a nation that had set its sights on citizen participation in the democratic process online set up some kind of public key encryption system, but what if a citizen loses or has their key stolen? A government server can have all the firewalls and protection it can, but what about vulnerabilities in the endpoints-- the devices that citizens use to access the election system? What if some threat actor installs keyloggers to capture peoples' passwords? It happens all the time. Most people fall for phishing attacks and can never be arsed to bother with the inconvenience of two factor authentication. And you're proposing to put an entire country's very legislative system online?

Another good point, been reading about that recently, one option is to remove anonymity and use digital ID's, or a thumbprint like required to access your phone without a passcode.

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.

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.
Haven't decided if delegates are preferred or not but gonna keep on reading and learning until the best answer arises.

Desdinova fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Jun 20, 2020

# ¿ Jun 20, 2020 02:26

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

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 a fundamental problem with modern governance, though: he who controls information controls the people, one way or another, and it doesn't really matter that much what kind of political system you want to filter that through. If you place a priority on the opinions of experts, then those who desire power will simply fund the creation of their own alternate experts while working to undermine the very definition of "expert", as demonstrated by the way the idea of liberal technocratic government is currently collapsing all over the world. If you focus on the populace as a whole, who generally lack information on specific issues, then those who desire power will take control of the channels people use to obtain that information. Overall, people are dependent on information for our decision-making, and it doesn't really matter who you put in charge of the decision-making as long as the same people are in charge of the information.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

# ¿ Jun 26, 2020 01:13

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

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

# ¿ Jun 26, 2020 01:14

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

-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.

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.

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.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2020 21:20

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Baronash posted:

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.

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.

The people who are voted upon to be experts in their chosen field would respond to a popular voted point upon an issue, and would be responded to. Industry shills with their paid for viewpoints would be disagreed with by unbribed others, people would be free to choose what seems correct to them given the evidence and reasoning.

A debate between millions of people can happen when the same points are condensed into a measured whole, with the stronger points argued for and against by everyone and voted by anyone who cares to vote. Rather than the current format of reading a thread, we could respond to a point made by tens of thousands of people and have that responded to.

In this way, experts (and anyone else in the scheme) would be responding to the favoured points, according to an Athenian democracy, in an online reformation.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2020 23:37

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Purple Prince posted:

Now note that what the 20th century conflicts of ideology showed is that more education, wealth and wisdom doesn't lead to moral progress in any sort of direct way: instead it leads to more sophisticated forms of political manipulation and violence. The work on using adtech and social media manipulation to manipulate public opinion in the 21st century is a direct evolution of the governance techniques of 'democracy'.

Moral progress is a variable that is subjective, morals change with time.

Purple Prince posted:

In a direct democracy you're just going to see the equivalent of Instagram influencers, hashtag communities on Twitter and Youtubers becoming the main nexus of political activity: in other words demagoguery writ large and with infinite different special-interest groups.

This would still be the case, but with a more direct effect on the system - people having their opinion reflected rather than compromised.

Purple Prince posted:

There is no solution to this problem. Either you go for a representative model and try to choose better leaders, which might be possible if the above special-interest groups weren't mobilised against it, or you go for a more autocratic model and try to impose a specific vision of what 'democracy' means on people (this seems to work okay, but it's fragile), or you go full autocrat and risk the people with power being corrupted by it.

Political systems are made of people, and people tend to be less-than-perfectly wise and easily corruptible. There is a political system which aims to give power only to people who are wise and incorruptible: it's called aristocracy (in the original sense of aristeia, rule by the best).

That would be an improvement on current Representative Democracy, but if we have Direct Democracy then people could still follow the shared values they have shared for thousands of years, and if autocratic then people would be harder to corrupt than a minority of lobbyists.

Purple Prince posted:

You can make leaders more accountable; you can make policies easier to understand and show support of or oppose; you can't make the populace in general make wise decisions.

In general therefore the only way to achieve good governance is by having a strong, well-educated set of oligarchs in power; the only way to achieve good legitimacy is to give absolute power to people who probably don't know what they're doing. The two goals are opposed to one another, and are irreconcilable.

Making policies easier to understand is definitely an objective, yet the people can make wise decisions after becoming informed about an issue - for example reading a concise briefing of the issue, with it's pros and cons before voting on either the issue itself or one of it's pros and cons.

Purple Prince posted:

e: For the American context, one of the least democratically-inclined presidents you had, FDR, who came from an elite political family and was criticised during his presidency and afterwards for doing his best to impose his will on Congress, is in retrospect considered one of the most effective at governing. On the other hand, 'I love bipartisanship' Obama, despite his equally elite education and background to FDR, achieved only a neutered version of one of his main political objectives (Obamacare) and acted in ways directly contradictory to his stated aims in other areas (foreign policy). Democracy and effectiveness are very rarely correlated.

That's one of the problems, one party undoes the previous party's decisions and progress is slowed to a snail's pace - this could be subverted.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2020 23:51

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Kaal posted:

While it may be appealing to simply blame "bad politicians" for America's ills, reality is a lot more complicated. At the end of the day, the issues with American politics don't really come down to personal bribes. They're systemic problems that typically have very little to do with individual graft or virtue. As a result, a jury democracy doesn't really serve a purpose. It would, however, so fundamentally weaken the political system that corporate influence would finally be able to "drown it in the bathtub".

