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Why real-world governments don’t have the consent of the governed

45 points by akbarnama 11y ago

infinity0 11y ago
Government is rape, essentially.
- vog 11y ago
  Is "essentially" the new "technically"? https://xkcd.com/1475/ https://xkcd.com/1475/
  - anon4 11y ago
    Basically, maybe.
- dang 11y ago
  Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
Synaesthesia 11y ago
This is why direct democracy would be a better model of government than representative democracy. However it's a threat to the existing power structure so don't expect to see it soon. We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app.
- paulsutter 11y ago
  Consider Switzerland: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy : "Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament.[16] Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a school house or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year"
  - aidos 11y ago
    How does the education of policy function in practice? I ask because in the UK we're planning a referendum on exiting the EU (or not). On most political issues I'd consider myself more well read than a great percentage of the population, but I don't feel in any way qualified to argue one way or another on this (I have a guy feeling, and I know which way I would probably vote, but really - that's not the right way to do things). I know that it will end up being driven by biased forces for political gain, like every other election / referendum held in the UK. How does Switzerland devolve information to the public so they can make a genuine informed decision?
    - iofj 11y ago
      This is not the advantage that a democracy gives. A democracy makes it impossible to fuck any group that's sufficiently large to either be a majority or able to team up with another minority and make a majority. You won't realize why this matters until you either study history, or look at how things work in countries like the UAE or China or other dictatorships. If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? (or vote invalid if the ballot is non-optional)
      - philh 11y ago
        > If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? This is an idea I've been toying with. Whenever an election rolls around, I keep hearing people say things like "I don't care who you vote for, just vote." "People died for your right to vote." "The problem today is that people don't vote." But I wonder whether the problem is that too many people vote. And mostly they don't do actual research, so they vote based on whatever's trickled down to them through the media they consume. This gives an advantage to whichever side can make itself sound most attractive in soundbites, which seems suboptimal.
      - marklgr 11y ago
        That's the flip side of the point, I guess; you can't go against the obvious interests of a majority of citizens, but if you can manipulate an uninformed/prejudiced/scared majority, then you have a relatively free hand to abuse everybody. Hence the importance of informed voters.
- nailer 11y ago
  The author still wouldn't approve of direct democracy either: they think all democracy is non-consent, and do not recognise societal majority as a form of consent. The author is arguing for anarchism, which generally doesn't scale beyond one person. As soon as you have multiple people and they disagree, you need some mechanism to fix the tie. This is obvious to most adult humans, which is why I'm surprised the article made it to WP. As the other poster notes with the example of Switzerland, the solution to governments straying too far from the will of the people is more democracy, rathe than abandoning the will of the people.
  - Synaesthesia 11y ago
    Anarchism can work at a larger scale, look at the success of revolutionary Spain. Anarchism can take many forms, the people can decide how they want their government to look. Anarchism merely rejects any form of authoritarianism. Well I don't agree with the author because he appears to be a right-wing, or American libertarian, who overlook the inherent authoritarianism and tyranny of corporations.
    - mike_hearn 11y ago
      What are you referring to? Spain has never been a long term example of anarchy. It has been a dictatorship many times though.
      - Synaesthesia 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia It was quickly crushed by all the other global powers together, the Soviet Union, the West, and the Franco Nationalists with the Nazi's. But while it existed, it was very successful. Read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" to get an impression of it.
        mike_hearn 11y ago
        Revolutionary Catalonia wasn't anarchist - your own source says "Although the Catalonian Generalitat was nominally in power, the trade unions were de facto in command of most of the economy and military forces." Socialist trade unions and anarchists are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum (assuming the anarchists are actually anarchists .... my experience of such people is that they often claim to be, but when the rubber hits the road they turn out to be communists too)
- calibraxis 11y ago
  There's a place in the world which has it. Rojava, US ally and the world's most effective ground force against ISIS: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_radical_experiment_in_democracy_in_northern_syria_american_leftists.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_... There's lots of literature on their bottom-up democratic model, with self-governing communities that come together and hopefully will dissolve the bureaucratic nation-state. (For example, as NYT points out, all their 6,000 police are elected, a women-only force deals with sexual assault, and all recruits receive weapons only after two weeks feminist instruction. This is incredible anywhere in the world, not to mention in Syria under attack from ISIS and Turkey.)
- onion2k 11y ago
