8 ms·

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they a

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

LukeB42 9y ago
Because you're talking about Averaged Joes instead of a singular political career. Direct democracy, I'm guessing, would amortise absolute power corrupting absolutely by spreading the power thinly across the population.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  Averaged Joes are not independent entities. They network. So you don't get the effect. What you get is design by committee. Or more accurate design by committee of factions. The idea that democracy is a great way of solving all problems is just as much an ideology as rule by technocrat.
  - LukeB42 9y ago
    Arguing the converse would be arguing that one representatives soul has more inherent decisive import than those represented and that's difficult to qualify or quantify unless the representative entity's God himself.
reitanqild 9y ago
AFAIK we have known for a long time that we are smarter together. See under "Variance and standard deviation" in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton for a well known example. That said I personally think this is an extreme case. I'll also admit that people - including me - are scaringly easy to manipulate in cases that are more complicated than this. Generally I'm more in favour of the Swiss system where you meet in town and vote by raising your sword. (disclaimer: I think this might have changed now - I heard this was how it used to be done by someone I know who grew up there a decade or two (I guess) before I was born. )
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  The Swiss have expert legislators that actually make the laws the way they want. Grossly simplified, the populace can force a decision, but the specific implementation of the decision is created by lawmakers and later accepted by the population. If it is rejected the lawmakers get to have another go. It is of course more direct than in America, though it is more a case of voters saying "We want this" and legislators saying "Ok, we tried to implement it in the best way we could. Do you accept?".
losteric 9y ago
Direct democracy works IF we have an educated electorate. Which America does not have, and will not have for at least a generation... all the same, it can work. An educated electorate does not imply subject matter expertise, it means ubiquitous critical thinking abilities... the ability to debate, ask good questions, analyze the credibility and argument of a subject matter expert, and having the humbleness to be persuaded.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  Which will never ever happen. Who has time to critically evaluate every single decision that needs to be made by an effective government? That is assuming of course you could make everyone rational.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Who says they would have to? Direct democracy = direct voting, not intimate involvement with every stage of policy. Representatives would still exist as subject matter experts that develop policy within their domain and act to convince the public. Ubiquitous critical thinking is sufficient to protect the public from demagogues and conmen - and that is an achievable goal (albeit politically challenging today)
banach 9y ago
It depends on ow you organize it, but ideally most decisions would be taken on the level of the people who are affected by it. If Joe doesn't understand before the election, he will understand after, and if he doesn't like the result, he can call for a new election. However, modern DD systems should support delegator/liquid democracy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy) which subsumes the benefits of representative democracy, while letting voters take back their vote from their delegate at any time.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  How is Joe going to know whether the tarriffs for imported salami should be 4% or 6.5%. How will he know that he made the right decision afterwards?
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    Maybe it doesn't make much difference? Maybe fine-tuning salami tarriffs is something that should not be done, and relevant legislators should be freed to perhaps produce salami themself?
    - skummetmaelk 9y ago
      In real government there are thousands of small decisions on small boring issues that combine to have huge effects. Sometimes I feel like people think politics is only about debating the big things that split party lines like gay marriage and abortion.
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        I don't have any confirmations that these small decisions actually matter much. You can have salami makers lobby for 6,5% import tax then salami sellers lobby for 4% import tax for years before the same parliament, this consuming resources of society but bringing zero value to society at large. On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.
apeace 9y ago
I don't necessarily ascribe to direct democracy ideas, but if you want to learn about why some people think it's a good idea, check out "The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement" by David Graeber. It chronicles his experiences in the Occupy Wall Street movement and expounds upon the value of direct democracy.
thriftwy 9y ago
These days I think that direct democracy is better than bureaucracy. Why won't it? Provided that it's deployed slowly and tenderly. Maybe Average Joe doesn't understand your area. Then you have two options: - Educate Average Joe about the issue. - Make sure that Average Joe doesn't vote on the issue and only concerned citizens do. This usually requires that issue poses no nuisances for Average Joe. But right now, when legislators don't understand anything and create bad policy, we have ZERO options. Zero is less than two.
- Pxtl 9y ago
