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To repeat: The South always had enough votes to keep slavery legal. Direct democracy is literally mob rule. The reason the Constitution had the 3/5 phrasing for

To repeat: The South always had enough votes to keep slavery legal. Direct democracy is literally mob rule. The reason the Constitution had the 3/5 phrasing for slaves is not that the ciswhite males thought blacks were less than people, they didn't want the South to get even more votes through their slaves than they already had. They knew the only way to get rid of the peculiar institution was to vote it out (or go to war, but they didn't want that). This is this the reason that the Founders didn't pick it. It is mob rule. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/the-founding-fathers-never-meant-to-create_b_13051196.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-friedman/the-founding-... The general concept of the Republic is that it balances the terrors that all other governments impose. Through the representatives, the people trained in statecraft, the passions of the masses should be calmed. It's the hardest to corrupt. It's the most likely to survive deaths. If you had a perfect king, giving him absolute power is a no-brainer. The trouble is a) that's near impossible, and b) when he dies how do prevent a non-perfect king from ruling absolutely? We see this with budget deficits in California. Direct democracy allows ballot initiatives without the need to secure funding. The masses vote for wonderful, expensive things, but they don't say how to pay. The leaves the general budget scrambling for scraps to cover the cost.

jrobn 8y ago
Except when the voting mechanisms that elect those representatives is badly broken and easily gamed, i.e. gerrymandering districts in the US. There are a lot of things that are a problem with the way the US government is set up. 1) The Senate is a questionable insitution born out of a bad compromise with the size of colonies at the time. 2) Our average House Representive is representing 375,000 people. It should be much, much lower than that. 3) There are NO spending limits on political campaigns and that the US considers corporations as “people”. 4) Supreme Court judges have life terms. They should have longer terms than senators but not for life (15 years?). The people of a nation change, yet parties can push through politcally motivated or judges that strike down or uphold laws that maybe the population doesn’t want anymore! 5) It’s become almost impossible to change the constitution with Amendments due to only having two parties and the fall of bi-partisanship.
- virmundi 8y ago
  While I agree, or at least am willing to hear more about various points, none argue for a direct democracy. For a direct democracy you need a small population that is homogeneous in at least outlook if not in race. The countries that come closest to it are largely a single race. I also think that republican forms of government collapse when you get 100+ million. The US has been straining for sometime to hold itself together. More and more people feel divided. If it wasn't for the inherent weakness to outside attack, I'd prefer to see the US divide into regional countries that are better able to manage themselves. For example, a $15 hourly wage would bankrupt rural Florida. We hear more and more about that at a Congressional level. The same is true for most of the rural areas of the country. A better answer is for the States to move to minimum wages that fit their territories.
  - jrobn 8y ago
    I wasn't putting through arguments for direct democracy. Just that the current system is badly failing the people and it needs to change. Point number 1 & 2 would actually move us more to a direct democracy than you think. But direct democracy isn't the answer. We need to re-establish the fairness, and by extension, faith in the federal government. Look, this sentiment has been echoed in polls for years. The congress has a historically bad approval rating. The presidency, not so much. Because people lean to a strong man in times of feeling under represented. This is how dictatorships are born. The US needs to change[1] [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dingell-how-restore-faith-government/577222/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dinge...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
asituop 8y ago
Switzerland is the exact proof that what you say about masses voting for the expensive things is not always true. For e.g they had a "votation" on minimum wage, and people refused because the proposed minimum wage was too high. They had the maturity/long-term vision of refusing such a proposal. But in other countries/context I agree with you, try to do that for e.g in France and I'm pretty sure people would instantly vote yes to such a proposition without caring about the consequences. Maybe when you ask people often what they want they become responsible (like in Switzerland) while if you never ask people what they think, the rare times where you'll ask them through referendum, they'll go for the extreme/expensive because they want to express how frustrated of not being listened to they are.
- notahacker 8y ago
