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Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. One of the major thing Intern

by sytelus 11y ago

Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. One of the major thing Internet does is to make process of voting dirt cheap. One no longer has to setup physical voting booths, deploy thousands of election officials, physically tally votes and so on. This means we can give direct democracy a real chance. Why should we let senators or presidents make all of the decisions for us for years? Why not just vote for every issue directly? Why shouldn't anyone on Internet be able to propose a law and have it voted by people in the country directly? This can change everything... ...or so I thought. There are several problem with direct democracy: (1) Most people are not expert at things like foreign policy, economics and so on. (2) Many people can be heavily influenced to vote either way by creating powerful PR campaigns. (3) Most people have no time or capacity to digest tons of dense information to get the background. (4) Some information needed to make decision must remain classified. This paper actually proposes a viable option here that works around many of the above issues. Instead of delegating all decisions for next 4 years to one person, we delegate case-by-cases and for arbitrary time length. This allows, for example, for a real economist to be elected to make a economy decision or nuclear scientist to be elected for Iran deal like decisions and so on. It might work. The bottom line is that we can get rid of arcane pre-Internet political system of senators, congressman and presidents.

wnevets 11y ago
>Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. One of the major thing Internet does is to make process of voting dirt cheap. One no longer has to setup physical voting booths, deploy thousands of election officials, physically tally votes and so on. This means we can give direct democracy a real chance. Why should we let senators or presidents make all of the decisions for us for years? Why not just vote for every issue directly? Why shouldn't anyone on Internet be able to propose a law and have it voted by people in the country directly? This can change everything... Cost of physically tally votes isn't the reason the US is a representative democracy. The mob is inherently irrational, stupid and over reactive, which is why the founders settled on representatives. Case-by-cases voting also doesn't solve this problem, even with the internet.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  "The mob is inherently irrational, stupid and over reactive" This was the main thrust of the monarchist argument against representative democracy. Most dictators have used it too. The other one is that people "are not ready" for more democracy but maybe they will be one day. Mubarak favored this excuse - that is, before murdering demonstrators in cold blood who had the gall to ask for it.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Just because dictators used it doesn't mean it isn't right. And I think its truth is self-evident, if you just care to look around. Democracy has good sides, like bloodless government transitions, but one thing it does not do is facilitating sane decision making.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      The opposite seems self evident to me. Saner decision making: Switzerland > US > Egypt > North Korea Level of democracy: Switzerland > US > Egypt > North Korea I used to think Singapore was a good example of "benevolent dictatorship", but after living here for a few years I've come to understand that this isn't the case. The ruling party has made some spectacularly bad decisions that they wouldn't have without more democratic accountability, and many of the good decisions they did make were stolen from the opposition (whomever they happened to be at the time).
    - monstruoso 11y ago
      > And I think its truth is self-evident Reads as if you are saying that nothing can convince you otherwise.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Seeing a mob coming up with non-completely-idiotic solutions to problems on a regular basis would. I doubt it's possible in principle though, even without negative (with various degrees of malice) influence of the media. It's funny how the tool that's supposed to guarantee accountability in a democracy is also the thing that dumbs it down.
nemothekid 11y ago
>One no longer has to setup physical voting booths, deploy thousands of election officials, physically tally votes and so on. Computerphile actually has a pretty good argument why we shouldn't use e-voting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
crdoconnor 11y ago
>Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. No, it is not. Democratic reforms have always been won by fighting entrenched elites protecting their power and privilege. It has never been about the 'expense'. People without property, blacks, women, etc. were not prevented from voting because it wasn't cheap enough or because they were too dumb (not that that excuse wasn't used frequently). Democratic reforms do not happen when everybody comes together to agree that they are a sensible next step. They happen when the masses fight and sacrifice with blood, sweat and sometimes their lives. Our representatives aren't experts in foreign policy or economics or other relevant policy matters either (series of tubes, anyone?). They rely upon advisors. This is another source of unchecked power and privilege (particularly for the economics profession, which abuses this power ruthlessly and are often no more competent at running an economy than the average person). Direct democracy is not available to us today because we didn't fight for it. It has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with a lack of activism (the kind which involves real work). As a society we're actually steadily de-democratizing and moving towards a more feudalistic model where the decisions are largely made by legions of unelected financiers, elite economists and a corporate elite.
datamonk88 11y ago
>There are several problem with direct democracy: (1) Most people are not expert at things like foreign policy, economics and so on. (2) Many people can be heavily influenced to vote either way by creating powerful PR campaigns. (3) Most people have no time or capacity to digest tons of dense information to get the background. (4) Some information needed to make decision must remain classified. In addition to 1-4, I think there is another problem: (5) Individuals with a higher stake in the outcome have no way to express their greater interest (an individual might have a higher stake in gay marriage being legalized, but his vote counts the same as someone mildly opposed). Systems like Quadratic Voting (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956) solve (5) by allowing voters to pay N*N dollars for N votes (25$ for 5 votes, 1,000,000$ for 1000 votes) and redistributing the funds collected per-capita to each voter after the vote is finished. I wonder if you could meld Delegative Democracy with Quadratic Voting? What if individuals can buy N votes (expressing their interests appropriately) AND delegate their votes to another (allocating their interests to those most capable of making decisions)? Delegative democracy seems to solve 1, 3, and 4. Quadratic voting seems to solve 5.
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  How is Quadratic Voting any different than a free market? In a free market system, people vote every day with their dollars. The only difference is with a free market, there are lots of mini-governments (companies) competing for your votes (dollars), while with Quadratic Voting, you only vote within one government?
  - JulianMorrison 11y ago
    QV only really captures preferences if people start out equally rich, or at least, where a given number of votes must be bought with an equal amount of "pain" which might be an expense scaled according to assets. FM allows a vanishingly tiny minority to sweep up such a huge money-pile that their most casual whim carries more weight than millions of third world people's urgent desperation.
    - 11y ago
jacques_chester 11y ago
The cost and unwieldiness of paper ballots is a feature, not a bug. A paper system has hundreds or thousands of individuals, some percentage of them mutually hostile, who must be subverted in order to subvert the election. A digital system is one stolen key, one bad sysadmin, one disgruntled programmer, from total compromise. They might be proved "safe", but they cannot be observed in the way that the mechanics surrounding a paper ballot can be.