  Joe does not have the time to be informed about the pros and cons of every decision that the government needs to ask him about. It's simply not practical. Direct democracy would be handing over the machinery of government to marketing companies fed by lobbies.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    We don't need Joe voting on every single issue. Just give Joe 100 voting credits at the start of cycle and let him spend in on whatever votes he likes - or not. Separation of scope also helps - a.k.a. moving issues from statewide scope and to relevant provinces/communes.
    - skummetmaelk 9y ago
      If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack. In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.
      - thriftwy 9y ago
        It's also easy to counter. I can think how and so can you. What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle? Very potent point is that laws should be tried and then most of them should be repealed. Only a minority of laws should survive to permanence. Right now we pretend that we're capable of writing good laws from the first attempt.
manigandham 9y ago
> Why would Average Joe do any better? They wouldn't. It only works when the electorate is educated and rational - and that is almost never the case.
- Spivak 9y ago
  They would. So long as your the Average Joe makes the correct decision 51% of the time in the long run we'll turn out fine.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    That makes no sense. What's the correct decision? All the people voting completely against their interests now think they're making the correct decision. Not all decisions or votes are equal and the outcome of an election can change what can even be voted on and by whom for the next round.
    - Spivak 9y ago
      I'm responding to the point that voters need to be rational and educated for a direct democracy to function. It only requires that voters have a bias, however slight, to making the 'right' decision. Don't think too much about how to define 'right' because you'll drive yourself mad. All that matters is the belief that in the long run people tend to make 'right' choices slightly more often than wrong ones.
      - manigandham 9y ago
        That wasn't the point. The question is whether it's a good idea - and it's not when people don't know or don't care about what they're voting on, both of which requires education and rational (long-term) thinking.
      - ZenoArrow 9y ago
        > "All that matters is the belief that in the long run people tend to make 'right' choices slightly more often than wrong ones." Do they though? I see people making the "wrong" choices very often when the "right" choice is inconvenient for them. I would include myself in that description too.
AmIFirstToThink 9y ago
1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor. 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code. 3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling 4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person. 5. It might have been difficult in the past, but in the internet age in USA, direct democracy has less things that would work against it. More information available, more means to communicate available, decent education available. 6. Find best people for the job. Ideas can come from anywhere. Implementer can come from anywhere. You won't get "I implement my idea, not you". "You stole my idea". etc.
- skummetmaelk 9y ago
  > 1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. It's easy to influence all Joes on the social media platforms virtually all of them use. > 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. Party line is less of a problem in countries with sensible representative democracies, i.e not FPTP. > You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code. I completely agree with you here, but like others you only talk about the big issues. Not the small day-to-day operation that must also be handled as well as all the small "boring" issues that face any real government. > 3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling. Representatives are not rulers. > 4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person. I guarantee that if direct democracy was implemented you would have charismatic personalities telling people how to vote on day one. And they would be much better than influencers trying to use reason too. > 5. It might have been difficult in the past, but in the internet age in USA, direct democracy has less things that would work against it. More information available, more means to communicate available, decent education available. More information overload. More false information supporting your preexisting views. > 6. Find best people for the job. Ideas can come from anywhere. Implementer can come from anywhere. You won't get "I implement my idea, not you". "You stole my idea". etc. Just like today it would be the most charismatic that flow to the top. Perhaps it would be even worse since today only the representatives have to be charismatic. At least their aides and bureaucrats can be ugly and socially inept as long as they are good at what they do.
logingone 9y ago
I like the idea of visualising the decisions. Break down an issue into its constituent parts, then show all the graphs and see-saws - if you vote x, then it a, b, c will change like this, and l,m,n will change like this.
joshuaheard 9y ago
The same reason crowdsourcing works on sites like Yelp, Amazon, and TripAdvisor.
rhizome 9y ago
You can't even pretend that you did a single web search?
MadcapJake 9y ago
Legislators aren't ignorant, they just vote according to their corporate sponsors. Direct democracy incentivizes the citizen to learn the issues. My opinions aside, TFA details a system to relieve "voter fatigue" and knowledge domain issues (delegating a committee of experts to craft votable resolutions)

