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That's why systems like Liquid Democracy have delegation features. You don't elect representatives, but you can delegate ("lend", if you will) your vote on cert

That's why systems like Liquid Democracy have delegation features. You don't elect representatives, but you can delegate ("lend", if you will) your vote on certain issues to them. And revoke the delegation at any time. Maybe Cicada could be equipped with something like this, but sentences like "The concept is so new that the word representativeless does not even exist. We had to invent it." don't look like the authors have done a lot of research on the topic.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
This is a github post that tries to pass itself off as a "paper" (because it sounds official, right), and ends with "And that can change the world". Wow that's academic and objective. Why are we upvoting delusional content that lacks a real understanding of behavior, politics, and law? Because if you want to change the world, a basic understanding of that might help. He could start with Plato and Xenophon and the Trial of the Generals and then progress to Reddit if he thinks crowds are wise and democracy without flaw. The next time there is an Arab Spring, the people will be able to replace their leaders with code. Is this serious? It's every bad Silicon Valley joke wrapped up in a document. In the real world, politicians, and armies, and people with power that you don't even know of have been ruling the world for a long time. If you want to break that you gotta be more realistic than quoting a science fiction book and a Github paper. To create something scalable enough to run an entire nation with no representatives, we created two cutting edge technologies to serve as the foundation of the platform Is it reasonable to make this statement without showing any code? They seem to have not scaled beyond writing thought on paper. How do you go from that to "leaders being replaced with code"? Is there not a massive gap to be bridged before such audacious claims are made? Why isn't there more skepticism of something like this?
- vertex-four 9y ago
  Primarily because HN is very libertarian-leaning, and has a lot of people who do not understand people or societies as a result.
  - zo1 9y ago
    You must think us Libertarians get insanely promoted and upvoted on HN or something. The truth is no where near that.
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      I see a lot more libertarian ideology appear on the front page than anything else, politics-wise, even if there's reasonable arguments in the comments. From blockchains to direct democracy to universal income, and a while back, an incredible amount of writings on property rights for some reason.
      - hueving 9y ago
        Universal income is not a libertarian idea, it's socialist. Block chains are a technology, nothing more, nothing less. Big banks are using them and they have nothing to do with libertarianism. Direct democracy is orthogonal to libertarianism. Structure of government is independent of desired role of government. Calls for direct democracy have surged from liberals in the US after the second wrath of the electoral college. The only thing that is libertarian is writing on property rights.
        vertex-four 9y ago
        Universal income as a replacement for all current Government social support functions is an idea that came out of libertarian-leaning ideology - it's a really, really good method of removing the Government's role in social support, and forcing people to take control of their own lives. Socialists support a universal income only so far as it doesn't massively affect various support functions the Government currently performs - i.e. they don't really support it, since that's untenable. PoW and PoS blockchains follow libertarian ideology and fundamentally libertarian ideas of how the world should work - "no ability for the Government to see what you're doing and tax it" is pretty much the rallying cry of its proponents, or it was about three years ago when I was into it. (Oh, along with a healthy dose of "companies can do no wrong, and if they do, it's your fault".) The political goal is to remove the Government's (and therefore the banks') role in trade. Centralised "blockchains" as used by banks are irrelevant there, and shouldn't even use the same word. Direct democracy is, unfortunately, something that heavily overlaps with libertarian ideology - again, it severely shrinks or removes the role of Government in political decision-making processes.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it. This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested while sending an active minority ballistic, and then freezing that moment into law. Switzerland, on the other hand, lets leaders counter-propose and negotiate with the population. It also has mandatory waiting periods. Broad direct democracy has a poor history because it tends to empower mobs. This is a bigger problem than the expertise issue that delegation addresses.
- joshuaheard 9y ago
  That's true, but you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy Presumably based on the laws this direct democracy enacts? Observe California and imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum. The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups. Direct democracy is better used as a check on a small group of leaders, e.g. a right to popularly veto legislation (or Constitutional amendments) and a right to select the leaders.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      > imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum And what do you think will happen then? I hope you respect the readers by not assuming that it will be paper ballot referendums.
      - xg15 9y ago