  We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. Using a smartphone app would mean people who are too poor to afford a smartphone, or physically unable use a smartphone, or who believe a smartphone is too great an invasion of their privacy, etc would be disenfranchised from the democratic process. That means it wouldn't really be democratic. Pretty much every single solution to direct democracy will leave someone out, so you need several ways to gather people's votes, and then it ends up being incredibly difficult to manage and expensive to run. Maybe in 30 years time when smartphones are truly ubiquitous, old people have grown up with them, they're genuinely secure and respectful of an individual's privacy an app will be a good idea. Until then, it's not going to work.
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    I don't see how it would be that difficult to manage and run. Smartphones + kiosks + teaching social services workers to help the disabled equals much better participation that with current systems.
    - mnw21cam 11y ago
      Two important attributes of a fair voting system are the ability to verify that only one vote is allowed per eligible person, and that it is impossible to tell afterwards which way a particular person voted. A paper voting system fulfils both of these requirements, simply by the fact that a voting official can check your name and ID as you enter the voting area, and you personally can check that there are no distinguishing marks on your particular voting slip. Therefore the identification step is separated from the vote counting. With an electronic voting system, it is impossible for the individual to inspect the inner workings of the voting mechanism and verify that the identification step is separated from the vote counting, so the second attribute described above is not fulfilled. As technology improves, computer systems become more complicated, not less, and so this becomes even more true. Because of this, I do not foresee any future technology that will adequately provide secure and deniable electronic voting that the individual can trust. Sometimes the simple way is the best.
- hk__2 11y ago
  I don’t think direct democracy is a good system, but perhaps that’s an issue with democracy as a whole. Decisions based on the majority’s choice are not always the best and you can easily end up in a situation where propositions are made based on popularity instead of effectiveness. Propose to remove all taxes or give $1m to every citizen and you’ll probably get a significant share of the population with you even if it’s absurd. The problem is uninformed vote: people who’re not informed/serious enough to make a wise decision. You have to either educate people (but in that case, who does that? How do we ensure they’re not biased?) or prevent them from making decisions (but that’s dictatorship: how do you ensure the dictator(s) stay wise and benevolent?).
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    Decisions based on the minorities choice are not always the best either. Unfortunately, the sentiment you're expressing here is increasingly common, especially in America. Pew Research have been doing surveys since the 1960's that show that the percentage of people who agree that they have "a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people" has been in steep decline for decades, and people who agree are now in the minority: http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/declining-confidence-in-political-wisdom-of-americans/ http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/declining-confidence... This is IMO leading directly to the popularity of guys like Trump, whose brand of politics is based almost entirely on "don't trust democracy, trust me". Unfortunately, it's easy to take for granted the stability that democracy brings. Yes, sometimes, bad decisions are made ... or we look back on earlier times and judge their decisions as bad in retrospect (although at the time, lots of people thought it was good, e.g. slavery, oppression of gays etc). But history has shown us what happens when you choose the alternative of decision making by small minorities of self-proclaimed "elites". You get communism and much worse decision making. By the way, your lack of faith in people is either misplaced, or a purely local phenomenon. For instance in Switzerland there are 16 referendums per year, and people do in fact vote against things that would be trivially good for them in the short term but possibly worse in the long term, like longer holidays. Switzerland is in fact an excellent example of how the world's most democratic country is also one of its most stable and prosperous.
    - 11y ago
- bsbechtel 11y ago
  The best model of direct democracy is where you vote every day for the goods and services you want in your life with your dollars.
  - fyolnish 11y ago
    Everyone would have to have the same number of dollars
    - bsbechtel 11y ago
      Direct democracy with one vote for one person is fine, until the majority starts voting to infringe on the minority's rights.
      - hwstar 11y ago
        The "Opulent Minorities" rights should be balanced with mob rule. Unfortunately in the US today, the Opulent Minority decides the laws for the rest of us, unless there is nearly unanimous dissent.
        bsbechtel 11y ago
        I wasn't necessarily referring to just the "Opulent Minorities", i.e. the rich unless you are referencing something else I'm not understanding. There are plenty of examples where mob rule overruns the rights poor/disenfranchised minorities too.
- hyperdunc 11y ago
  Direct democracy is susceptible to mob rule, but we could certainly try it in some form on a small scale in order to learn more about it's strengths and weaknesses.
- datenwolf 11y ago
