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Direct democracy is dangerous. Major decisions, and joining /leaving EU is certainly one, should require e super-majority. Say 60% of the vote and 60% of the Pa

Direct democracy is dangerous. Major decisions, and joining /leaving EU is certainly one, should require e super-majority. Say 60% of the vote and 60% of the Parliament. 50%+1 just doesn't seem right. These are life-changing decisions and there needs to be a general consensus.

quirkafleeg 9y ago
The life changing 1970s referendum to remain didn't require more than 50%+1 so I don't see how it's right that Brexiting should have. Edit to clarify this is about the first referendum to remain, not join in the first place.
- easilyBored 9y ago
  It should have required then (IMHO).
  - probablybroken 9y ago
    Plus there is now the potential for a great deal of purely negative disruption to the economy as a result.
    - hardlianotion 9y ago
      There was great potential for that then as well. Joining required the UK to give up exclusive fishing rights in its own waters and put up tariffs to its Commonwealth trading partners. That the UK did so without much of a fuss is a matter of shame for the country, the trade disruption had great impact in countries that depended on the trade. The Common Agricultural Policy was cemented in to prepare for UK arrival as well, so guaranteeing transfer of wealth from UK into France, an almost direct subsidy of French agriculture. This was the basis on which Margaret Thatcher went all obstinate to get a British rebate in the early 80s.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
mjw1007 9y ago
I agree. And I think it was wrong for the UK to end up as part of the EU, as opposed to a more limited "common market", without at least one of the successive governments which signed up to additional treaties demonstrating such general consensus. That was part of the reason why it was so easy for the "leave" side to portray the EU as a hostile unaccountable force.
lucidguppy 9y ago
Why is direct Democracy dangerous? I think not educating your population effectively is dangerous. Unfortunately the non-direct democrats have taken advantage by not educating each oncoming generation so as to more easily manipulate them. Now we have Trump...
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  In Britain we have a representative democracy. That is how British democracy works. A small group of Euro-sceptics in one party were frustrated that they couldn't get Britain to leave the EU using that system so forced the PM to hold a referrendum. So they couldn't get their own way by following the rules so forced the government to change temporarily to a different kind of democracy that better suited their means. That is incredibly dangerous, yes. Direct democracy is not just calling referendums when you think populism will help your cause.
lucaspiller 9y ago
Fun fact: In both referendums on EU membership, less than half the registered voters cast votes for the winning decision.
- hardlianotion 9y ago
  I would be interested in knowing about an election in modern times (you choose what that means) in which a majority of the electorate in a British election did vote for the winning proposition.
  - notahacker 9y ago
    If you count British Overseas Territories, then Falklands and Gibraltar sovereignty referendums are probably the only examples (I wouldn't be surprised to discover that no free and fair public election has ever achieved a more emphatic result than 99.8% on a 91.9% turnout managed by the Falkland islanders)
    - hardlianotion 9y ago
      Good knowledge. Just glad I didn't offer a prize...
- ptaipale 9y ago
  In fact, in almost all referendums and elections, less than half of eligible voters cast their voters for the winning decision or party. That comes pretty much by nature. Then there are elections where a majority supports the winning decision. A few are good ones, like the Falklands referendum that was mentioned in another post. But very many are scams: Saddam Hussein's presidential referendum gave him 99.9 % support of votes in a 99.47 % turnout. Worker's Party of Korea regularly gets around 85-90 % of votes again with a 99.9 % turnout. National Socialist Party of Germany got 98.8 % of a 99 % turnout in 1936. Finally, the point is: "“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”"
beaconstudios 9y ago
the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place. You can't apply stringent rules in only one direction of a decision, or you're weighting the default to the position you personally prefer. At the end of the day, the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased.
- OJFord 9y ago
  > the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased. Apologies if you're from the UK (or otherwise aware) but there was huge debate about 'the question' ahead of the referendum. Like you (it sounds) I was surprised they decided on one that seems so obviously biased. I think the 'to be or not to be' variant was supposedly going to be 'confusing to voters'.
  - beaconstudios 9y ago
    yeah I am from the UK, and this is the exact debate I'm referencing - in fact, one of the questions that I asked a few people that got them to really think about their position was "if this was a vote to join the EU, would your position still be the same?" - this question is also obviously biased in the other direction, but it gets people to think outside of the default position of loss aversion, which has psychological biases to support it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion).
- belltaco 9y ago
  >the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun... >The electorate expressed significant support for EC membership, with 67% in favour on a national turnout of 64%. Am I missing something?
mafribe 9y ago
Direct democracy is dangerous. So are all other forms of governance. The only significant example of direct democracy in action has been Switzerland, and it's been pretty successful in comparison. Yes, n=1 is not good, but better than n=0.
- adventured 9y ago
  California has been using a direct democracy model in various formulations for a long time and it's four times the size of Switzerland in both population and economy. The results are at best mixed (eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10%).
  - mafribe 9y ago
    Interesting. I'm not familiar with the Californian model. But as with direct democracy in cities and villages, California is not a country, so certain life/death decisions, like engaging in warfare, are not applicable. Moreover, I believe that some of California's problems are a direct consequence of its spectacular success, which attracts large-scale immigration, largely from poorer countries. California has grown by > 10x in the last century. In contrast, the Swiss population expanded at a much lower pace. Be that all as it may, by many metrics California is also a spectacular success.
  - enraged_camel 9y ago
    >>eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10% Can you provide some citations to these claims?
OJFord 9y ago
I used to agree; Brexit made me think about it a lot. I now think a bias in favour of maintaining status quo is just as arbitrary as one against the status quo - if it's so great now and everyone knows it then they'll come out in droves to keep it, right?
vfclists 9y ago
Where does the "dangerous" come in? What makes the EU government inherently better at governing and representing interests the of British people than a British government? There is something about local democracy that some people simply don't understand. Voters can apply more pressure on locally elected officials than central officials. Ever since Thatcher's government began systematically reducing the powers of local government, central government can and has often overridden the choices of local voter, because they are not directly answerable to local voters. If voters don't like some policies set by local politicians and officials they can organize effectively to have them changed and the officials removed. What kind of pressure can the people say Hammersmith exercise over an EU policy they don't like, assuming they know who to address, and can even bring political pressure to bear on them?
- Symbiote 9y ago
  Taking the example of Hammersmith, at the previous election 50% of people didn't vote for the MP that won. What can they do, when they disagree with a local decision? What about a national decision? The EU government is at least more representative of its electorate. For the EU level (London constituency), the Hammersmith resident is represented by four Tory, two Labour, one UKIP and one Green MEP. With that range, it's more likely someone will find time for their opinion. The solution is therefore to fix the electoral system in the UK, meanwhile I'm glad the EU government exists above it. We could also start electing the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_(UK_Parliament_constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_(UK_Parliament_con... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_co...
  - presidente20 9y ago
    If you want an elected House of Lords, why would you be in favour of the EU? In the EU the elected house is a ratifying chamber only (akin to the Lords). You're glad to be ruled by the undemocratic executive EU but not the undemocratic ratifying Lords?
- notahacker 9y ago
avar 9y ago
If that's going to be the criteria fine, but we'd need to kick some countries out of the EU then (e.g. Sweden) since they went in with a similarly narrow margin.
wdb 9y ago
Still don't understand they left the EU. Especially with the latest changes they had the best deal within the EU but still they want to leave. Rebates, no euro etc. I wish we could get that...
- presidente20 9y ago
  I think we do. We're a net contributor so the rebate point is null. Re. the euro, is there any point in being one of only 9 countries outside the euro (bear in mind most of those 9 are new members who intend to join). What kind of say do you think the non-euro countries are going to get?

