Nameless Voice on 18/2/2018 at 15:58

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In theory, I like the idea of a direct democracy, but given the way that I've seen people behave - in recent elections and referendums around the word, in online games, and even in communities like TTLG - the whole idea is just depressing.
I can never decide if the awful people, the hate groups, the racists, the bigots, are a small but loud fraction of society whose toxic opinions make them stand out more and seem more numerous than they really are, of if that's just human nature, and any attempt at direct democracy would be doomed to failure because, in their hearts, most people are just not decent people capable of making informed, rational and empathetic decisions.


I think the big problem with current political systems is that they aren't actually the representational democracies that they claim to be.

They are corrupted by political parties and money.

A true representational democracy would actually have representatives from every part of society having a say, as opposed to all policy decided by a group that mostly consists of rich, privileged white men.

I think that political parties are anathema to democracy, because they subvert the concept. The government doesn't make decisions based on consensus from different parts of society, but instead one faction organises into a monopoly to subvert the democratic process and push the agenda of their party.


The other thing is that current electoral systems are, by and large, broken in most countries. Ireland is a tiny country that doesn't really matter to the rest of the world, but they are one of the few countries that actually allow each voter to list their candidates in order of preference; to vote for the person that they really want to elect, but to hedge their bets and also put in the candidates that they'd least hate to see in office as later preferences on their votes. Without that, you end up with a government that the largest single group of people want, rather than what the entire population would like to compromise on.


The other thing is that governments around the world are really far too swayed by basically bribes from wealthy interests and large companies. It seems to be too easy for specific elected individuals and political parties to be bribed into not making the decisions and legislation that need to be made for the benefits of the most people.
In a direct democracy, it would be much harder for those special interests to subvert democracy, because they'd need to bribe everyone - and if they were bribing everyone, they'd probably have to do so with community projects rather than monetary bribes - and wouldn't that mean that they were basically donating their money to make the world a better place, even if for the wrong reasons?

Trance on 20/2/2018 at 01:46

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If you're gonna pull the theft angle, consider the case of corporate lobbyists and bribes endeavoring to rewrite the rulebook so those at the top can run off with more and more of the economy's blood, and a greater percentage of the money supply pools around them. There's theft of wealth going on right now, only it's in the opposite direction from what you're referring to.

You're right to bring morality into the subject of economic policy, but you're pointing it at the wrong crowd.

Trance on 20/2/2018 at 19:48

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All of that sounds like a failing of the republic model rather than anything against direct democracy. Enjoy your cocktail.

Nicker on 23/2/2018 at 17:00

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Kolya - Many professions impact human lives. Commercial pilots and bus drivers hold more lives in their hands than any individual doctor. So what? Your comparison of doctors and politicians doesn't exclude anyone from becoming an elected official to high office, either by definition or in actuality. It's a non-argument.

Political science is the study of politics after the fact, not training to be in politics. There is no overt educational requirement for elected office. Either that needs to be changed or we must accept that the methods and standards for filling public offices is inherently different from certifying professions.

Politics is hard - that's a description, not an argument. I think that politics is hard in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons but politics will happen, regardless. How can we do it better?

"Are you somehow averse to science and expert knowledge?"

No. Are you somehow averse to new ideas before they have even been thought?

Touche on Brexit and Greece. But on the other hand, Canadians have been demanding decriminalised pot for over half a century, three generations. It's always been a good idea for ethical and practical reasons. But individual politicians and unenlightened self interest (mostly the prison industrial complex in the USA) prevented it. Whether in groups or individually, humans are capable of genius and stupidity, courage and cowardice, compassion and avarice. Again, that's a description, it's not an argument for or against a better democracy or any particular method to achieve it.

"To begin with, people tend not to care and not even go to votes they have no interest in."

This is an important point. Is this indifference because people are naturally disinterested or because our present systems prevents and discourages meaningful participation? If you remove the barriers of money, connections and personal risk from the equation, if access is through a device we already have in our home, will people rise to the challenge or just find other excuses to shirk?

That's kind of the object of this exercise - how might the problems you identify, and others, be overcome or at least mitigated? You said that "It's not like this stuff hasn't been tried." Actually some of the stuff already suggested has not been tried and since we are still gathering new ideas, fatalism is premature. Criticism is healthy. Preventing even the possibility of new thinking is not.

"Trump wants to cut out the experts in politics ("dry the swamp") and so do you apparently."