LukeB42 9y ago

Because you're talking about Averaged Joes instead of a singular political career. Direct democracy, I'm guessing, would amortise absolute power corrupting absolutely by spreading the power thinly across the population.

neilwilson 9y ago
Averaged Joes are not independent entities. They network. So you don't get the effect. What you get is design by committee. Or more accurate design by committee of factions. The idea that democracy is a great way of solving all problems is just as much an ideology as rule by technocrat.
- LukeB42 9y ago
  Arguing the converse would be arguing that one representatives soul has more inherent decisive import than those represented and that's difficult to qualify or quantify unless the representative entity's God himself.

reitanqild 9y ago

AFAIK we have known for a long time that we are smarter together. See under "Variance and standard deviation" in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton for a well known example. That said I personally think this is an extreme case. I'll also admit that people - including me - are scaringly easy to manipulate in cases that are more complicated than this. Generally I'm more in favour of the Swiss system where you meet in town and vote by raising your sword. (disclaimer: I think this might have changed now - I heard this was how it used to be done by someone I know who grew up there a decade or two (I guess) before I was born. )

skummetmaelk 9y ago
The Swiss have expert legislators that actually make the laws the way they want. Grossly simplified, the populace can force a decision, but the specific implementation of the decision is created by lawmakers and later accepted by the population. If it is rejected the lawmakers get to have another go. It is of course more direct than in America, though it is more a case of voters saying "We want this" and legislators saying "Ok, we tried to implement it in the best way we could. Do you accept?".

losteric 9y ago

Direct democracy works IF we have an educated electorate. Which America does not have, and will not have for at least a generation... all the same, it can work. An educated electorate does not imply subject matter expertise, it means ubiquitous critical thinking abilities... the ability to debate, ask good questions, analyze the credibility and argument of a subject matter expert, and having the humbleness to be persuaded.

skummetmaelk 9y ago
Which will never ever happen. Who has time to critically evaluate every single decision that needs to be made by an effective government? That is assuming of course you could make everyone rational.
- losteric 9y ago
  Who says they would have to? Direct democracy = direct voting, not intimate involvement with every stage of policy. Representatives would still exist as subject matter experts that develop policy within their domain and act to convince the public. Ubiquitous critical thinking is sufficient to protect the public from demagogues and conmen - and that is an achievable goal (albeit politically challenging today)

banach 9y ago

It depends on ow you organize it, but ideally most decisions would be taken on the level of the people who are affected by it. If Joe doesn't understand before the election, he will understand after, and if he doesn't like the result, he can call for a new election. However, modern DD systems should support delegator/liquid democracy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy) which subsumes the benefits of representative democracy, while letting voters take back their vote from their delegate at any time.

skummetmaelk 9y ago
How is Joe going to know whether the tarriffs for imported salami should be 4% or 6.5%. How will he know that he made the right decision afterwards?
- thriftwy 9y ago
  Maybe it doesn't make much difference? Maybe fine-tuning salami tarriffs is something that should not be done, and relevant legislators should be freed to perhaps produce salami themself?
  - skummetmaelk 9y ago
    In real government there are thousands of small decisions on small boring issues that combine to have huge effects. Sometimes I feel like people think politics is only about debating the big things that split party lines like gay marriage and abortion.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      I don't have any confirmations that these small decisions actually matter much. You can have salami makers lobby for 6,5% import tax then salami sellers lobby for 4% import tax for years before the same parliament, this consuming resources of society but bringing zero value to society at large. On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.

apeace 9y ago

I don't necessarily ascribe to direct democracy ideas, but if you want to learn about why some people think it's a good idea, check out "The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement" by David Graeber. It chronicles his experiences in the Occupy Wall Street movement and expounds upon the value of direct democracy.

thriftwy 9y ago

These days I think that direct democracy is better than bureaucracy. Why won't it? Provided that it's deployed slowly and tenderly. Maybe Average Joe doesn't understand your area. Then you have two options: - Educate Average Joe about the issue. - Make sure that Average Joe doesn't vote on the issue and only concerned citizens do. This usually requires that issue poses no nuisances for Average Joe. But right now, when legislators don't understand anything and create bad policy, we have ZERO options. Zero is less than two.