quirkafleeg 9y ago

The life changing 1970s referendum to remain didn't require more than 50%+1 so I don't see how it's right that Brexiting should have. Edit to clarify this is about the first referendum to remain, not join in the first place.

easilyBored 9y ago
It should have required then (IMHO).
- probablybroken 9y ago
  Plus there is now the potential for a great deal of purely negative disruption to the economy as a result.
  - hardlianotion 9y ago
    There was great potential for that then as well. Joining required the UK to give up exclusive fishing rights in its own waters and put up tariffs to its Commonwealth trading partners. That the UK did so without much of a fuss is a matter of shame for the country, the trade disruption had great impact in countries that depended on the trade. The Common Agricultural Policy was cemented in to prepare for UK arrival as well, so guaranteeing transfer of wealth from UK into France, an almost direct subsidy of French agriculture. This was the basis on which Margaret Thatcher went all obstinate to get a British rebate in the early 80s.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

mjw1007 9y ago

I agree. And I think it was wrong for the UK to end up as part of the EU, as opposed to a more limited "common market", without at least one of the successive governments which signed up to additional treaties demonstrating such general consensus. That was part of the reason why it was so easy for the "leave" side to portray the EU as a hostile unaccountable force.

lucidguppy 9y ago

Why is direct Democracy dangerous? I think not educating your population effectively is dangerous. Unfortunately the non-direct democrats have taken advantage by not educating each oncoming generation so as to more easily manipulate them. Now we have Trump...

jimnotgym 9y ago
In Britain we have a representative democracy. That is how British democracy works. A small group of Euro-sceptics in one party were frustrated that they couldn't get Britain to leave the EU using that system so forced the PM to hold a referrendum. So they couldn't get their own way by following the rules so forced the government to change temporarily to a different kind of democracy that better suited their means. That is incredibly dangerous, yes. Direct democracy is not just calling referendums when you think populism will help your cause.

lucaspiller 9y ago

Fun fact: In both referendums on EU membership, less than half the registered voters cast votes for the winning decision.

