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Agreed. One of the best features of small "d" democracy is that it lends the government a pretty powerful argument for legitimacy. Which is perhaps the most imp

Agreed. One of the best features of small "d" democracy is that it lends the government a pretty powerful argument for legitimacy. Which is perhaps the most important feature a government needs to last. Edit: Consent of the Governed is probably the most powerful legitimacy arguments there is beside maybe Divine Right.

ALittleLight 7y ago
I disagree that democracy provides consent of the governed. To write with broad strokes: Half of people don't vote. Half that do don't get what they want. Half that do don't understand the issues, and without understanding can't give consent. You don't know what laws your representatives will write. You don't know how the obtuse legal language will be interpreted through a myriad of other legal artifacts by unelected judges. You don't know how the administrators of the executive branch will selectively enforce whatever does get written. How does giving an almost entirely symbolic vote (for national elections) in any way convey the consent of the governed?
- Aeolun 7y ago
  You give consent for a given group of people to govern you, not for every decision they make. That would be direct democracy (and probably a clusterfuck).
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    > probably a clusterfuck Why do you believes this? I'm not an advocate of direct democracy but I have no idea why this valuation is so ubiquitous.
    - zxcmx 7y ago
      Have thought about this a bit. Moving towards DD used to seem like an obvious evolution to me, particularly with modern technology. Following recent political developments I see a lot more risks now. First of all is how do we choose what to vote on; a lot of power is rests on whoever drafts and sets the "framing" of votes. If we also do this "directly" in some manner then the filtering mechanism is vulnerable, and if we try to crowd source all the things we are likely to get "government by reddit". Direct democracy moves power away from politicians and towards media (traditional and social), celebrities, opinion makers. If you believe we live in a world of misinformation now, there is a potential for direct democracy to make that much worse. It's also not obvious in a direct democracy how you would control for holistic things that result from many decisions. The obvious one is how do you balance a budget without making the voting process very complicated.
      - Iv 7y ago
        I think liquid democracy is a reasonable proposition: delegate your vote to professionals, but take it back on any propositions you have a strong opinion about. Having met some representative and politicians, I can confidently say that they are as vulnerable to misinformation, hubris and inadequate education than the average voter. Switzerland has actually a system pretty close to DD with its petition-triggered referendums. I believe California has something similar? DD is the possibility to vote, but it is fine to have representatives, as long as you can take your cote back when you want.
      - wayneftw 7y ago
        What if we had a very serious law that says that if you get caught lying to people about the issues being voted on, you'd be thrown in jail? Regarding the budget question - could we still vote on important issues and leave the rest up to the bureaucracy? i.e. The people have spoken. Make it so... If there is a major budgetary issue with a given decision, we vote on where to get the money... Even if direct democracy wouldn't work officially - I think it would be interesting if there were a way to collect the general populations opinion on a matter at any given time and make it known. I'm surprised Facebook/Google hasn't done something like this yet. I bet you they would if some startup came along and tried to market an app like this.
        amelius 7y ago
        > What if we had a very serious law that says that if you get caught lying to people about the issues being voted on, you'd be thrown in jail? You don't have to lie in order to make people vote in a certain direction. For example, you could give more coverage of one side of the argument than the other. E.g. in the case of the topic of terrorism you can choose to ignore it, or you can frame the issue in such a way that it seems that the viewer is at a high risk of being attacked, e.g. by showing old footage in every news bulletin. As another example, take euthanasia; you can explain the humanitarian side of it, or you can zoom in on the mistakes that have been made by doctors in other countries in this context, and make them look horrific. You can apply these kinds of tricks to almost any topic, I'm sure you get the point.
