11 ms·

One big problem is that the elected after being elected, choose to not follow or dilute those promises. There is no accountability. So time and again, democracy

One big problem is that the elected after being elected, choose to not follow or dilute those promises. There is no accountability. So time and again, democracy fails as they just change their minds after being elected. There is this "damping" factor like a mechanical system, that takes the energy out of the people's hands and dampens it with lobbying, dishonesty, unaccountability and complete neglect for public interest. The response of the system is now steady state with little change. We need a public roster of each politician and their promises written in notarized documents, that can be used to strip them of relection and penalize them in some way so that future politicians cannot weasel their way out of promises. I would also vote for public presentations with slides + data by each politician instead of these stupid debates and speeches. They should be documented and scrutinized for accuracy of data and their claims. We have startup decks, but yet politicians don't have to make presentations. Instead they trade blows on a debate stage with polished repertoire which has now become an entertainment show, at least at the presidential level.

Avicebron 6y ago
I like this idea of a transparent democracy. It seems that if we are to be surveilled and held accountable by inscrutable decisions. Then we should have the right to surveil back. Heck, maybe to be elected one has to wear a body cam in all non-top secret non-personal decision making sessions of legislating. Might end lobbying pretty quick.
sokoloff 6y ago
I’m not sure it’s quite so simple as “they change their mind”. In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y. Doesn’t mean you changed your mind on Z or strict-Y, but you can’t get everything you want because other Americans want other things and they can’t get everything they want either. Maybe a lesser politician would only have gotten W and half of X... I’m not sure what penalty would be appropriate that would be better than standing for re-election and having the people weigh in. Voters who were strict-Y or any-Z might choose to not vote to re-elect. Voters who care about and got more X than par and a little bit of Y would be inclined to re-elect.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I think you're providing a great perspective into the complexity of the problem. If it was easy and straight forward, I presume it would have been solved a long ago. Penalty is tricky because the analysis of the problem has gray areas and its not strictly black or white. We need an umpire that can enforce and have oversight.
- mistermann 6y ago
  > In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y. Doesn’t mean you changed your mind on Z or strict-Y, but you can’t get everything you want because other Americans want other things and they can’t get everything they want either. Maybe a lesser politician would only have gotten W and half of X If I owned a company and the people I hired to manage it were playing games like this, and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them. Yes, I realize "it's complex", but complexity is a continuum, not a binary. With respect to the article, is it not true that the President has some substantial ability to float ideas into the public consciousness, that would put the heat on the state and municipal politicians to come up with some better systems to manage law enforcement and officer interactions with the public? And if the federal level truly has no power whatsoever in instituting reform or enforcing federal laws (what's the FBI do again?), I don't see why a comprehensive framework with recommendations for operational reform and greater transparency couldn't come from the top down. If there's nothing to be held accountable to, and no one to do the holding, I don't see why people are surprised when law enforcement restraint is largely left up to the goodwill of individual officers. This whole situation and the way it is discussed seems rather absurd to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    There are 100 Senators and 435 Representatives. They don't all run on the same set of promises (or else we'd presumably get all of those outcomes). Often their platform promises are in conflict with each other. They make deals with each other to get some of what they represent their constituents want in exchange for some of what the others' constituents want. This is necessary (and I believe by and large healthy) behavior when you're trying to govern ~350 million people.
hysan 6y ago
One reason for this is because once elected, there is very little that the population can do to hold the official accountable. You can’t remove officials for not fulfilling their promises. They can also delay until it’s too late by saying, “I’m working on it.” Then once out of office, they are accountable for nothing. Job safety is built into the position for good reason. However, it’s been perverted to allow officials to do whatever they want. Fixing this balance is not simple, but I believe would be a crucial step towards realizing a functional democratic system.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  I am curious, what would such a system look like? I am thinking that a "promise" is not a quantitative term. It needs to be ratified into specific data oriented actions that can go through a litmus test whether it was fulfilled or betrayed. After that, one idea is to have an accountability score tracked by bureaucracy and have that printed on the ballot along with their principle accomplishments in the supplement. Another idea is to have a penalty score of not meeting prior promises as a dilution factor to the number of votes. If a politician only met 90% of the promises, they will lose 10% of the voting power of the public (like a 0.X multiplier to the votes). Just thinking out loud, there may be major issues with these ideas.