  > say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. That creates the problem of implementing a truly democratic voting system. You have to ensure that: - voting is secret (i.e. you can't map votes to individuals using just the information available to the public or the vote management) - voting is free (i.e. you can not influence the votes of individuals by coercion, which is easiest implemented by ensuring that voting is secret) - voting is equal, i.e. every voter has the same number of votes and votes can be entered only for entitled voters and each voter gets to vote only once per election - every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made - the counting process is open and accessible to everyone and does not require any a-priori knowledge about the finer details of the voting process in place Now try to implement THAT electronicsally. Even if the solve the first 4 clauses using the right kind of electronics and/or cryptography, the 5th clause is what puts the nail in the coffin for any electronic or computerized voting system: It excludes everybody from participating in the whole process of the election, who lacks deep knowledge about secure electronics design, cryptography and the implemented voting protocoll. In short, your idea of a "smartphone voting app" is stillborn, if you aim for a truly democratic election system.
  - ajuc 11y ago
    > every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made This isn't currently implemented in paper voting systems, why should it count against electronic voting systems? Also 5 isn't implemented too well at the moment either. I think if you got printout with your vote identifier after voting, and then printouts with all the votes (secret identifier->vote) were available - peple could check if their vote was counted. In which way paper voting is more open or more secret than that?
    - majewsky 11y ago
      Of course this is implemented in a paper voting system, if done right. When there are elections over here (in Germany), I can sit in the room all day and observe that the ballot box is empty at the beginning, every voter only votes once, and that votes are counted correctly at the end. When I did that last year, I also wrote down the totals and compared these to the published results for my electoral district.
- carsongross 11y ago
  Direct democracy, while certainly better than todays kakistocracy, is not a solution to the problem of governmental legitimacy based on something other than violence. Consider direct democracy involving the citizens of China and the US. Is there any way that such a system could avoid a tyrannical outcome? The only way to have meaningful consent amongst the governed is for the political unit to be significantly homogenized, and for voting to not really matter all that much. This is why secessionism and the devolution of sovereignty to smaller political units is a moral imperative. Voting should be used to ratify already existing consensus. This is also why multiculturalism is so deeply wounding to political legitimacy, and requires increasingly totalitarian measures to maintain.
paulsutter 11y ago
> You have no reasonable way of opting out of government rule. Governments control all the habitable land, and most of us don’t have the resources or even the legal permission to move elsewhere. The quickest way to change the law is to board a plane. Yes it's difficult to create a whole new country, but there are 200 readymade countries to choose from. (I'm surprised this is so controversial. I'm just saying individuals do have some direct control over the laws that they are subject to).
- deciplex 11y ago
  Most of them are terrible in one way (at least) or another, though.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- lordfoom 11y ago
  By doing that you're not opting out of government rule, you're just changing governments.
- parenthephobia 11y ago
  That isn't "opting-out of government rule", and it isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Yes it's almost like sharing the planet peacefully is hard and requires compromise.
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    > isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply It's not that hard. In comparison to "opting-out of government rule" it's trivial.
- toucan56 11y ago
lumberjack 11y ago
Libertarians to everyone else: "I will use my power and leverage to influence you at will, but don't you dare use your power and leverage to influence me. I don't consent to it."
- UK-AL 11y ago
  What the hell are you on about? Libertarians definition freedom stops at the point you start infringing on the freedom of others. It's a core concept. You would not find a single libertarian who agrees with your statement. They would probably stick to that concept more than any other ideology would.
  - edent 11y ago
    "I am scared to leave my house because you might shoot me." Can a person controlling others with their intimidating behaviour? If so, what's the Libertarian response to that? Libertarianism is the rule of the power of individuals. Which is great if you're strong, skilled, healthy, respected, and/or have access to equipment. For the rest of us, it's a dystopia.
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      Well if someone threating to shoot you, then yes obviously someone is infringing on your liberty... so yes there would rules against that.
      - edent 11y ago
        "Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons." Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...?
        UK-AL 11y ago
        "Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons." - That an excuse, people try to make excuses with the current system to get away with things. It's not exclusive libertarianism. You would get it under any system. "Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...? " There are millions of different versions libertarianism with different solutions. Some with insurance, private police force that work for the insurer. Can't list them all. I personally am a classical liberal, I don't advocate no government just that it should be limited to law, order, military etc
edent 11y ago
> they chose him as the lesser of the evils put forward by a political system that they have little if any leverage over. Bilge! You only need to look at the successes of fringe religious candidates in parts of the USA to see that small groups can wield enormous leverage if exercised correctly. In most parts of the world, it's trivial to join a party / trade union / action group / stand for election. If you cannot convince a few hundred people to vote for you - perhaps it's you who are wrong, not society.
- blfr 11y ago