        7y ago
    - crdoconnor 7y ago
      Every attempt to democratise has been characterized this way. Representative democracy was once castigated as a chaotic rule by brutes.
    - LoSboccacc 7y ago
      understanding the world is a full time job. not saying the current crop of politicians are doing a great job of it, but the chances for Joe Random to understand the ramifications of his voting in direct democracy are slim Moreover the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present; while a populist leader still have to work within the framework of the houses it would be extremely easy to con the people into, say, voting xenophobic measures during circumscribed but substantial crisis like the Syrian war.
      - mistermann 7y ago
        Indeed, there are many obvious shortcomings and risks with DD and any other system - pointing them out is about as difficult a shooting fish in a barrel. But I find this style of argument utterly unconvincing of the popular truism that it would inevitably result in a clusterfuck. Not only that, any time I read such criticisms, they seem to overlook the fact that DD would change the landscape. Perhaps people are "ignorant of the facts" now, and I certainly don't disagree, but can you blame them? If a democracy offers you only two choices of party, who differ very little if viewed from a perspective outside the Overton Window (which is constantly drilled into people's minds as a true representation of reality), then why bother putting much effort into it? Of course, the average Joe's reasoning doesn't get down into such detail, but I believe the common man has a reasonably accurate intuitive sense for discriminating between sincerity and theatre. To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried, with many variations, over a very long period of time. To me, this seems unmistakably true due to the complex nature of reality - and yet, the overwhelming consensus opinion seems to be that It Is Known that it could not possibly work, full stop. To me, this seems like yet another an example of intuition being mistaken for fact, a general idea that this [0] excellent comment touched upon. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897532
        afarrell 7y ago
        > To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried No, you can also build up a set of ideas of how people behave in response to desires, norms, and stimuli. Those ideas let you make predictions of how people would act. Can those ideas be wrong? Totally. So they should be tested. But at what scale do they need to be tested? If you've seen a 20-person student group engage in a long wankerous meeting for 6 hours until 1:30am, does that experience provide valid information about what can happen in a Direct Democracy the size of Singapore (pop: 5.6 million)?
    - afarrell 7y ago
      The way I arrived at this opinion was sitting in 5-hour-long-meetings as a student.
      - Iv 7y ago
        Direct democracy just means you get a vote on the final decision. It does not mean you have to listen to all the debates.
      - DubiousPusher 7y ago
        You could use that same argument to say a representative democracy would never work. As obvious as some of the problems are with DD so is it obvious the system would need some guard rails. Just as modern republics looked at the failings of historical ones and added features to protect themselves. I have no idea whether it could work or not but it seems to me there's little empirical evidence to validate the commonly held strong opinion that it would necessarily be a disaster.
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  I never said the argument was true. An argument can be powerful without being true. I didn't express my personal values in regards to democracy or any other form of government.
- dgudkov 7y ago
  That's right. Democracy is not without drawbacks. However democracy solves one big problem - anything else is much worse. Inventing a better form than democracy would be a huge boon to the humanity. It's a pity that research for better forms of democracy doesn't get that much funding, if any at all. For some reason it's considered less important than yet another food delivery service.
redis_mlc 7y ago
Very cogent. The Chinese emperors all sought ways to appear mandated to rule. And the purpose of royal portraits in Europe was to show the lineage of throne inheritance.
foogazi 7y ago
This reminds me of this GoT quote: >Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys-said-swirling-the-wine-in https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys...

