3 ms·

There's a system that, in my opinion, is even better (fairer, less prone to corruption) than sortition, and that's liquid democracy (a.k.a. delegative democracy

• notahacker 11y ago
  I rather like the concept, but I can see it having some interested and unanticipated side effects if you allow people to select their delegate by category rather than individual bill by individual bill. The person that decides whether people's delegates for voting on (e.g.) an act related to surveillance default to being the delegate they selected for "civil liberties" or the delegate they selected for "national security" actually ends up with rather a large degree of executive power, despite probably having a lower profile than the leader of an executive regular parliamentary or presidential system. Of course, there's a reasonable argument that this is still much more transparent and fair (and reversible) than, for example, coalition bargaining, but it is a system I'd like to see used in practice more in bodies like trade unions before we decide it's the solution to national governance.
  • ZenoArrow 11y ago
    > "I rather like the concept, but I can see it having some interested and unanticipated side effects if you allow people to select their delegate by category rather than individual bill by individual bill." The point is that you can delegate for individual bills, as well as taking back your power to vote on individual bills. You can delegate by category, but you don't need to if it doesn't serve you. The idea is that the people you delegate to have to stick up for your best interests, as their power can be taken away at any point if they do not.
    • notahacker 11y ago
      Agree that you can delegate for individual bills, but my point was that most people won't delegate for individual bills most of the time, but probably will choose delegates for "categories" of decision making if the system is set up that way. Surveillance law is a pretty relevant example, since for most people not on HN it's a relatively low priority, and there's a fairly high likelihood that if they're able to delegate somebody to vote for them on a general area like "civil liberties issues" (for most people, a delegate with a decent libertarian credentials) and "national security" (for most people, a delegate who promises to be robust), the person or committee that decides for whether a particular surveillance bill is considered "civil liberties" or "national security" in effect holds a casting vote any time most of the public doesn't feel strongly enough to make a bill-specific decision. Somebody has to resolve differences between a budget balancing bill popular with the public's preferred delegates for "taxation" issues and a bill with public spending implications popular with the public's preferred delegates for "health issues", "education issues" or "social policy issues" too. Since they're supposed to be administering a process rather than enacting a particular programme of government they were elected on like a de jure executive, they're probably also subject to far less scrutiny. Of course, the system still has the advantage that the public can step in and overrule their regular representative whenever they feel strongly enough to do so, but not necessarily any more effectively in practice than powers to force a referendum as a form of public veto.
      • ZenoArrow 11y ago
        The categorisation issue is a good one to raise, it would be something to iron out. You may be interested in this video, the speaker mentions a couple of solutions to the categorisation issue, as well as a bunch of other implementation issues they're trying to address: http://youtu.be/cMc0Piwx8SU http://youtu.be/cMc0Piwx8SU
• deleted 11y ago
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