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"Lesson two: don’t ask people to make decisions they are not qualified to make." He's implying that certain questions (such as whether or not the UK should be

"Lesson two: don’t ask people to make decisions they are not qualified to make." He's implying that certain questions (such as whether or not the UK should be a member of the EU) should be left to the political and economic experts. What if the political and economic experts disagree with the majority, not just because of their political and economic knowledge, but because they are a very limited demographic and don't even consider many of the things that are important to the people who are not experts in those fields? Considering what he wrote, I would say we need more referendums, not less. So that people can become familiar with their votes having an observable impact on their lives. At the moment, people feel powerless, so when they're given a vote, they're more likely to use it in anger. Give them more decision making power, not less.

Safety1stClyde 10y ago
We probably don't need more referendums, but a constitutional change like Scottish independence or leaving the European Union does warrant a referendum.
- barking 10y ago
  Paraphrasing some French commentator, the problem with referendums is that the electorate don't necessarily answer the question asked. Voters often like to give a government a kicking mid-term.
2muchcoffeeman 10y ago
> Give them more decision making power, not less. I can't see this working out at all. In the 2016 US election 43% of you failed to vote. For Brexit 28% of people failed to vote. And the younger the demographic, the fewer people who voted. In Australia where voting is compulsory, we have close to 6% informal votes. Donkey votes are believed to be close to 2%. I shudder to think of the people who vote for Labour or Libs because "their votes doesn't really count anyway". And you don't have to vote that often! You had one job!
- Swenrekcah 10y ago
  The thing is, when all you can do is vote once every 4 years, you don't have a lot of influence. If I were tasked with steering a cruise ship but my only tool was to splash my arms in the sea to make waves, I would give up pretty quickly. So the point about having more referendums, not less, is I think completely spot on to try to fix this issue.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  My statement was that giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely, and I gave some reasoning for that. Your response was that, not many people vote. I'm not sure how that addresses what I wrote?
  - bostik 10y ago
    > giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely Psychology and sociology disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue The only solution I can think of is to enact a set of laws that require and enforce science and evidence based legislation. However, this is such an affront to all the lobbying groups that even the suggestion of such laws will be aggressively attacked from every direction possible.
    - mike-cardwell 10y ago
      That link doesn't actually argue either way. It just presents some ideas with lots of "could be" and "under certain circumstances" and "proponents often counter" and so on. No sources. It does provide one example. But the example has nothing to do with referendums, it's about people being asked to vote on the same sort of question repeatedly in a short period of time. I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election, so the behaviour may be completely different. Do you have a better link?
      - bostik 10y ago
        There is research into the phenomenon, but since I don't want to even try to link to [cough sb], I can provide a couple of pointers for further research. - 10.2307/2108922 - (no idea why, but this has no DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895) - (no DOI either: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401000476 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401...) > I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election I think you are being somewhat dishonest here, and I would suspect you actually know that. From an individual voter's point of view there is very little practical difference: you are supposed to set time aside to go to the polling station at a given date, and cast your vote on an issue where it is HIGHLY unlikely that you have enough data to make an educated decision. Referendums attempt to distill a complex issue (or a set of issues) into a binary decision. (I find it relevant that binary option trading is a common source of scams: http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); elections attempt to distill a complex set of competing and mutually exclusive issues into a personality contest. Either way the only repeatibly reliable result is that no matter whose side wins, all the voters will eventually feel they have been shafted.
mrcarrot 10y ago
I'd rather the UK did something about the effective disenfranchisement caused by FPTP parliamentary elections first.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  The UK did. It had a referendum about it 6 years ago. Two thirds of the voters chose FPTP.
  - SilkRoadie 10y ago
    The scary thing is how easily people are swayed by blatant lies. Britain has been let down twice recently. Both times it was the quality of the debate around the referendums. For the voting system a lie was spread about how it isn't fair one person gets to vote once while another can vote 6 or 7 times.. this was the description of the AV system. You then have Brexit which was a shit show. It worries me how few people ask to see evidence. This is why I do not feel people should have a say in complex decisions via referendum. If the should then Britain has demonstrated how not to do it.
    - mike-cardwell 10y ago
      You could equally say that stupid people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they make bad decisions. Democracy isn't always about getting the right answer. It's about distributing decision making power and making sure everyone gets an input. Even when they're wrong.
  - mrcarrot 10y ago
    And it seems like a good example of why more referendums wouldn't do much good in the current UK political system. Who's going to be setting the questions? Presumably the government? Which means realistically the Conservative party or Labour (generously assuming they can recover to a position of electability at some point). Why would they then ever pose referendum questions where they wouldn't like one of the answers (especially in light of the last referendum)? How does anyone really get more of a democratic voice when you'd just be choosing from options selected by the 2 big parties so that their preferred option is all but guaranteed to win? "Should we: A) waste £90 million on a complicated new voting system, or B) keep our traditional voting system and spend the money on the NHS?"
_pythonlover_ 10y ago
What if 99% of the people has no idea about the implications of their vote? I'm genuinely curious here. What if the experts are right and the majority of people are against them?
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  Then we make the inferior decision. Equally the experts can be wrong. Or they can be right about the particular things they are experts in, but wrong about everything else. Democracy doesn't mean always making the right decision. But it does mean we take collective responsibility when we make the wrong one.
tigershark 10y ago
Yes, we all know that democracy cannot possibly be wrong. Give people more power. It will be impossible for example to elect Adolf Hitler when the people have the ultimate power... or maybe he was legitimately elected by the majority of German people at the time? It's kind of scary that people keep repeating their errors and have a blind faith in democracy or whatever form of government is popular.
- mike-cardwell 10y ago
  As I said in another comment: "Democracy doesn't mean always making the right decision. But it does mean we take collective responsibility when we make the wrong one." I never stated that the majority would always make the right decision as you're implying that I did. Nor will the correct decisions always be made by ignoring the majority. I would argue that the people who voted to remain in the EU have more blind faith in government. Willy nilly disregarding concepts such as sovereignty, and representation, and democracy as concepts from the past that don't need to be considered any more, because we've not had a war to fight to keep them for a generation or two. I don't want to tell my grand children that we allowed democracy to be eroded because some people were afraid how the value of the pound would be affected.
- velik_m 10y ago
  https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/what-hitler-was-not-elected/ https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/what-hitler...