  Religious politicians in the US are not successful in promoting religious groups' goals. This may provide nice careers for politicians of repeating appropriate slogans but: gay marriage has been legalized, small business owners are even forced to cater to the ceremonies, new companies have to pay for contraception, etc, etc.
  - edent 11y ago
    On the other hand, [creationism is taught in (some) schools](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/03/crazy-creationist-wins-big-in-texas-board-of-education-vote/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016...) and there are vast parts of the country with [little or no access to reproductive health clinics](https://www.facebook.com/nationalabortionfederation/posts/1232854116742389 https://www.facebook.com/nationalabortionfederation/posts/12...).
deleted 11y ago
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chipsy 11y ago
This is the old "freedom/security" debate in the guise of interpersonal consent. Governance has always involved coercion at the individual level, because governments rule with force, and a certain amount of force is necessary for order and security; without making that move to unify under some law, a population gets mired in low-level disorders and disagreements. It can be a really shitty Hammurabi-style eye-for-an-eye law, legitimize slavery, rape, etc., but if it protects the interests of the ruling class and is not an immediate threat for most of everyone else, it sticks. Thus, for thousands of years, most people lived as peasants, and enjoyed equality and fraternity with their immediate peers, but few freedoms around property, invention, travel, or other such actions that might threaten harmony in society. But the consent of the people does exist, as a mass body. It takes quite a lot for a critical mass of them to decide that the government is no longer legitimate and disorder would be preferable, but if they do, the government is pushed into crisis. And when governments make breakthroughs, it's in the moment of crisis where leadership is forced to either make a big concession or be pulled down by the mob. In between crises, the status quo sticks and politicians jockey for position within it instead. What that never translates to is the individual who sticks out of the crowd, arguing for change, getting special treatment. At all times, even in the era of post-Enlightenment reason, they are viewed suspiciously, because good enough is good enough, and they might just be another "bad guy" (criminal/barbarian/spy/rebel/etc.) trying to pull a fast one. They get no credit; as with business and innovators vs. fast followers, it's the people who come afterwards, using more polished rhetoric and building existing small movements into large ones, who tend to turn those ideas into reality.
Booktrope 11y ago
Consent of the governed does not mean, agreement of the governed to specific measures. No does it mean majority rule, which can easily be tyranny of the majority (possibly, the worst kind of tyranny, because it's possibly the strongest kind). One can easily consent to something without actively participating. The author of this oversimplified piece doesn't seem to even acknowledge a category of decisions that people might consent to, even if they disagree with them. It's obviously foolish to say that government is acting without consent, if it makes decisions that you do not agree with, although you are willing (and may even actively choose) to live under the system for making decisions. Nor, of course, does consent always mean actively choosing; it can mean accepting things. The concept of consent of the governed was articulated most effectively by Locke, whose philosophy was a key inspiration for the American revolution. To Locke, consent of the governed had nothing to do with whether or not people agreed with specific laws. Rather, consent of the governed was the foundation of civil society -- that is a society governed by rules and laws. Locke identified the alternative as a state of war -- government by bare force, unconstrained by the rules of civil society. When the consent of the governed is lost, it means that the people no longer accept the legitimacy of the government (sometimes stated as: government has lost the mandate of heaven, or some other revolutionary slogan). It means, change of the form of government, not just the laws and not just the holders of power. It usually doesn't come out well. But (rarely) it creates something new, and better.
millstone 11y ago
To be sure, when Abraham Lincoln said "no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent," he was referring to owning slaves. The men governed without consent were literal slaves; the governers were not governments, but private citizens. This is a really strange article. Look at its claim that "the exercise of coercive power without consent is a bad thing." First of all, coercion means without consent by definition; you can't have consent and coercion. Second, most laws are about actions which affect other people. What does consent look like there? You can't unilaterally refuse to consent to speed limits, because that affects me by putting me at greater risk. You need my consent too. And if we disagree? It also refers to "nonconsensual government," implying there's such a thing as "consensual government, and later references "a government that genuinely derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." But it doesn't explain what that would look like.
scotty79 11y ago
States governments are just most recent and best invention in the field of predictably and least harmfully exploiting people by people with physical power. Earlier invention in the same field were warlords and mafia. If you look at the World Wars you might be wondering if it's actually a progress but in times of peace they are way more efficient and how else could they learn that war between states is a bad thing until they tried few times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
hwstar 11y ago
We should keep the system in place that we have at the US federal level, but add initiative, referendum, and recall. This allows the citizens to "correct" the legislators, and allows more controversial laws to be passed which legislatures typically avoid. The only problem I see with this is keeping the moneyed special interests at bay.