by sytelus 11y ago

wnevets 11y ago

>Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. One of the major thing Internet does is to make process of voting dirt cheap. One no longer has to setup physical voting booths, deploy thousands of election officials, physically tally votes and so on. This means we can give direct democracy a real chance. Why should we let senators or presidents make all of the decisions for us for years? Why not just vote for every issue directly? Why shouldn't anyone on Internet be able to propose a law and have it voted by people in the country directly? This can change everything... Cost of physically tally votes isn't the reason the US is a representative democracy. The mob is inherently irrational, stupid and over reactive, which is why the founders settled on representatives. Case-by-cases voting also doesn't solve this problem, even with the internet.

crdoconnor 11y ago
"The mob is inherently irrational, stupid and over reactive" This was the main thrust of the monarchist argument against representative democracy. Most dictators have used it too. The other one is that people "are not ready" for more democracy but maybe they will be one day. Mubarak favored this excuse - that is, before murdering demonstrators in cold blood who had the gall to ask for it.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Just because dictators used it doesn't mean it isn't right. And I think its truth is self-evident, if you just care to look around. Democracy has good sides, like bloodless government transitions, but one thing it does not do is facilitating sane decision making.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    The opposite seems self evident to me. Saner decision making: Switzerland > US > Egypt > North Korea Level of democracy: Switzerland > US > Egypt > North Korea I used to think Singapore was a good example of "benevolent dictatorship", but after living here for a few years I've come to understand that this isn't the case. The ruling party has made some spectacularly bad decisions that they wouldn't have without more democratic accountability, and many of the good decisions they did make were stolen from the opposition (whomever they happened to be at the time).
  - monstruoso 11y ago
    > And I think its truth is self-evident Reads as if you are saying that nothing can convince you otherwise.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Seeing a mob coming up with non-completely-idiotic solutions to problems on a regular basis would. I doubt it's possible in principle though, even without negative (with various degrees of malice) influence of the media. It's funny how the tool that's supposed to guarantee accountability in a democracy is also the thing that dumbs it down.