Where did anyone say that? Where is that required or even implied? No specific plan or method has been presented. There is an invitation for people to think creatively about a more inclusive government. That's all.

"Creating something stupid isn't that hard."

That's a premature value judgment you have yet to support convincingly, IMHO.

"It sounds like you want to make general agreement with your idea the entry card to this thread."

I neither have nor want to nor can enforce any such agenda here. I have, for the sake argument, presumed that there is a body of wisdom and knowledge, in the greater population, which is presently untapped, and asked how it might be accessed using current technologies.

You are welcome to participate in any way you wish but I invite you to try on a different hat for a change.

Harvester on 24/2/2018 at 19:05

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I'm willing to believe that a larger degree of direct democracy can work. However, Kolya has a point: a stupid, shitty form of direct democracy is worse than none at all. I'll illustrate by analyzing a form of direct democracy we've had here until recently.

In the Netherlands, there has been the possibility of an “advisory referendum” in place since 2015. We've had one such referendum, and IMO it was a huge disaster.

In the law that was passed in 2015, passed by mostly populist right-wing and socialist left-wing parties, you had to get 300,000 signatures to hold a referendum over a law that's been passed that you want the government to consider revoking. The advisory status means that the passed law has to be reconsidered and a new decision has to be made, but the decision can still be the same.

The referendum that we held was about the association treaty of the EU with the Ukraine. Signing the association treaty means a greater degree of collaboration between the EU and the Ukraine, albeit without official membership. It was considered important for the Ukraine to move in a more pro-European direction instead of pro-Russian. However, in the Netherlands a lot of people didn't like our government back then. The socialists and environmentalists thought it was too right-wing, the populists wanted it to be more anti-immigrant, and many people wanted it to be more anti-EU. A lot of people hate the European Union and many want to leave (a “Nexit”), which I think is a disastrous idea.

This presented the following problems with the referendum:


* People voted for the wrong reasons. The referendum was about the association treaty, but a lot of people used it to “send a message” to the government and the EU, by torpedoing the association treaty. We had this party leader who plainly said: “We don't care about the Ukraine, we just want to send a message to the EU”. So you just want to bitch about the EU at the expense of the Ukrainians, who just want a better future for themselves? Yeah, seems like a great idea.
* There was a lot of misinformation. For example, the “animal party” (yes, that's a thing here) said we're going to get a lot of cheap meat here from the Ukraine that's been produced in terrible conditions re: animal suffering. While in reality, when the Ukraine signs the association treaty, they're obliging themselves to move towards animal welfare standards closer to EU regulations.
* People stayed at home for strategic reasons. The result only has to be considered when 30% of the eligible voters has voted. So personally I stayed at home, because I don't believe in this form of referendum and didn't want to legitimize it with my vote. A lot of people did the same thing, hoping to keep the percentage below 30, thus rendering the result invalid - that's been researched. The attendance percentage was just over 30% and 61% voted against signing the treaty, but that number is meaningless with many people who supported the treaty staying at home for strategic reasons.
* That didn't stop people from demanding that the government listens to the result and refuses to sign the treaty. That means a EU-wide treaty can be blocked by a couple of million citizens from one single country, many of which voted for the wrong reasons. I hope I don't have to explain why this is a bad thing.
* The government drafted some addendums to the treaty, and lobbied in the EU to get the adjusted treaty passed, and it did. However, it was not good enough for the people who voted against the treaty. The advisory status was meaningless to them - according to them, the government had to do exactly what they wanted.
* That illustrates the main problem I have with this kind of thing: political reality is complicated and can't be reduced to Yes/No, Before/Against binary decisions. A referendum like this, with people demanding that the result should be followed verbatim and compromises are not allowed, cannot do justice to the difficulties of political reality as they are.

Our new government put an end to this form of referendum a few days ago. Good riddance if you ask me. There's one more referendum already planned which is still happening. It's about a “dragnet law” which allows our intelligence agencies to collect vast amounts of data to stop terrorism and such. Several parties are already saying: “vote FOR the advisory referendum by voting AGAINST the dragnet law”. As I said, people vote for the wrong reasons. QED on why this form of direct democracy is a bad idea, thus supporting Kolya's point of why badly thought out forms of direct democracy are worse than none at all.

A more robust system of referendums is in place in Switzerland. That seems to work fairly well, but I don't know much about it.