Safety1stClyde 10y ago

We probably don't need more referendums, but a constitutional change like Scottish independence or leaving the European Union does warrant a referendum.

barking 10y ago
Paraphrasing some French commentator, the problem with referendums is that the electorate don't necessarily answer the question asked. Voters often like to give a government a kicking mid-term.

2muchcoffeeman 10y ago

> Give them more decision making power, not less. I can't see this working out at all. In the 2016 US election 43% of you failed to vote. For Brexit 28% of people failed to vote. And the younger the demographic, the fewer people who voted. In Australia where voting is compulsory, we have close to 6% informal votes. Donkey votes are believed to be close to 2%. I shudder to think of the people who vote for Labour or Libs because "their votes doesn't really count anyway". And you don't have to vote that often! You had one job!

Swenrekcah 10y ago
The thing is, when all you can do is vote once every 4 years, you don't have a lot of influence. If I were tasked with steering a cruise ship but my only tool was to splash my arms in the sea to make waves, I would give up pretty quickly. So the point about having more referendums, not less, is I think completely spot on to try to fix this issue.
mike-cardwell 10y ago
My statement was that giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely, and I gave some reasoning for that. Your response was that, not many people vote. I'm not sure how that addresses what I wrote?
- bostik 10y ago
  > giving people more referendums would make them use them more wisely Psychology and sociology disagree with you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_fatigue The only solution I can think of is to enact a set of laws that require and enforce science and evidence based legislation. However, this is such an affront to all the lobbying groups that even the suggestion of such laws will be aggressively attacked from every direction possible.
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    That link doesn't actually argue either way. It just presents some ideas with lots of "could be" and "under certain circumstances" and "proponents often counter" and so on. No sources. It does provide one example. But the example has nothing to do with referendums, it's about people being asked to vote on the same sort of question repeatedly in a short period of time. I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election, so the behaviour may be completely different. Do you have a better link?
    - bostik 10y ago
      There is research into the phenomenon, but since I don't want to even try to link to [cough sb], I can provide a couple of pointers for further research. - 10.2307/2108922 - (no idea why, but this has no DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895 http://www.jstor.org/stable/25791895) - (no DOI either: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401000476 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379401...) > I would argue that the nature of a referendum is completely different to that of an election I think you are being somewhat dishonest here, and I would suspect you actually know that. From an individual voter's point of view there is very little practical difference: you are supposed to set time aside to go to the polling station at a given date, and cast your vote on an issue where it is HIGHLY unlikely that you have enough data to make an educated decision. Referendums attempt to distill a complex issue (or a set of issues) into a binary decision. (I find it relevant that binary option trading is a common source of scams: http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); http://scambroker.com/binary-options-trading-scam/); elections attempt to distill a complex set of competing and mutually exclusive issues into a personality contest. Either way the only repeatibly reliable result is that no matter whose side wins, all the voters will eventually feel they have been shafted.