hardlianotion 9y ago
I would be interested in knowing about an election in modern times (you choose what that means) in which a majority of the electorate in a British election did vote for the winning proposition.
- notahacker 9y ago
  If you count British Overseas Territories, then Falklands and Gibraltar sovereignty referendums are probably the only examples (I wouldn't be surprised to discover that no free and fair public election has ever achieved a more emphatic result than 99.8% on a 91.9% turnout managed by the Falkland islanders)
  - hardlianotion 9y ago
    Good knowledge. Just glad I didn't offer a prize...
ptaipale 9y ago
In fact, in almost all referendums and elections, less than half of eligible voters cast their voters for the winning decision or party. That comes pretty much by nature. Then there are elections where a majority supports the winning decision. A few are good ones, like the Falklands referendum that was mentioned in another post. But very many are scams: Saddam Hussein's presidential referendum gave him 99.9 % support of votes in a 99.47 % turnout. Worker's Party of Korea regularly gets around 85-90 % of votes again with a 99.9 % turnout. National Socialist Party of Germany got 98.8 % of a 99 % turnout in 1936. Finally, the point is: "“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”"

beaconstudios 9y ago

the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place. You can't apply stringent rules in only one direction of a decision, or you're weighting the default to the position you personally prefer. At the end of the day, the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased.

OJFord 9y ago
> the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased. Apologies if you're from the UK (or otherwise aware) but there was huge debate about 'the question' ahead of the referendum. Like you (it sounds) I was surprised they decided on one that seems so obviously biased. I think the 'to be or not to be' variant was supposedly going to be 'confusing to voters'.
- beaconstudios 9y ago
  yeah I am from the UK, and this is the exact debate I'm referencing - in fact, one of the questions that I asked a few people that got them to really think about their position was "if this was a vote to join the EU, would your position still be the same?" - this question is also obviously biased in the other direction, but it gets people to think outside of the default position of loss aversion, which has psychological biases to support it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion).
belltaco 9y ago
>the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Communities_membership_referendum,_1975 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun... >The electorate expressed significant support for EC membership, with 67% in favour on a national turnout of 64%. Am I missing something?

mafribe 9y ago

Direct democracy is dangerous. So are all other forms of governance. The only significant example of direct democracy in action has been Switzerland, and it's been pretty successful in comparison. Yes, n=1 is not good, but better than n=0.

adventured 9y ago
California has been using a direct democracy model in various formulations for a long time and it's four times the size of Switzerland in both population and economy. The results are at best mixed (eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10%).
- mafribe 9y ago
  Interesting. I'm not familiar with the Californian model. But as with direct democracy in cities and villages, California is not a country, so certain life/death decisions, like engaging in warfare, are not applicable. Moreover, I believe that some of California's problems are a direct consequence of its spectacular success, which attracts large-scale immigration, largely from poorer countries. California has grown by > 10x in the last century. In contrast, the Swiss population expanded at a much lower pace. Be that all as it may, by many metrics California is also a spectacular success.
- enraged_camel 9y ago
  >>eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10% Can you provide some citations to these claims?

OJFord 9y ago

I used to agree; Brexit made me think about it a lot. I now think a bias in favour of maintaining status quo is just as arbitrary as one against the status quo - if it's so great now and everyone knows it then they'll come out in droves to keep it, right?

vfclists 9y ago

Where does the "dangerous" come in? What makes the EU government inherently better at governing and representing interests the of British people than a British government? There is something about local democracy that some people simply don't understand. Voters can apply more pressure on locally elected officials than central officials. Ever since Thatcher's government began systematically reducing the powers of local government, central government can and has often overridden the choices of local voter, because they are not directly answerable to local voters. If voters don't like some policies set by local politicians and officials they can organize effectively to have them changed and the officials removed. What kind of pressure can the people say Hammersmith exercise over an EU policy they don't like, assuming they know who to address, and can even bring political pressure to bear on them?

Symbiote 9y ago
Taking the example of Hammersmith, at the previous election 50% of people didn't vote for the MP that won. What can they do, when they disagree with a local decision? What about a national decision? The EU government is at least more representative of its electorate. For the EU level (London constituency), the Hammersmith resident is represented by four Tory, two Labour, one UKIP and one Green MEP. With that range, it's more likely someone will find time for their opinion. The solution is therefore to fix the electoral system in the UK, meanwhile I'm glad the EU government exists above it. We could also start electing the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_(UK_Parliament_constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_(UK_Parliament_con... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_constituency) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_co...
- presidente20 9y ago
  If you want an elected House of Lords, why would you be in favour of the EU? In the EU the elected house is a ratifying chamber only (akin to the Lords). You're glad to be ruled by the undemocratic executive EU but not the undemocratic ratifying Lords?
notahacker 9y ago

avar 9y ago

If that's going to be the criteria fine, but we'd need to kick some countries out of the EU then (e.g. Sweden) since they went in with a similarly narrow margin.

wdb 9y ago

Still don't understand they left the EU. Especially with the latest changes they had the best deal within the EU but still they want to leave. Rebates, no euro etc. I wish we could get that...

presidente20 9y ago
I think we do. We're a net contributor so the rebate point is null. Re. the euro, is there any point in being one of only 9 countries outside the euro (bear in mind most of those 9 are new members who intend to join). What kind of say do you think the non-euro countries are going to get?