45 points by akbarnama 11y ago

infinity0 11y ago

Government is rape, essentially.

vog 11y ago
Is "essentially" the new "technically"? https://xkcd.com/1475/ https://xkcd.com/1475/
- anon4 11y ago
  Basically, maybe.
dang 11y ago
Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Synaesthesia 11y ago

This is why direct democracy would be a better model of government than representative democracy. However it's a threat to the existing power structure so don't expect to see it soon. We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app.

paulsutter 11y ago
Consider Switzerland: From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy : "Switzerland is a rare example of a country with instruments of direct democracy (at the levels of the municipalities, cantons, and federal state). Citizens have more power than in a representative democracy. At the federal level, citizens can propose changes to the constitution (federal popular initiative) or ask for a referendum to be held on any law voted by the parliament.[16] Swiss citizens vote regularly on any kind of issue on every political level, such as financial approvals of a school house or the building of a new street, or the change of the policy regarding sexual work, or on constitutional changes, or on the foreign policy of Switzerland, four times a year"
- aidos 11y ago
  How does the education of policy function in practice? I ask because in the UK we're planning a referendum on exiting the EU (or not). On most political issues I'd consider myself more well read than a great percentage of the population, but I don't feel in any way qualified to argue one way or another on this (I have a guy feeling, and I know which way I would probably vote, but really - that's not the right way to do things). I know that it will end up being driven by biased forces for political gain, like every other election / referendum held in the UK. How does Switzerland devolve information to the public so they can make a genuine informed decision?
  - iofj 11y ago
    This is not the advantage that a democracy gives. A democracy makes it impossible to fuck any group that's sufficiently large to either be a majority or able to team up with another minority and make a majority. You won't realize why this matters until you either study history, or look at how things work in countries like the UAE or China or other dictatorships. If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? (or vote invalid if the ballot is non-optional)
    - philh 11y ago
      > If you don't have an informed vote, perhaps you should simply not vote at all ? This is an idea I've been toying with. Whenever an election rolls around, I keep hearing people say things like "I don't care who you vote for, just vote." "People died for your right to vote." "The problem today is that people don't vote." But I wonder whether the problem is that too many people vote. And mostly they don't do actual research, so they vote based on whatever's trickled down to them through the media they consume. This gives an advantage to whichever side can make itself sound most attractive in soundbites, which seems suboptimal.
    - marklgr 11y ago
      That's the flip side of the point, I guess; you can't go against the obvious interests of a majority of citizens, but if you can manipulate an uninformed/prejudiced/scared majority, then you have a relatively free hand to abuse everybody. Hence the importance of informed voters.
nailer 11y ago
The author still wouldn't approve of direct democracy either: they think all democracy is non-consent, and do not recognise societal majority as a form of consent. The author is arguing for anarchism, which generally doesn't scale beyond one person. As soon as you have multiple people and they disagree, you need some mechanism to fix the tie. This is obvious to most adult humans, which is why I'm surprised the article made it to WP. As the other poster notes with the example of Switzerland, the solution to governments straying too far from the will of the people is more democracy, rathe than abandoning the will of the people.
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  Anarchism can work at a larger scale, look at the success of revolutionary Spain. Anarchism can take many forms, the people can decide how they want their government to look. Anarchism merely rejects any form of authoritarianism. Well I don't agree with the author because he appears to be a right-wing, or American libertarian, who overlook the inherent authoritarianism and tyranny of corporations.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    What are you referring to? Spain has never been a long term example of anarchy. It has been a dictatorship many times though.
    - Synaesthesia 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Catalonia It was quickly crushed by all the other global powers together, the Soviet Union, the West, and the Franco Nationalists with the Nazi's. But while it existed, it was very successful. Read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" to get an impression of it.
      - mike_hearn 11y ago
        Revolutionary Catalonia wasn't anarchist - your own source says "Although the Catalonian Generalitat was nominally in power, the trade unions were de facto in command of most of the economy and military forces." Socialist trade unions and anarchists are pretty much at opposite ends of the spectrum (assuming the anarchists are actually anarchists .... my experience of such people is that they often claim to be, but when the rubber hits the road they turn out to be communists too)
calibraxis 11y ago
There's a place in the world which has it. Rojava, US ally and the world's most effective ground force against ISIS: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_radical_experiment_in_democracy_in_northern_syria_american_leftists.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/11/25/rojava_is_a_... There's lots of literature on their bottom-up democratic model, with self-governing communities that come together and hopefully will dissolve the bureaucratic nation-state. (For example, as NYT points out, all their 6,000 police are elected, a women-only force deals with sexual assault, and all recruits receive weapons only after two weeks feminist instruction. This is incredible anywhere in the world, not to mention in Syria under attack from ISIS and Turkey.)
onion2k 11y ago
We have the technology in place to effect large scale democracy, say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. Using a smartphone app would mean people who are too poor to afford a smartphone, or physically unable use a smartphone, or who believe a smartphone is too great an invasion of their privacy, etc would be disenfranchised from the democratic process. That means it wouldn't really be democratic. Pretty much every single solution to direct democracy will leave someone out, so you need several ways to gather people's votes, and then it ends up being incredibly difficult to manage and expensive to run. Maybe in 30 years time when smartphones are truly ubiquitous, old people have grown up with them, they're genuinely secure and respectful of an individual's privacy an app will be a good idea. Until then, it's not going to work.
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  I don't see how it would be that difficult to manage and run. Smartphones + kiosks + teaching social services workers to help the disabled equals much better participation that with current systems.
  - mnw21cam 11y ago