Consider a courtroom without a judge or a legislative body to enact laws. Both the prosecution and defense provide experts to testify. The lay jury may review precedent, but makes their decision independently and without any particular insight. Perhaps they render a just verdict, or perhaps the outcome is seen as incompetent or even malevolent - the jury is unaccountable regardless. Either way, the case can usually be appealed before a new jury. Where is the legitimacy here? What are the merits of this system? Certainly there is little about it that seems fair or democratic.

That's a excellent point - we could all vote on a case, rather than a selection of 12. Group discussion of evidence, and people whose hobby it is to decipher legalese (if legalese isn't already voted away with) then a fairer trial could take place. If Direct, or Liquid Democracy is unanonymous then there votes would be a matter of record, potentially on a public website in a similar vein to China's, where their vote on "Black man on rape charge obvs guilty" is noted according to them, and the public react accordingly.

Purple Prince posted:

When you're talking about a Artificial General Superintelligence, you're talking about a machine that is able to formulate its own goals and strategies for accomplishing those goals. If you want a governance-bot, that necessarily needs to include heuristics for what a good society, or a good process in society, looks like. And that's where the issue with inventor bias comes in.

If we let the AGI continue to develop it stands to reason that it would evolve beyond it's biases, as some of us do. :shrug:

# ¿ Sep 3, 2020 20:24

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Typo posted:

I see absolutely nothing that can possibly go wrong with making life-or-death trial outcomes decided by the equivalent of a twitter poll

There could be checks of understanding in place, and weed out troll votes where people shitpost on someone's murder rap, but it could be a lot more in depth thatn *pah* twitter. Some forums work well with all the options they have available.

What's the film?

# ¿ Sep 6, 2020 20:21

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Typo posted:

So a harsher version of a literacy test

A version to test understanding, that could be performed (and passed) by the illiterate.

I think a big problem with your suggestion is idea that "group discussions" on the internet produces understanding and good results.

This is something which 20 years ago people actually beleived: but a five minute glance at your Twitter and FB feed today will instantly disprove.

Not only that but you are proposing getting rid of secret balloting entirely, and explicitly use the threat of popular retribution for voting against whatever the majority opinion is on any given topic to whip dissent into line. Which is to say the mechanism you have for enforcing "good" behavior is basically to automatically doxx everyone the instant they vote for anything.

Even if you think this is a good idea for enforcing "correct" political views, it instantly breaks if 51% of FB userbase's political opinion is "wrong" at any given moment and the people on the "right" side of an issue is are now the victims of doxxing. It's rule by Twitter mob: which sounds worse than when the Athenian assembly voted to executed Socrates or their generals after Arginusae.
it's ending to deus ex invisible wars
[/quote]

People on FB and Twitter feeds are trying to score emotional points with their arguments rather than logical ones, in a professional setting brainstorming can produce unprecedented effects. Take a look at [The Wisdom of Crowdshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds] - if people are placed together to solve a problem, many are better than one.

Whether votes should be anonymised is a valid issue, not sure what's best at the moment - if you're speaking in public you may be more or less inclined to troll people, depending on the reactions you get. Either way, we get the democracy we deserve by it's constituents.

Regarding the 51% issue, one solution could be to require a supermajority on issues rated as high importance. For example. voting on someone's execution (if capital punishment was voted into place

)

Thanks for the reference, that's the only DX apart from the mobile one I haven't tried.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2020 20:57

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Typo posted:

how exactly does is this test suppose to work?

There are a number of ways, one would be to have a quick multiple choice 5 question quiz to test undertanding of the issue. Get them right, get to vote.

Typo posted:

How are you planning to enforce "professional setting" discussions? Who does the enforcement? What is the punishment for "unprofessional" discourse?

Well, it hasn't been tried yet, though I feel that people would choose to act more professional when they are choosing how the country is run. "Unprofessional" discourse would be downvoted if not liked by the community that the DD is in place for, so the community would socially enforce behaviours. Social credits could be a better incentive than financial ones.

Typo posted:

fair enough I guess, although this seems a distinct negative rather than positive

I get that, but I think most people get the short end of the stick - people tend to be quite similar creatures in lots of ways and respects.

# ¿ Sep 25, 2020 20:26

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Still Dismal posted:

Right now I'm voting on like a dozen different ballot initiatives, it's loving stupid. Some of them are on pretty complex and technical stuff that honestly should be handled by the legislature. A well designed political system should put as few barriers in the way of the electorate being able to translate their views into policy as possible, and having to dig deep into the intricacies of bond financing or whatever to figure out just what the hell I'm voting for is a absolutely an obstacle to that.

DRWN posted:

How about liquid democracy? The goal is to take power from politicians right?

As DRWN mentions, liquid democracy would ensure that we can put our voting powers to those in the know on the sorts of ballots you mention, where the layperson wouldn't know what the hell (or care, probably) what bond financing is, but could vote for their favourite economist to vote on those matters. Sure, some people would still choose to give all their votes in all their voting areas to...let's see, who's popular with the youth of today...Morgan Freeman but that would still be better if good ol' Freeman chose to pass his votes on to an economist for economic matters.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2020 14:57

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# ¿ May 12, 2024 03:44

Desdinova: Dec 16, 2004; I had to be on my toes, like a midget at a urinal!

Still Dismal posted:

Direct democracy is me having to vote on poo poo like bond financing.

If we used Liquid Democracy instead of Direct, then you could choose a finance person to vote on all the finance stuff that you aren't knowledgable/interested in.

This also means we have more of a meritocracy, so experts (decided by the public) would be able to have a larger voice in the decision making process.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2020 12:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Direct Democracy