  It doesn't need to be "always true" for a tendency to produce conflicting objectives no sane legislator would ever choose (and making them much more difficult to repeal) to be a potentially crippling weakness of direct democracy. Perhaps experience with being consulted is why the Swiss appear relatively sanguine about a referendum vote to impose quotas on all immigration being creatively reinterpreted by its trade-prioritising government as just introducing job preferences for Swiss nationals in times of high unemployment and tightening residency permit criteria. That's certainly a course of action which would be expected to create much more unease in other parts of Europe; the furore over whether prioritising Single Market alignment in the UK's future relationship with the EU over an assumed preference for immigration restrictions that wasn't even on the relevant referendum ballot paper is a notable contrast. But I'd imagine there were aspects of the Swiss political psyche other than "maturity", "long term vision" or experience with referendums which made them relatively unenthusiastic about an impractically-high UBI proposal, high minimum holiday entitlement and supremacy of Swiss law over international law and relatively enthusiastic about banning minarets, allowing greater surveillance powers and [until remarkably recently in some cantons] restricting the franchise to men. Californians certainly don't have a particular shortage of referendums either.
  - asituop 8y ago
    You made the generalization that people will always vote for shiny and expensive stuff, I gave you an example it is not always the case. I never said direct-democracy is a bullet proof system that always ends up deciding reasonable laws. Taking the case of surveillance law as a failure of direct democracy is not relevant as a majority of non-direct democracies countries passed far more privacy invasive surveillance laws around the same period
microtherion 8y ago
> The South always had enough votes to keep slavery legal. Enough white votes, maybe, and trying to exclude people from the franchise is still a powerful strain in US politics. > This is this the reason that the Founders didn't pick it. It is mob rule. I can think of other reasons why a group of propertied males would think that government by a group of propertied males was optimal... What I find particularly dumb about the US political system is that the founders consciously patterned many of its elements (mutually blocking institutions, vetoes, senators, indirect representation, unequal representation) directly after the Roman Republic, while being perfectly aware how THAT turned out (Increasing institutional gridlock, increasing reward for violating norms, escalating violence, eventually leading to 1500 years of monarchy). > We see this with budget deficits in California. Excellent! Now explain budget deficits in Kansas, or federal deficits in the US, for that matter.
- virmundi 8y ago
  > Excellent! Now explain budget deficits in Kansas, or federal deficits in the US, for that matter. Extremes in ideals. Kansas cut their tax base too much without cutting their spending accordingly. With the US most of its the process of taking on massive amounts of debt under a pseuodo-socialist/capitalist system of welfare programs. 80% of the US budget goes towards paying for welfare programs: medicare/medicaid, social security, and debt payments that came from mostly spending on the welfare programs. The Republicans never slash, or kill the programs. The democrats always expand them without correcting the tax issues. For example, when Obama had the majority of Congress, he did not seek to raise the cap on SS taxes past the existing 120-130k line where it is today. Increasing the line, while also limiting payouts to an income of 120k, would pay for the program. What I mean by this is that there should be no cap, but the system will only pay out a maximum regardless of how much you paid in. Essentially both parties fail to observe the logical outcome of their philosophies. The Republicans are for a small government and a large military, which isn't really contradictory. The military is a specific power of the US government under the Constitution. The trouble with them is that they don't actually pursue the process of paring down the government. The Democrats are for large government. Their problem is they don't pursue the tax side the way they should. They need to increase taxes on the poor like the Scandinavian countries. In Finland, the average person pays 30-40% of their income to the State. They don't have a progressive tax system like we do. The Democrats don't pursue this. As a result, they go into debt. A direct democracy doesn't protect against this. Look at recent Florida elections. There is less than a 1% difference between the gubernatorial candidates. Should the 49.9901 get ruled by the other side? > Enough white votes, maybe, and trying to exclude people from the franchise is still a powerful strain in US politics. The South didn't have, and knew it would only loose ground, to the Northern votes if it only leaned on its white population. The first industrial revolution was growing the North even in the early days of the Constitutional system. The South needed the white Democrats, at least the precursor, once the cotton gin was invented to support slavery. Before the gin, slave labor didn't help that much. Cotton was too expensive due to manual labor. With the gin, all those bails of cotton that usually rotted in the fields were useful and valuable as long as you had the labor to get them out in time. The northern bankers made the funding available to purchase the slaves and extend the cotton trade. The founders were more afraid of direct democracy that led to the Athenians getting pushed to the sea when a demagogue rose to power due to sweet words. Again, unless you require a supermajority for all votes, direct democracy is easily swayed by political hacks like Colbert or Catiline.

