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The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? The way

The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? The way the parliament is elected is quite fair - it gives a little more power to people in smaller countries, but that's not unusual (UK westminster constituencies vary from 22k to 120k. U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million). There's an argument that it should be more even than the current 11:1 ratio, but we call the U.S. senate democratic and that's a 69:1 ratio. The actual choice of MEP comes down to a proportionate election, meaning that if you get 15% of the votes, you get 15% of the MEPs. This beats fptp systems where MPs in the house of commons are elected with as few as 30% of the votes cast. Voting for a representative is the very essence of representative democracy. Perhaps we should have direct democracy. As it happens I watched an episode of The Orville[0] last night which covered this scenario. Personally I'm a fan of representative democracy. It's the worst system except for all the others. I expect my representitive to work full time in understanding proposals and voting on my behalf, but they are a representitive, not a delegate. This is where direct PR falls down (who gets the seats is down to the party, not to the voter. I can't vote for Candidate B rather than candidate A if they are part of the same party. STV works better in this case, although 90% of voters don't really care and in the UK 80% don't even know who their MP is! [0] https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule

sprash 8y ago
Parliamentary democracy is a type of fake democracy that legitimizes tyranny. If people were able to vote directly Art. 17 would have never passed.
- marcodave 8y ago
  > If people were able to vote directly Art. 17 The cynical in me would complete the sentence with "...a vast majority would not even understand what the article is about"
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Quite, I haven't got a clue on all the ins and outs, and I'm relatively clued up compared with most people I know. I've seen a lot of lobbying from google and co saying it shouldn't pass. That's why I vote for people who can spend a lot of time looking at it and voting for or against it in parliament. As it happens my preferred grouping were pretty much split evenly, there's certainly pros and cons.
DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
To make my point a bit clearer: I am almost convinced now that "representative democracy" shouldn't count as a "democracy" just because the population can vote who they get ####ed by. It only works as long as the representatives see it as their duty to represent the will of the voters accurately, which I'm starting to believe is an antithesis to human behavior, and thus will never be the norm. I'm not saying that European society (if such a thing even exists) is inherently undemocratic; just that it's not democratic enough to be called a proper Democracy. And I'm not even asking for direct democracy on everything, but there should be laws in place that force politicians to put decisions up for vote to the public if there's a certain level of resistance from the population. Take for an example the UK referendum to leave the EU. Even though it's overall a complete shitshow, and all sides usually agree on that, nobody can really claim that it wasn't a democratic decision. Was it a smart one? Who knows, I doubt it. But it was democratic, and that's more than I can say about this mess.
- yulaow 8y ago
  Well it depends on which is your view about "what is the most democratic vote system". For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about. From my point of view the Brexit vote is totally not-democratic because it put an absurdly complex decision on a big part of the population which has not even remotely the competence to decide on the matter. As you see it is not all white or black.
  - DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
    > For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about. Isn't that not just a technocracy? I actually think a system like that would make a lot of sense, but I still believe the population should have the power to veto a law that they don't want. As for the brexit vote being undemocratic, I see your point, but I don't think just because the people were uninformed that means the referendum was undemocratic. First of all, I don't think most MEPs who voted for the copyright reform were any more informed, on average. I also think it should ultimately be up to the population of a democratic system to decide things, even if they don't understand the situation entirely. That's the point of democracy.
xienze 8y ago
> The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? Did any parliament members run on this issue? If so, how many? The point I'm getting at is, to what extent did "the people" really have a say in this issue? Politicians are elected and some time down the road laws are proposed without much, if any, input from the people. It's not really possible to know ahead of time what laws will be proposed years in advance and how your representative will actually vote on them when the time comes. That's my main gripe with the whole "well you should've voted for a better representative!" argument. Yeah you can vote them out after the fact, but ahead of time the best you can do is vote for someone who represents your district's interests in the most general sense. It's really a crapshoot as to what your representative is going to do once they're sat in front of some dense, hard-to-understand legislation cooked up by a nameless, faceless corporate-political committee.
- Xelbair 8y ago
  And lets not forget about lobbying. That sweet, sweet money flowing into their pockets.
Xelbair 8y ago
>The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? I'm more annoyed that they keep pushing the similar legislatures despite widespread protests. remember ACTA and others? It looks to me like they will keep pushing same stuff, that people actually do not want, again and again - just wait some time until the heat dies down so to say.
- isostatic 8y ago
  The solution is to vote them out.
rorykoehler 8y ago
It's undemocratic because it's bought by a lobby and not in the interests of the populace as a whole.
ApolloFortyNine 8y ago
>The way the parliament is elected is quite fair - it gives a little more power to people in smaller countries, but that's not unusual (UK westminster constituencies vary from 22k to 120k. U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million). There's an argument that it should be more even than the current 11:1 ratio, but we call the U.S. senate democratic and that's a 69:1 ratio. At least call out the House of Representatives, that's what supposed to truly represent individuals. The senate is supposed to be at a state level by design (originally of course it was supposed to be a check on the general public, but it doesn't work that way anymore).
- isostatic 8y ago
  > At least call out the House of Representatives I did ("U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million") > The senate is supposed to be at a state level by design Yes, same as the EU Council (which is 1 rep per country, although that rep is the head of government of each country rather than directly elected -- I believe the senate started off in a similar fashion) The U.S. House is more balanced than the UK parliament or European Parliament, but it's not an insane inbalance. Not sure what would happen if American Samoa became a state. Would it's rep get a vote? If so that would be 1 vote for 55k people. You'd have to have about 6000 reps in that case to have an even spread.

