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> I'm curious to which country you're assigning these noble ideals. Actually all of them. > In no place I've lived would the average person walking into the v

by wazoox 11y ago

> I'm curious to which country you're assigning these noble ideals. Actually all of them. > In no place I've lived would the average person walking into the voting box have spent time studying the history of banking law and policy to make a well-informed rational decision. Because most people have been mercilessly been beaten into obedience, and the belief that they aren't actually able to think by themselves, that they're inferior to the oligarchs in command (hint: they aren't. The President is no better than me and no better than the garbage man). In 2005, in France, the "referendum on a European Constitution" lit an immense debate, and there was an incredibly well-formed decision on an enormously obtuse tome of legalese. You can check that similar debates are common in Switzerland. People actually think about the problem, discuss it, and vote in conscience. If you think people aren't able to think and decide autonomously for themselves, you are actively opposing democracy. Ordinary elective oligarchy is the ideology that mostly pass as "democracy" nowadays, but please don't stay abused and go on pretending you like democracy when you don't.

tonfa 11y ago
> You can check that similar debates are common in Switzerland. People actually think about the problem, discuss it, and vote in conscience. Or in 90%+ of the case they just follow the opinion of the federal council.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
dozzie 11y ago
> [...] (hint: they aren't. The President is no better than me and no better than the garbage man). I would be surprised if he would be better than The Garbageman. http://dilbert.wikia.com/wiki/The_Garbageman http://dilbert.wikia.com/wiki/The_Garbageman
ethbro 11y ago
Both of you are correct. The problem with direct democracy these days is that it ignores the power of mass media, which is to say it ignores the influence of money on a statistically significant portion of the voters. Premise 1: if you continue adding people to the voting pool on an issue, at some point (X) you're going to exceed the number of people who have interest / time / capability to render themselves informed. When you do, mass media begins to exert a much greater effect on the outcome (as these people are more susceptible to having their opinions swayed). Premise 2: If you shrink the pool of potential voters, but keep the money involved the same, then corruption increases -- There are of course things you can do legally to fight both of these negative outcomes, but I feel you'll always be fighting the basic tendencies. The solution then isn't direct democracy (where mass media overrides logic) or oligarchy (where corruption rules) but some point in between.
- wazoox 11y ago
  > Both of you are correct. The problem with direct democracy these days is that it ignores the power of mass media, which is to say it ignores the influence of money on a statistically significant portion of the voters. That's why the example of the 2005 French referendum is so important. All of mainstream politics were campaigning for "Yes". All of media, papers, TV, radios were exclusively campaigning for "Yes". However, the "No" vote won by a comfortable margin 55% to 45%, and the campaign for the "No" almost entirely took place on the internet and social networks.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    The outcome and the results are useless without normalizing against an unadvertised baseline. If either traditional/big media or the internet and social networks influenced the vote by pursuading people who didn't do their own research -- that's a fundamental problem.
murbard2 11y ago
> Actually all of them. I suspect you live in a bubble. Have you met many average voters?
- wazoox 11y ago
  Quite a lot, and I try to and avoid the self-satisfying feeling of smug contempt or disdain. And I've met people pretty close to the highest level of command of this world, too. Therefore I feel entitled to compare them and I'm absolutely certain that the difference between the lowest pavement sweeper and POTUS is much, much smaller than the oligarchy wants you to believe. Because you know, that would mean that democracy, equality, freedom are actually possible. That the rich and powerful don't actually deserve any special treatment. etc.
  - murbard2 11y ago
    It would imply no such thing. Voters do not have much incentive to make informed votes since the expected impact of their vote is very small. As a result, they tend to use their vote for signaling purposes, as a way to reflect the type of person they want to be, rather than based on what they anticipate the consequences of their vote will be. If voters are so astute and informed, how do you explain that they radically disagree on the consequence of various policies, and that their disagreement can be predicted based on their parent's politics? How do you explain that in polls, voters position align so well with the left-right axis? We aren't just talking about values here, but about a non subjective assessment of the consequences of policies. How odd that it would cluster in this way!
    - wazoox 11y ago
      *> Voters do not have much incentive to make informed votes since the expected impact of their vote is very small. True. This is called learned helplessness. But people can also learn autonomy, emancipation instead, given the possibility to make an impact. I'm not pretending that people are "astute and informed", they aren't; but they're definitely able to become so.
PaulAJ 11y ago
Because most people have been mercilessly been beaten into obedience, and the belief that they aren't actually able to think by themselves, that they're inferior to the oligarchs in command. I don't agree. I've read quite a bit of economics, I read serious newspapers from a range of political viewpoints, and I have a technical degree. All of this merely helps me to appreciate just how ignorant I am, and how complicated the world is. Imagine that my local council asked its residents how much money this year should be dedicated to renewing the sewerage system, which is a typical example of the small but important decisions that have to be taken on behalf of the public. I don't know the first thing about sewerage engineering. If the council tells me that they recommend $10M then I have literally no idea whether this is the right number, even to an order of magnitude. The Pointy Haired Boss is a character in the Dilbert cartoons. He doesn't understand the technology Dilbert is working on, but that doesn't stop him from telling Dilbert how to do his job. Direct democracy puts the public in the role of the PHB, and the results would be very similar.
- icebraining 11y ago
  But the thing is, the members of the council don't know either. Do you think the retired economist or the graduate in communication studies - the two most senior members of my local council - know about sewers?
mattlutze 11y ago
> In 2005, in France, the "referendum on a European Constitution" lit an immense debate, and there was an incredibly well-formed decision on an enormously obtuse tome of legalese. On the contrary, the outcome of the referendum was less about the merits of the proposed constitution, and more an expression of growing anti-Establishment social opinion and a demonstration of discontent with the majority parties and President Chirac. > If you think people aren't able to think and decide autonomously for themselves, you are actively opposing democracy. If you think people aren't able to determine how to choose reasonable facsimiles of their moral/social/economic position through which to abstract their effect on the daily operation of a state, you are actively opposing democracy. Being able to choose when and how to make decisions must be a core component of the free exercise of democracy.