jrobn 8y ago

Except when the voting mechanisms that elect those representatives is badly broken and easily gamed, i.e. gerrymandering districts in the US. There are a lot of things that are a problem with the way the US government is set up. 1) The Senate is a questionable insitution born out of a bad compromise with the size of colonies at the time. 2) Our average House Representive is representing 375,000 people. It should be much, much lower than that. 3) There are NO spending limits on political campaigns and that the US considers corporations as “people”. 4) Supreme Court judges have life terms. They should have longer terms than senators but not for life (15 years?). The people of a nation change, yet parties can push through politcally motivated or judges that strike down or uphold laws that maybe the population doesn’t want anymore! 5) It’s become almost impossible to change the constitution with Amendments due to only having two parties and the fall of bi-partisanship.

virmundi 8y ago
While I agree, or at least am willing to hear more about various points, none argue for a direct democracy. For a direct democracy you need a small population that is homogeneous in at least outlook if not in race. The countries that come closest to it are largely a single race. I also think that republican forms of government collapse when you get 100+ million. The US has been straining for sometime to hold itself together. More and more people feel divided. If it wasn't for the inherent weakness to outside attack, I'd prefer to see the US divide into regional countries that are better able to manage themselves. For example, a $15 hourly wage would bankrupt rural Florida. We hear more and more about that at a Congressional level. The same is true for most of the rural areas of the country. A better answer is for the States to move to minimum wages that fit their territories.
- jrobn 8y ago
  I wasn't putting through arguments for direct democracy. Just that the current system is badly failing the people and it needs to change. Point number 1 & 2 would actually move us more to a direct democracy than you think. But direct democracy isn't the answer. We need to re-establish the fairness, and by extension, faith in the federal government. Look, this sentiment has been echoed in polls for years. The congress has a historically bad approval rating. The presidency, not so much. Because people lean to a strong man in times of feeling under represented. This is how dictatorships are born. The US needs to change[1] [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dingell-how-restore-faith-government/577222/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/john-dinge...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

asituop 8y ago

Switzerland is the exact proof that what you say about masses voting for the expensive things is not always true. For e.g they had a "votation" on minimum wage, and people refused because the proposed minimum wage was too high. They had the maturity/long-term vision of refusing such a proposal. But in other countries/context I agree with you, try to do that for e.g in France and I'm pretty sure people would instantly vote yes to such a proposition without caring about the consequences. Maybe when you ask people often what they want they become responsible (like in Switzerland) while if you never ask people what they think, the rare times where you'll ask them through referendum, they'll go for the extreme/expensive because they want to express how frustrated of not being listened to they are.