mrcarrot 10y ago

I'd rather the UK did something about the effective disenfranchisement caused by FPTP parliamentary elections first.

mike-cardwell 10y ago
The UK did. It had a referendum about it 6 years ago. Two thirds of the voters chose FPTP.
- SilkRoadie 10y ago
  The scary thing is how easily people are swayed by blatant lies. Britain has been let down twice recently. Both times it was the quality of the debate around the referendums. For the voting system a lie was spread about how it isn't fair one person gets to vote once while another can vote 6 or 7 times.. this was the description of the AV system. You then have Brexit which was a shit show. It worries me how few people ask to see evidence. This is why I do not feel people should have a say in complex decisions via referendum. If the should then Britain has demonstrated how not to do it.
  - mike-cardwell 10y ago
    You could equally say that stupid people shouldn't be allowed to vote because they make bad decisions. Democracy isn't always about getting the right answer. It's about distributing decision making power and making sure everyone gets an input. Even when they're wrong.
- mrcarrot 10y ago
  And it seems like a good example of why more referendums wouldn't do much good in the current UK political system. Who's going to be setting the questions? Presumably the government? Which means realistically the Conservative party or Labour (generously assuming they can recover to a position of electability at some point). Why would they then ever pose referendum questions where they wouldn't like one of the answers (especially in light of the last referendum)? How does anyone really get more of a democratic voice when you'd just be choosing from options selected by the 2 big parties so that their preferred option is all but guaranteed to win? "Should we: A) waste £90 million on a complicated new voting system, or B) keep our traditional voting system and spend the money on the NHS?"

_pythonlover_ 10y ago

What if 99% of the people has no idea about the implications of their vote? I'm genuinely curious here. What if the experts are right and the majority of people are against them?

mike-cardwell 10y ago
Then we make the inferior decision. Equally the experts can be wrong. Or they can be right about the particular things they are experts in, but wrong about everything else. Democracy doesn't mean always making the right decision. But it does mean we take collective responsibility when we make the wrong one.

tigershark 10y ago

Yes, we all know that democracy cannot possibly be wrong. Give people more power. It will be impossible for example to elect Adolf Hitler when the people have the ultimate power... or maybe he was legitimately elected by the majority of German people at the time? It's kind of scary that people keep repeating their errors and have a blind faith in democracy or whatever form of government is popular.

mike-cardwell 10y ago
As I said in another comment: "Democracy doesn't mean always making the right decision. But it does mean we take collective responsibility when we make the wrong one." I never stated that the majority would always make the right decision as you're implying that I did. Nor will the correct decisions always be made by ignoring the majority. I would argue that the people who voted to remain in the EU have more blind faith in government. Willy nilly disregarding concepts such as sovereignty, and representation, and democracy as concepts from the past that don't need to be considered any more, because we've not had a war to fight to keep them for a generation or two. I don't want to tell my grand children that we allowed democracy to be eroded because some people were afraid how the value of the pound would be affected.
velik_m 10y ago
https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/what-hitler-was-not-elected/ https://democraticpeace.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/what-hitler...