4 ms·

> 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.
  - aeternum 7y ago
    Online polls are notoriously inaccurate. If Facebook/Google tried this and it gained traction, it would likely trigger an onslaught of fake and stolen accounts.
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.

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.
- aeternum 7y ago
  Online polls are notoriously inaccurate. If Facebook/Google tried this and it gained traction, it would likely trigger an onslaught of fake and stolen accounts.

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.