aaron-lebo 9y ago

This is a github post that tries to pass itself off as a "paper" (because it sounds official, right), and ends with "And that can change the world". Wow that's academic and objective. Why are we upvoting delusional content that lacks a real understanding of behavior, politics, and law? Because if you want to change the world, a basic understanding of that might help. He could start with Plato and Xenophon and the Trial of the Generals and then progress to Reddit if he thinks crowds are wise and democracy without flaw. The next time there is an Arab Spring, the people will be able to replace their leaders with code. Is this serious? It's every bad Silicon Valley joke wrapped up in a document. In the real world, politicians, and armies, and people with power that you don't even know of have been ruling the world for a long time. If you want to break that you gotta be more realistic than quoting a science fiction book and a Github paper. To create something scalable enough to run an entire nation with no representatives, we created two cutting edge technologies to serve as the foundation of the platform Is it reasonable to make this statement without showing any code? They seem to have not scaled beyond writing thought on paper. How do you go from that to "leaders being replaced with code"? Is there not a massive gap to be bridged before such audacious claims are made? Why isn't there more skepticism of something like this?

vertex-four 9y ago
Primarily because HN is very libertarian-leaning, and has a lot of people who do not understand people or societies as a result.
- zo1 9y ago
  You must think us Libertarians get insanely promoted and upvoted on HN or something. The truth is no where near that.
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    I see a lot more libertarian ideology appear on the front page than anything else, politics-wise, even if there's reasonable arguments in the comments. From blockchains to direct democracy to universal income, and a while back, an incredible amount of writings on property rights for some reason.
    - hueving 9y ago
      Universal income is not a libertarian idea, it's socialist. Block chains are a technology, nothing more, nothing less. Big banks are using them and they have nothing to do with libertarianism. Direct democracy is orthogonal to libertarianism. Structure of government is independent of desired role of government. Calls for direct democracy have surged from liberals in the US after the second wrath of the electoral college. The only thing that is libertarian is writing on property rights.
      - vertex-four 9y ago
        Universal income as a replacement for all current Government social support functions is an idea that came out of libertarian-leaning ideology - it's a really, really good method of removing the Government's role in social support, and forcing people to take control of their own lives. Socialists support a universal income only so far as it doesn't massively affect various support functions the Government currently performs - i.e. they don't really support it, since that's untenable. PoW and PoS blockchains follow libertarian ideology and fundamentally libertarian ideas of how the world should work - "no ability for the Government to see what you're doing and tax it" is pretty much the rallying cry of its proponents, or it was about three years ago when I was into it. (Oh, along with a healthy dose of "companies can do no wrong, and if they do, it's your fault".) The political goal is to remove the Government's (and therefore the banks') role in trade. Centralised "blockchains" as used by banks are irrelevant there, and shouldn't even use the same word. Direct democracy is, unfortunately, something that heavily overlaps with libertarian ideology - again, it severely shrinks or removes the role of Government in political decision-making processes.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it. This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested while sending an active minority ballistic, and then freezing that moment into law. Switzerland, on the other hand, lets leaders counter-propose and negotiate with the population. It also has mandatory waiting periods. Broad direct democracy has a poor history because it tends to empower mobs. This is a bigger problem than the expertise issue that delegation addresses.

joshuaheard 9y ago
That's true, but you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > you would still have a balance of power so that a court could overturn a law created by direct democracy Presumably based on the laws this direct democracy enacts? Observe California and imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum. The system fails because people don't compromise across large, unaccountable groups. Direct democracy is better used as a check on a small group of leaders, e.g. a right to popularly veto legislation (or Constitutional amendments) and a right to select the leaders.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    > imagine if every single law had to be passed through referendum And what do you think will happen then? I hope you respect the readers by not assuming that it will be paper ballot referendums.
    - xg15 9y ago