ALittleLight 7y ago

I disagree that democracy provides consent of the governed. To write with broad strokes: Half of people don't vote. Half that do don't get what they want. Half that do don't understand the issues, and without understanding can't give consent. You don't know what laws your representatives will write. You don't know how the obtuse legal language will be interpreted through a myriad of other legal artifacts by unelected judges. You don't know how the administrators of the executive branch will selectively enforce whatever does get written. How does giving an almost entirely symbolic vote (for national elections) in any way convey the consent of the governed?

Aeolun 7y ago
You give consent for a given group of people to govern you, not for every decision they make. That would be direct democracy (and probably a clusterfuck).
- DubiousPusher 7y ago
  > probably a clusterfuck Why do you believes this? I'm not an advocate of direct democracy but I have no idea why this valuation is so ubiquitous.
  - zxcmx 7y ago
    Have thought about this a bit. Moving towards DD used to seem like an obvious evolution to me, particularly with modern technology. Following recent political developments I see a lot more risks now. First of all is how do we choose what to vote on; a lot of power is rests on whoever drafts and sets the "framing" of votes. If we also do this "directly" in some manner then the filtering mechanism is vulnerable, and if we try to crowd source all the things we are likely to get "government by reddit". Direct democracy moves power away from politicians and towards media (traditional and social), celebrities, opinion makers. If you believe we live in a world of misinformation now, there is a potential for direct democracy to make that much worse. It's also not obvious in a direct democracy how you would control for holistic things that result from many decisions. The obvious one is how do you balance a budget without making the voting process very complicated.
    - Iv 7y ago
      I think liquid democracy is a reasonable proposition: delegate your vote to professionals, but take it back on any propositions you have a strong opinion about. Having met some representative and politicians, I can confidently say that they are as vulnerable to misinformation, hubris and inadequate education than the average voter. Switzerland has actually a system pretty close to DD with its petition-triggered referendums. I believe California has something similar? DD is the possibility to vote, but it is fine to have representatives, as long as you can take your cote back when you want.
    - wayneftw 7y ago
      What if we had a very serious law that says that if you get caught lying to people about the issues being voted on, you'd be thrown in jail? Regarding the budget question - could we still vote on important issues and leave the rest up to the bureaucracy? i.e. The people have spoken. Make it so... If there is a major budgetary issue with a given decision, we vote on where to get the money... Even if direct democracy wouldn't work officially - I think it would be interesting if there were a way to collect the general populations opinion on a matter at any given time and make it known. I'm surprised Facebook/Google hasn't done something like this yet. I bet you they would if some startup came along and tried to market an app like this.
      - amelius 7y ago
        > What if we had a very serious law that says that if you get caught lying to people about the issues being voted on, you'd be thrown in jail? You don't have to lie in order to make people vote in a certain direction. For example, you could give more coverage of one side of the argument than the other. E.g. in the case of the topic of terrorism you can choose to ignore it, or you can frame the issue in such a way that it seems that the viewer is at a high risk of being attacked, e.g. by showing old footage in every news bulletin. As another example, take euthanasia; you can explain the humanitarian side of it, or you can zoom in on the mistakes that have been made by doctors in other countries in this context, and make them look horrific. You can apply these kinds of tricks to almost any topic, I'm sure you get the point.
      - 7y ago
  - crdoconnor 7y ago
    Every attempt to democratise has been characterized this way. Representative democracy was once castigated as a chaotic rule by brutes.
  - LoSboccacc 7y ago
    understanding the world is a full time job. not saying the current crop of politicians are doing a great job of it, but the chances for Joe Random to understand the ramifications of his voting in direct democracy are slim Moreover the risk of unmitigated populism storming the masses into voting some real shit is ever present; while a populist leader still have to work within the framework of the houses it would be extremely easy to con the people into, say, voting xenophobic measures during circumscribed but substantial crisis like the Syrian war.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      Indeed, there are many obvious shortcomings and risks with DD and any other system - pointing them out is about as difficult a shooting fish in a barrel. But I find this style of argument utterly unconvincing of the popular truism that it would inevitably result in a clusterfuck. Not only that, any time I read such criticisms, they seem to overlook the fact that DD would change the landscape. Perhaps people are "ignorant of the facts" now, and I certainly don't disagree, but can you blame them? If a democracy offers you only two choices of party, who differ very little if viewed from a perspective outside the Overton Window (which is constantly drilled into people's minds as a true representation of reality), then why bother putting much effort into it? Of course, the average Joe's reasoning doesn't get down into such detail, but I believe the common man has a reasonably accurate intuitive sense for discriminating between sincerity and theatre. To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried, with many variations, over a very long period of time. To me, this seems unmistakably true due to the complex nature of reality - and yet, the overwhelming consensus opinion seems to be that It Is Known that it could not possibly work, full stop. To me, this seems like yet another an example of intuition being mistaken for fact, a general idea that this [0] excellent comment touched upon. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897532 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21897532
      - afarrell 7y ago
        > To know with any level of confidence whether DD could work, it would have to be tried No, you can also build up a set of ideas of how people behave in response to desires, norms, and stimuli. Those ideas let you make predictions of how people would act. Can those ideas be wrong? Totally. So they should be tested. But at what scale do they need to be tested? If you've seen a 20-person student group engage in a long wankerous meeting for 6 hours until 1:30am, does that experience provide valid information about what can happen in a Direct Democracy the size of Singapore (pop: 5.6 million)?
  - afarrell 7y ago
    The way I arrived at this opinion was sitting in 5-hour-long-meetings as a student.
    - Iv 7y ago
      Direct democracy just means you get a vote on the final decision. It does not mean you have to listen to all the debates.
    - DubiousPusher 7y ago
      You could use that same argument to say a representative democracy would never work. As obvious as some of the problems are with DD so is it obvious the system would need some guard rails. Just as modern republics looked at the failings of historical ones and added features to protect themselves. I have no idea whether it could work or not but it seems to me there's little empirical evidence to validate the commonly held strong opinion that it would necessarily be a disaster.
DubiousPusher 7y ago
I never said the argument was true. An argument can be powerful without being true. I didn't express my personal values in regards to democracy or any other form of government.
dgudkov 7y ago
That's right. Democracy is not without drawbacks. However democracy solves one big problem - anything else is much worse. Inventing a better form than democracy would be a huge boon to the humanity. It's a pity that research for better forms of democracy doesn't get that much funding, if any at all. For some reason it's considered less important than yet another food delivery service.

redis_mlc 7y ago

Very cogent. The Chinese emperors all sought ways to appear mandated to rule. And the purpose of royal portraits in Europe was to show the lineage of throne inheritance.

foogazi 7y ago

This reminds me of this GoT quote: >Varys smiled. “Here, then. Power resides where men believe it resides. No more and no less.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys-said-swirling-the-wine-in https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/503606-oh-i-think-not-varys...