by wazoox 11y ago

tonfa 11y ago

> You can check that similar debates are common in Switzerland. People actually think about the problem, discuss it, and vote in conscience. Or in 90%+ of the case they just follow the opinion of the federal council.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

dozzie 11y ago

> [...] (hint: they aren't. The President is no better than me and no better than the garbage man). I would be surprised if he would be better than The Garbageman. http://dilbert.wikia.com/wiki/The_Garbageman http://dilbert.wikia.com/wiki/The_Garbageman

ethbro 11y ago

Both of you are correct. The problem with direct democracy these days is that it ignores the power of mass media, which is to say it ignores the influence of money on a statistically significant portion of the voters. Premise 1: if you continue adding people to the voting pool on an issue, at some point (X) you're going to exceed the number of people who have interest / time / capability to render themselves informed. When you do, mass media begins to exert a much greater effect on the outcome (as these people are more susceptible to having their opinions swayed). Premise 2: If you shrink the pool of potential voters, but keep the money involved the same, then corruption increases -- There are of course things you can do legally to fight both of these negative outcomes, but I feel you'll always be fighting the basic tendencies. The solution then isn't direct democracy (where mass media overrides logic) or oligarchy (where corruption rules) but some point in between.

wazoox 11y ago
> Both of you are correct. The problem with direct democracy these days is that it ignores the power of mass media, which is to say it ignores the influence of money on a statistically significant portion of the voters. That's why the example of the 2005 French referendum is so important. All of mainstream politics were campaigning for "Yes". All of media, papers, TV, radios were exclusively campaigning for "Yes". However, the "No" vote won by a comfortable margin 55% to 45%, and the campaign for the "No" almost entirely took place on the internet and social networks.
- ethbro 11y ago
  The outcome and the results are useless without normalizing against an unadvertised baseline. If either traditional/big media or the internet and social networks influenced the vote by pursuading people who didn't do their own research -- that's a fundamental problem.

murbard2 11y ago

> Actually all of them. I suspect you live in a bubble. Have you met many average voters?

wazoox 11y ago
Quite a lot, and I try to and avoid the self-satisfying feeling of smug contempt or disdain. And I've met people pretty close to the highest level of command of this world, too. Therefore I feel entitled to compare them and I'm absolutely certain that the difference between the lowest pavement sweeper and POTUS is much, much smaller than the oligarchy wants you to believe. Because you know, that would mean that democracy, equality, freedom are actually possible. That the rich and powerful don't actually deserve any special treatment. etc.
- murbard2 11y ago
  It would imply no such thing. Voters do not have much incentive to make informed votes since the expected impact of their vote is very small. As a result, they tend to use their vote for signaling purposes, as a way to reflect the type of person they want to be, rather than based on what they anticipate the consequences of their vote will be. If voters are so astute and informed, how do you explain that they radically disagree on the consequence of various policies, and that their disagreement can be predicted based on their parent's politics? How do you explain that in polls, voters position align so well with the left-right axis? We aren't just talking about values here, but about a non subjective assessment of the consequences of policies. How odd that it would cluster in this way!
  - wazoox 11y ago
    *> Voters do not have much incentive to make informed votes since the expected impact of their vote is very small. True. This is called learned helplessness. But people can also learn autonomy, emancipation instead, given the possibility to make an impact. I'm not pretending that people are "astute and informed", they aren't; but they're definitely able to become so.

PaulAJ 11y ago

Because most people have been mercilessly been beaten into obedience, and the belief that they aren't actually able to think by themselves, that they're inferior to the oligarchs in command. I don't agree. I've read quite a bit of economics, I read serious newspapers from a range of political viewpoints, and I have a technical degree. All of this merely helps me to appreciate just how ignorant I am, and how complicated the world is. Imagine that my local council asked its residents how much money this year should be dedicated to renewing the sewerage system, which is a typical example of the small but important decisions that have to be taken on behalf of the public. I don't know the first thing about sewerage engineering. If the council tells me that they recommend $10M then I have literally no idea whether this is the right number, even to an order of magnitude. The Pointy Haired Boss is a character in the Dilbert cartoons. He doesn't understand the technology Dilbert is working on, but that doesn't stop him from telling Dilbert how to do his job. Direct democracy puts the public in the role of the PHB, and the results would be very similar.

icebraining 11y ago
But the thing is, the members of the council don't know either. Do you think the retired economist or the graduate in communication studies - the two most senior members of my local council - know about sewers?

mattlutze 11y ago

> In 2005, in France, the "referendum on a European Constitution" lit an immense debate, and there was an incredibly well-formed decision on an enormously obtuse tome of legalese. On the contrary, the outcome of the referendum was less about the merits of the proposed constitution, and more an expression of growing anti-Establishment social opinion and a demonstration of discontent with the majority parties and President Chirac. > If you think people aren't able to think and decide autonomously for themselves, you are actively opposing democracy. If you think people aren't able to determine how to choose reasonable facsimiles of their moral/social/economic position through which to abstract their effect on the daily operation of a state, you are actively opposing democracy. Being able to choose when and how to make decisions must be a core component of the free exercise of democracy.