    Two important attributes of a fair voting system are the ability to verify that only one vote is allowed per eligible person, and that it is impossible to tell afterwards which way a particular person voted. A paper voting system fulfils both of these requirements, simply by the fact that a voting official can check your name and ID as you enter the voting area, and you personally can check that there are no distinguishing marks on your particular voting slip. Therefore the identification step is separated from the vote counting. With an electronic voting system, it is impossible for the individual to inspect the inner workings of the voting mechanism and verify that the identification step is separated from the vote counting, so the second attribute described above is not fulfilled. As technology improves, computer systems become more complicated, not less, and so this becomes even more true. Because of this, I do not foresee any future technology that will adequately provide secure and deniable electronic voting that the individual can trust. Sometimes the simple way is the best.
hk__2 11y ago
I don’t think direct democracy is a good system, but perhaps that’s an issue with democracy as a whole. Decisions based on the majority’s choice are not always the best and you can easily end up in a situation where propositions are made based on popularity instead of effectiveness. Propose to remove all taxes or give $1m to every citizen and you’ll probably get a significant share of the population with you even if it’s absurd. The problem is uninformed vote: people who’re not informed/serious enough to make a wise decision. You have to either educate people (but in that case, who does that? How do we ensure they’re not biased?) or prevent them from making decisions (but that’s dictatorship: how do you ensure the dictator(s) stay wise and benevolent?).
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  Decisions based on the minorities choice are not always the best either. Unfortunately, the sentiment you're expressing here is increasingly common, especially in America. Pew Research have been doing surveys since the 1960's that show that the percentage of people who agree that they have "a good deal of confidence in the wisdom of the American people" has been in steep decline for decades, and people who agree are now in the minority: http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/declining-confidence-in-political-wisdom-of-americans/ http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/declining-confidence... This is IMO leading directly to the popularity of guys like Trump, whose brand of politics is based almost entirely on "don't trust democracy, trust me". Unfortunately, it's easy to take for granted the stability that democracy brings. Yes, sometimes, bad decisions are made ... or we look back on earlier times and judge their decisions as bad in retrospect (although at the time, lots of people thought it was good, e.g. slavery, oppression of gays etc). But history has shown us what happens when you choose the alternative of decision making by small minorities of self-proclaimed "elites". You get communism and much worse decision making. By the way, your lack of faith in people is either misplaced, or a purely local phenomenon. For instance in Switzerland there are 16 referendums per year, and people do in fact vote against things that would be trivially good for them in the short term but possibly worse in the long term, like longer holidays. Switzerland is in fact an excellent example of how the world's most democratic country is also one of its most stable and prosperous.
  - 11y ago
bsbechtel 11y ago
The best model of direct democracy is where you vote every day for the goods and services you want in your life with your dollars.
- fyolnish 11y ago
  Everyone would have to have the same number of dollars
  - bsbechtel 11y ago
    Direct democracy with one vote for one person is fine, until the majority starts voting to infringe on the minority's rights.
    - hwstar 11y ago
      The "Opulent Minorities" rights should be balanced with mob rule. Unfortunately in the US today, the Opulent Minority decides the laws for the rest of us, unless there is nearly unanimous dissent.
      - bsbechtel 11y ago
        I wasn't necessarily referring to just the "Opulent Minorities", i.e. the rich unless you are referencing something else I'm not understanding. There are plenty of examples where mob rule overruns the rights poor/disenfranchised minorities too.
hyperdunc 11y ago
Direct democracy is susceptible to mob rule, but we could certainly try it in some form on a small scale in order to learn more about it's strengths and weaknesses.
datenwolf 11y ago
> say having referendums electronically via a smartphone app. That creates the problem of implementing a truly democratic voting system. You have to ensure that: - voting is secret (i.e. you can't map votes to individuals using just the information available to the public or the vote management) - voting is free (i.e. you can not influence the votes of individuals by coercion, which is easiest implemented by ensuring that voting is secret) - voting is equal, i.e. every voter has the same number of votes and votes can be entered only for entitled voters and each voter gets to vote only once per election - every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made - the counting process is open and accessible to everyone and does not require any a-priori knowledge about the finer details of the voting process in place Now try to implement THAT electronicsally. Even if the solve the first 4 clauses using the right kind of electronics and/or cryptography, the 5th clause is what puts the nail in the coffin for any electronic or computerized voting system: It excludes everybody from participating in the whole process of the election, who lacks deep knowledge about secure electronics design, cryptography and the implemented voting protocoll. In short, your idea of a "smartphone voting app" is stillborn, if you aim for a truly democratic election system.
- ajuc 11y ago
  > every voter can assert that his/her votes are actually counted in the way they were made This isn't currently implemented in paper voting systems, why should it count against electronic voting systems? Also 5 isn't implemented too well at the moment either. I think if you got printout with your vote identifier after voting, and then printouts with all the votes (secret identifier->vote) were available - peple could check if their vote was counted. In which way paper voting is more open or more secret than that?
  - majewsky 11y ago
    Of course this is implemented in a paper voting system, if done right. When there are elections over here (in Germany), I can sit in the room all day and observe that the ballot box is empty at the beginning, every voter only votes once, and that votes are counted correctly at the end. When I did that last year, I also wrote down the totals and compared these to the published results for my electoral district.
carsongross 11y ago
Direct democracy, while certainly better than todays kakistocracy, is not a solution to the problem of governmental legitimacy based on something other than violence. Consider direct democracy involving the citizens of China and the US. Is there any way that such a system could avoid a tyrannical outcome? The only way to have meaningful consent amongst the governed is for the political unit to be significantly homogenized, and for voting to not really matter all that much. This is why secessionism and the devolution of sovereignty to smaller political units is a moral imperative. Voting should be used to ratify already existing consensus. This is also why multiculturalism is so deeply wounding to political legitimacy, and requires increasingly totalitarian measures to maintain.