Pxtl 9y ago
Joe does not have the time to be informed about the pros and cons of every decision that the government needs to ask him about. It's simply not practical. Direct democracy would be handing over the machinery of government to marketing companies fed by lobbies.
- thriftwy 9y ago
  We don't need Joe voting on every single issue. Just give Joe 100 voting credits at the start of cycle and let him spend in on whatever votes he likes - or not. Separation of scope also helps - a.k.a. moving issues from statewide scope and to relevant provinces/communes.
  - skummetmaelk 9y ago
    If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack. In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      It's also easy to counter. I can think how and so can you. What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle? Very potent point is that laws should be tried and then most of them should be repealed. Only a minority of laws should survive to permanence. Right now we pretend that we're capable of writing good laws from the first attempt.

manigandham 9y ago

> Why would Average Joe do any better? They wouldn't. It only works when the electorate is educated and rational - and that is almost never the case.

Spivak 9y ago
They would. So long as your the Average Joe makes the correct decision 51% of the time in the long run we'll turn out fine.
- manigandham 9y ago
  That makes no sense. What's the correct decision? All the people voting completely against their interests now think they're making the correct decision. Not all decisions or votes are equal and the outcome of an election can change what can even be voted on and by whom for the next round.
  - Spivak 9y ago
    I'm responding to the point that voters need to be rational and educated for a direct democracy to function. It only requires that voters have a bias, however slight, to making the 'right' decision. Don't think too much about how to define 'right' because you'll drive yourself mad. All that matters is the belief that in the long run people tend to make 'right' choices slightly more often than wrong ones.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      That wasn't the point. The question is whether it's a good idea - and it's not when people don't know or don't care about what they're voting on, both of which requires education and rational (long-term) thinking.
    - ZenoArrow 9y ago
      > "All that matters is the belief that in the long run people tend to make 'right' choices slightly more often than wrong ones." Do they though? I see people making the "wrong" choices very often when the "right" choice is inconvenient for them. I would include myself in that description too.

AmIFirstToThink 9y ago

1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor. 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code. 3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling 4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person. 5. It might have been difficult in the past, but in the internet age in USA, direct democracy has less things that would work against it. More information available, more means to communicate available, decent education available. 6. Find best people for the job. Ideas can come from anywhere. Implementer can come from anywhere. You won't get "I implement my idea, not you". "You stole my idea". etc.

skummetmaelk 9y ago
> 1. It's harder to bribe all Joes. It's easy to influence all Joes on the social media platforms virtually all of them use. > 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to. Party line is less of a problem in countries with sensible representative democracies, i.e not FPTP. > You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code. I completely agree with you here, but like others you only talk about the big issues. Not the small day-to-day operation that must also be handled as well as all the small "boring" issues that face any real government. > 3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling. Representatives are not rulers. > 4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person. I guarantee that if direct democracy was implemented you would have charismatic personalities telling people how to vote on day one. And they would be much better than influencers trying to use reason too. > 5. It might have been difficult in the past, but in the internet age in USA, direct democracy has less things that would work against it. More information available, more means to communicate available, decent education available. More information overload. More false information supporting your preexisting views. > 6. Find best people for the job. Ideas can come from anywhere. Implementer can come from anywhere. You won't get "I implement my idea, not you". "You stole my idea". etc. Just like today it would be the most charismatic that flow to the top. Perhaps it would be even worse since today only the representatives have to be charismatic. At least their aides and bureaucrats can be ugly and socially inept as long as they are good at what they do.

logingone 9y ago

I like the idea of visualising the decisions. Break down an issue into its constituent parts, then show all the graphs and see-saws - if you vote x, then it a, b, c will change like this, and l,m,n will change like this.

joshuaheard 9y ago

The same reason crowdsourcing works on sites like Yelp, Amazon, and TripAdvisor.

rhizome 9y ago

You can't even pretend that you did a single web search?

MadcapJake 9y ago

Legislators aren't ignorant, they just vote according to their corporate sponsors. Direct democracy incentivizes the citizen to learn the issues. My opinions aside, TFA details a system to relieve "voter fatigue" and knowledge domain issues (delegating a committee of experts to craft votable resolutions)