sprash 8y ago

Parliamentary democracy is a type of fake democracy that legitimizes tyranny. If people were able to vote directly Art. 17 would have never passed.

marcodave 8y ago
> If people were able to vote directly Art. 17 The cynical in me would complete the sentence with "...a vast majority would not even understand what the article is about"
- isostatic 8y ago
  Quite, I haven't got a clue on all the ins and outs, and I'm relatively clued up compared with most people I know. I've seen a lot of lobbying from google and co saying it shouldn't pass. That's why I vote for people who can spend a lot of time looking at it and voting for or against it in parliament. As it happens my preferred grouping were pretty much split evenly, there's certainly pros and cons.

DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago

To make my point a bit clearer: I am almost convinced now that "representative democracy" shouldn't count as a "democracy" just because the population can vote who they get ####ed by. It only works as long as the representatives see it as their duty to represent the will of the voters accurately, which I'm starting to believe is an antithesis to human behavior, and thus will never be the norm. I'm not saying that European society (if such a thing even exists) is inherently undemocratic; just that it's not democratic enough to be called a proper Democracy. And I'm not even asking for direct democracy on everything, but there should be laws in place that force politicians to put decisions up for vote to the public if there's a certain level of resistance from the population. Take for an example the UK referendum to leave the EU. Even though it's overall a complete shitshow, and all sides usually agree on that, nobody can really claim that it wasn't a democratic decision. Was it a smart one? Who knows, I doubt it. But it was democratic, and that's more than I can say about this mess.

yulaow 8y ago
Well it depends on which is your view about "what is the most democratic vote system". For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about. From my point of view the Brexit vote is totally not-democratic because it put an absurdly complex decision on a big part of the population which has not even remotely the competence to decide on the matter. As you see it is not all white or black.
- DarkWiiPlayer 8y ago
  > For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about. Isn't that not just a technocracy? I actually think a system like that would make a lot of sense, but I still believe the population should have the power to veto a law that they don't want. As for the brexit vote being undemocratic, I see your point, but I don't think just because the people were uninformed that means the referendum was undemocratic. First of all, I don't think most MEPs who voted for the copyright reform were any more informed, on average. I also think it should ultimately be up to the population of a democratic system to decide things, even if they don't understand the situation entirely. That's the point of democracy.

xienze 8y ago

> The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? Did any parliament members run on this issue? If so, how many? The point I'm getting at is, to what extent did "the people" really have a say in this issue? Politicians are elected and some time down the road laws are proposed without much, if any, input from the people. It's not really possible to know ahead of time what laws will be proposed years in advance and how your representative will actually vote on them when the time comes. That's my main gripe with the whole "well you should've voted for a better representative!" argument. Yeah you can vote them out after the fact, but ahead of time the best you can do is vote for someone who represents your district's interests in the most general sense. It's really a crapshoot as to what your representative is going to do once they're sat in front of some dense, hard-to-understand legislation cooked up by a nameless, faceless corporate-political committee.

Xelbair 8y ago
And lets not forget about lobbying. That sweet, sweet money flowing into their pockets.

Xelbair 8y ago

>The EU Parliament, who we vote for every 5 years (and have elections coming up), vote for a law. You don't like said law, therefore it's undemocratic? I'm more annoyed that they keep pushing the similar legislatures despite widespread protests. remember ACTA and others? It looks to me like they will keep pushing same stuff, that people actually do not want, again and again - just wait some time until the heat dies down so to say.

isostatic 8y ago
The solution is to vote them out.

rorykoehler 8y ago

It's undemocratic because it's bought by a lobby and not in the interests of the populace as a whole.

ApolloFortyNine 8y ago

>The way the parliament is elected is quite fair - it gives a little more power to people in smaller countries, but that's not unusual (UK westminster constituencies vary from 22k to 120k. U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million). There's an argument that it should be more even than the current 11:1 ratio, but we call the U.S. senate democratic and that's a 69:1 ratio. At least call out the House of Representatives, that's what supposed to truly represent individuals. The senate is supposed to be at a state level by design (originally of course it was supposed to be a check on the general public, but it doesn't work that way anymore).

isostatic 8y ago
> At least call out the House of Representatives I did ("U.S. congress areas are more even, ranging from 500k to 1 million") > The senate is supposed to be at a state level by design Yes, same as the EU Council (which is 1 rep per country, although that rep is the head of government of each country rather than directly elected -- I believe the senate started off in a similar fashion) The U.S. House is more balanced than the UK parliament or European Parliament, but it's not an insane inbalance. Not sure what would happen if American Samoa became a state. Would it's rep get a vote? If so that would be 1 vote for 55k people. You'd have to have about 6000 reps in that case to have an even spread.