nemothekid 11y ago

>One no longer has to setup physical voting booths, deploy thousands of election officials, physically tally votes and so on. Computerphile actually has a pretty good argument why we shouldn't use e-voting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

crdoconnor 11y ago

>Current implementation of democratic systems is result of the fact that process for voting had been expensive in pre-Internet era. No, it is not. Democratic reforms have always been won by fighting entrenched elites protecting their power and privilege. It has never been about the 'expense'. People without property, blacks, women, etc. were not prevented from voting because it wasn't cheap enough or because they were too dumb (not that that excuse wasn't used frequently). Democratic reforms do not happen when everybody comes together to agree that they are a sensible next step. They happen when the masses fight and sacrifice with blood, sweat and sometimes their lives. Our representatives aren't experts in foreign policy or economics or other relevant policy matters either (series of tubes, anyone?). They rely upon advisors. This is another source of unchecked power and privilege (particularly for the economics profession, which abuses this power ruthlessly and are often no more competent at running an economy than the average person). Direct democracy is not available to us today because we didn't fight for it. It has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with a lack of activism (the kind which involves real work). As a society we're actually steadily de-democratizing and moving towards a more feudalistic model where the decisions are largely made by legions of unelected financiers, elite economists and a corporate elite.

datamonk88 11y ago

>There are several problem with direct democracy: (1) Most people are not expert at things like foreign policy, economics and so on. (2) Many people can be heavily influenced to vote either way by creating powerful PR campaigns. (3) Most people have no time or capacity to digest tons of dense information to get the background. (4) Some information needed to make decision must remain classified. In addition to 1-4, I think there is another problem: (5) Individuals with a higher stake in the outcome have no way to express their greater interest (an individual might have a higher stake in gay marriage being legalized, but his vote counts the same as someone mildly opposed). Systems like Quadratic Voting (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2343956) solve (5) by allowing voters to pay N*N dollars for N votes (25$ for 5 votes, 1,000,000$ for 1000 votes) and redistributing the funds collected per-capita to each voter after the vote is finished. I wonder if you could meld Delegative Democracy with Quadratic Voting? What if individuals can buy N votes (expressing their interests appropriately) AND delegate their votes to another (allocating their interests to those most capable of making decisions)? Delegative democracy seems to solve 1, 3, and 4. Quadratic voting seems to solve 5.

bsbechtel 11y ago
How is Quadratic Voting any different than a free market? In a free market system, people vote every day with their dollars. The only difference is with a free market, there are lots of mini-governments (companies) competing for your votes (dollars), while with Quadratic Voting, you only vote within one government?
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  QV only really captures preferences if people start out equally rich, or at least, where a given number of votes must be bought with an equal amount of "pain" which might be an expense scaled according to assets. FM allows a vanishingly tiny minority to sweep up such a huge money-pile that their most casual whim carries more weight than millions of third world people's urgent desperation.
  - 11y ago

jacques_chester 11y ago

The cost and unwieldiness of paper ballots is a feature, not a bug. A paper system has hundreds or thousands of individuals, some percentage of them mutually hostile, who must be subverted in order to subvert the election. A digital system is one stolen key, one bad sysadmin, one disgruntled programmer, from total compromise. They might be proved "safe", but they cannot be observed in the way that the mechanics surrounding a paper ballot can be.