paulsutter 11y ago

> You have no reasonable way of opting out of government rule. Governments control all the habitable land, and most of us don’t have the resources or even the legal permission to move elsewhere. The quickest way to change the law is to board a plane. Yes it's difficult to create a whole new country, but there are 200 readymade countries to choose from. (I'm surprised this is so controversial. I'm just saying individuals do have some direct control over the laws that they are subject to).

deciplex 11y ago
Most of them are terrible in one way (at least) or another, though.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
lordfoom 11y ago
By doing that you're not opting out of government rule, you're just changing governments.
parenthephobia 11y ago
That isn't "opting-out of government rule", and it isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Yes it's almost like sharing the planet peacefully is hard and requires compromise.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  > isn't so trivial to move to another country to live there as you imply It's not that hard. In comparison to "opting-out of government rule" it's trivial.
toucan56 11y ago

lumberjack 11y ago

Libertarians to everyone else: "I will use my power and leverage to influence you at will, but don't you dare use your power and leverage to influence me. I don't consent to it."

UK-AL 11y ago
What the hell are you on about? Libertarians definition freedom stops at the point you start infringing on the freedom of others. It's a core concept. You would not find a single libertarian who agrees with your statement. They would probably stick to that concept more than any other ideology would.
- edent 11y ago
  "I am scared to leave my house because you might shoot me." Can a person controlling others with their intimidating behaviour? If so, what's the Libertarian response to that? Libertarianism is the rule of the power of individuals. Which is great if you're strong, skilled, healthy, respected, and/or have access to equipment. For the rest of us, it's a dystopia.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Well if someone threating to shoot you, then yes obviously someone is infringing on your liberty... so yes there would rules against that.
    - edent 11y ago
      "Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons." Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...?
      - UK-AL 11y ago
        "Threatening? No, sir! I just like walking down the street open-carrying my AK47. And occasionally test firing it at wood-pigeons." - That an excuse, people try to make excuses with the current system to get away with things. It's not exclusive libertarianism. You would get it under any system. "Incidentally - who makes the rules against threats? Who enforces them? Seems like we would need a group of people to decide on these rules. But how should we choose those people...? " There are millions of different versions libertarianism with different solutions. Some with insurance, private police force that work for the insurer. Can't list them all. I personally am a classical liberal, I don't advocate no government just that it should be limited to law, order, military etc

edent 11y ago

> they chose him as the lesser of the evils put forward by a political system that they have little if any leverage over. Bilge! You only need to look at the successes of fringe religious candidates in parts of the USA to see that small groups can wield enormous leverage if exercised correctly. In most parts of the world, it's trivial to join a party / trade union / action group / stand for election. If you cannot convince a few hundred people to vote for you - perhaps it's you who are wrong, not society.