notahacker 8y ago
It doesn't need to be "always true" for a tendency to produce conflicting objectives no sane legislator would ever choose (and making them much more difficult to repeal) to be a potentially crippling weakness of direct democracy. Perhaps experience with being consulted is why the Swiss appear relatively sanguine about a referendum vote to impose quotas on all immigration being creatively reinterpreted by its trade-prioritising government as just introducing job preferences for Swiss nationals in times of high unemployment and tightening residency permit criteria. That's certainly a course of action which would be expected to create much more unease in other parts of Europe; the furore over whether prioritising Single Market alignment in the UK's future relationship with the EU over an assumed preference for immigration restrictions that wasn't even on the relevant referendum ballot paper is a notable contrast. But I'd imagine there were aspects of the Swiss political psyche other than "maturity", "long term vision" or experience with referendums which made them relatively unenthusiastic about an impractically-high UBI proposal, high minimum holiday entitlement and supremacy of Swiss law over international law and relatively enthusiastic about banning minarets, allowing greater surveillance powers and [until remarkably recently in some cantons] restricting the franchise to men. Californians certainly don't have a particular shortage of referendums either.
- asituop 8y ago
  You made the generalization that people will always vote for shiny and expensive stuff, I gave you an example it is not always the case. I never said direct-democracy is a bullet proof system that always ends up deciding reasonable laws. Taking the case of surveillance law as a failure of direct democracy is not relevant as a majority of non-direct democracies countries passed far more privacy invasive surveillance laws around the same period

microtherion 8y ago

> The South always had enough votes to keep slavery legal. Enough white votes, maybe, and trying to exclude people from the franchise is still a powerful strain in US politics. > This is this the reason that the Founders didn't pick it. It is mob rule. I can think of other reasons why a group of propertied males would think that government by a group of propertied males was optimal... What I find particularly dumb about the US political system is that the founders consciously patterned many of its elements (mutually blocking institutions, vetoes, senators, indirect representation, unequal representation) directly after the Roman Republic, while being perfectly aware how THAT turned out (Increasing institutional gridlock, increasing reward for violating norms, escalating violence, eventually leading to 1500 years of monarchy). > We see this with budget deficits in California. Excellent! Now explain budget deficits in Kansas, or federal deficits in the US, for that matter.

virmundi 8y ago
> Excellent! Now explain budget deficits in Kansas, or federal deficits in the US, for that matter. Extremes in ideals. Kansas cut their tax base too much without cutting their spending accordingly. With the US most of its the process of taking on massive amounts of debt under a pseuodo-socialist/capitalist system of welfare programs. 80% of the US budget goes towards paying for welfare programs: medicare/medicaid, social security, and debt payments that came from mostly spending on the welfare programs. The Republicans never slash, or kill the programs. The democrats always expand them without correcting the tax issues. For example, when Obama had the majority of Congress, he did not seek to raise the cap on SS taxes past the existing 120-130k line where it is today. Increasing the line, while also limiting payouts to an income of 120k, would pay for the program. What I mean by this is that there should be no cap, but the system will only pay out a maximum regardless of how much you paid in. Essentially both parties fail to observe the logical outcome of their philosophies. The Republicans are for a small government and a large military, which isn't really contradictory. The military is a specific power of the US government under the Constitution. The trouble with them is that they don't actually pursue the process of paring down the government. The Democrats are for large government. Their problem is they don't pursue the tax side the way they should. They need to increase taxes on the poor like the Scandinavian countries. In Finland, the average person pays 30-40% of their income to the State. They don't have a progressive tax system like we do. The Democrats don't pursue this. As a result, they go into debt. A direct democracy doesn't protect against this. Look at recent Florida elections. There is less than a 1% difference between the gubernatorial candidates. Should the 49.9901 get ruled by the other side? > Enough white votes, maybe, and trying to exclude people from the franchise is still a powerful strain in US politics. The South didn't have, and knew it would only loose ground, to the Northern votes if it only leaned on its white population. The first industrial revolution was growing the North even in the early days of the Constitutional system. The South needed the white Democrats, at least the precursor, once the cotton gin was invented to support slavery. Before the gin, slave labor didn't help that much. Cotton was too expensive due to manual labor. With the gin, all those bails of cotton that usually rotted in the fields were useful and valuable as long as you had the labor to get them out in time. The northern bankers made the funding available to purchase the slaves and extend the cotton trade. The founders were more afraid of direct democracy that led to the Athenians getting pushed to the sea when a demagogue rose to power due to sweet words. Again, unless you require a supermajority for all votes, direct democracy is easily swayed by political hacks like Colbert or Catiline.