blfr 11y ago
Religious politicians in the US are not successful in promoting religious groups' goals. This may provide nice careers for politicians of repeating appropriate slogans but: gay marriage has been legalized, small business owners are even forced to cater to the ceremonies, new companies have to pay for contraception, etc, etc.
- edent 11y ago
  On the other hand, [creationism is taught in (some) schools](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/03/crazy-creationist-wins-big-in-texas-board-of-education-vote/ http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016...) and there are vast parts of the country with [little or no access to reproductive health clinics](https://www.facebook.com/nationalabortionfederation/posts/1232854116742389 https://www.facebook.com/nationalabortionfederation/posts/12...).

deleted 11y ago

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chipsy 11y ago

This is the old "freedom/security" debate in the guise of interpersonal consent. Governance has always involved coercion at the individual level, because governments rule with force, and a certain amount of force is necessary for order and security; without making that move to unify under some law, a population gets mired in low-level disorders and disagreements. It can be a really shitty Hammurabi-style eye-for-an-eye law, legitimize slavery, rape, etc., but if it protects the interests of the ruling class and is not an immediate threat for most of everyone else, it sticks. Thus, for thousands of years, most people lived as peasants, and enjoyed equality and fraternity with their immediate peers, but few freedoms around property, invention, travel, or other such actions that might threaten harmony in society. But the consent of the people does exist, as a mass body. It takes quite a lot for a critical mass of them to decide that the government is no longer legitimate and disorder would be preferable, but if they do, the government is pushed into crisis. And when governments make breakthroughs, it's in the moment of crisis where leadership is forced to either make a big concession or be pulled down by the mob. In between crises, the status quo sticks and politicians jockey for position within it instead. What that never translates to is the individual who sticks out of the crowd, arguing for change, getting special treatment. At all times, even in the era of post-Enlightenment reason, they are viewed suspiciously, because good enough is good enough, and they might just be another "bad guy" (criminal/barbarian/spy/rebel/etc.) trying to pull a fast one. They get no credit; as with business and innovators vs. fast followers, it's the people who come afterwards, using more polished rhetoric and building existing small movements into large ones, who tend to turn those ideas into reality.

Booktrope 11y ago

Consent of the governed does not mean, agreement of the governed to specific measures. No does it mean majority rule, which can easily be tyranny of the majority (possibly, the worst kind of tyranny, because it's possibly the strongest kind). One can easily consent to something without actively participating. The author of this oversimplified piece doesn't seem to even acknowledge a category of decisions that people might consent to, even if they disagree with them. It's obviously foolish to say that government is acting without consent, if it makes decisions that you do not agree with, although you are willing (and may even actively choose) to live under the system for making decisions. Nor, of course, does consent always mean actively choosing; it can mean accepting things. The concept of consent of the governed was articulated most effectively by Locke, whose philosophy was a key inspiration for the American revolution. To Locke, consent of the governed had nothing to do with whether or not people agreed with specific laws. Rather, consent of the governed was the foundation of civil society -- that is a society governed by rules and laws. Locke identified the alternative as a state of war -- government by bare force, unconstrained by the rules of civil society. When the consent of the governed is lost, it means that the people no longer accept the legitimacy of the government (sometimes stated as: government has lost the mandate of heaven, or some other revolutionary slogan). It means, change of the form of government, not just the laws and not just the holders of power. It usually doesn't come out well. But (rarely) it creates something new, and better.

millstone 11y ago

To be sure, when Abraham Lincoln said "no man is good enough to govern another man, without that other's consent," he was referring to owning slaves. The men governed without consent were literal slaves; the governers were not governments, but private citizens. This is a really strange article. Look at its claim that "the exercise of coercive power without consent is a bad thing." First of all, coercion means without consent by definition; you can't have consent and coercion. Second, most laws are about actions which affect other people. What does consent look like there? You can't unilaterally refuse to consent to speed limits, because that affects me by putting me at greater risk. You need my consent too. And if we disagree? It also refers to "nonconsensual government," implying there's such a thing as "consensual government, and later references "a government that genuinely derives its just powers from the consent of the governed." But it doesn't explain what that would look like.

scotty79 11y ago

States governments are just most recent and best invention in the field of predictably and least harmfully exploiting people by people with physical power. Earlier invention in the same field were warlords and mafia. If you look at the World Wars you might be wondering if it's actually a progress but in times of peace they are way more efficient and how else could they learn that war between states is a bad thing until they tried few times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence

hwstar 11y ago

We should keep the system in place that we have at the US federal level, but add initiative, referendum, and recall. This allows the citizens to "correct" the legislators, and allows more controversial laws to be passed which legislatures typically avoid. The only problem I see with this is keeping the moneyed special interests at bay.