  - someguyorother 6y ago
    A control theory idea: use continuous voting. When the support falls below some threshold (e.g. 50%), kick the candidate out. But now you'll get an unstable system where candidates get kicked out all the time and are too populist because they don't expect to live long. So add a low-pass filter. When the moving average of the candidate's support falls below the threshold and a definite other candidate's support is high enough, replace the incumbent with that challenger. You might even increase the duration of the moving average with time, like the doubling trick in multi-armed bandits. The logic is that a candidate who has shown that he can weather the initial period without getting voted out can be trusted with more long-term decisions, i.e. actions speak louder than words.
    - 6y ago
chr1 6y ago
The idea about presentations is very good, but it alone won't fix the problem. We need to be able to vote for individual decisions instead of people, and we on hn are best positioned to fix the democracy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423
- secabeen 6y ago
  This is what gets you Brexit. The entire future of a country changed on a 50-49 vote that 6 months later, would probably go at least 52-47 the other way.
  - chr1 6y ago
    I disagree, this will save us from situations like Brexit, because if referendum is not an expensive and slow process, you can hold it multiple times, until the vote stabilizes, you can require significant difference for decisions changing status quo, and most importantly you won't have to vote on a huge number of issues as one thing, people would be able to vote on small issues they care about, and use vote trading as described in the link to find a better compromise. Now it is easy to spend lots of money to mislead many people right before the big and expensive referendum, but if a new referendum can happen any day, spending lots of money on campaigns would become unviable.
- mistermann 6y ago
  It's interesting how the idea of some form of direct democracy never even comes up in conversation. Of course I wouldn't expect any current or former politician to suggest the idea, but even in conversation on HN or in the general public, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it before. Of course, there will be no shortage of overly enthusiastic (and absolutely confident) defeatism "We 'can't' do it because x, y, z" (complexities with security, ensuring the person casting the vote is indeed the actual person, excess amount of uninformed populism, etc.) So how about this: for the first <x> years, make it non-binding and simply observe the results. If the votes have no power, so much for the disingenuous claims that "we don't dare try it, and it won't work anyways", because it completely derisks the situation. So then, when you have people still guaranteeing doom, I reckon there's a pretty good chance that would make a good shortlist of people who should no longer be allowed anywhere near the political process. I would love to know why people are adamantly opposed to having a honest, transparent, and fact-checked public conversation on the idea.
js8 6y ago
> One big problem is that the elected after being elected, choose to not follow or dilute those promises. There is no accountability. So time and again, democracy fails as they just change their minds after being elected. One solution to this is more direct democracy. When people can propose initiatives and vote on them in referendums, it is harder for politicians to ignore that agenda. This works pretty well in Switzerland.
- ativzzz 6y ago
  > This works pretty well in Switzerland. Democracy that works in a country of 8.6 million does not scale up to work for a country of 330 million.
  - kgin 6y ago
    Considering how often this is the explanation for why we can’t have nice things, I’m beginning to think our country is too big.
  - js8 6y ago
    Yeah, I get it. It's lot more idiots. Also lot more people who don't know that vote counting can actually be done in logarithmic time.
- LiquidSky 6y ago
  >This works pretty well in Switzerland. The place where women couldn't vote in federal elections until 1971, and in local elections as late as 1990?
  - js8 6y ago
    The source which told you that should also have explained that you can actually have women voting in direct democracy as any other citizens, there is nothing preventing that. You don't need to do it in person on a square, either. (It's a known fact, yes, in general, people do vote more socially conservatively in referendums, often backing up status quo. But that doesn't prevent progressive politicians to come up with better proposals.) In any case, if we use your logic, US would be perfect country for this, being one of the last countries on Earth that doesn't have universal health care system. Interestingly, many U.S. states do have some direct democracy provisions, courtesy of the progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century. But what I heard it was sabotaged at federal level by the administration at the time, because U.S. wanted to get a bit involved in WW1 and it could potentially prevent that.

Avicebron 6y ago

I like this idea of a transparent democracy. It seems that if we are to be surveilled and held accountable by inscrutable decisions. Then we should have the right to surveil back. Heck, maybe to be elected one has to wear a body cam in all non-top secret non-personal decision making sessions of legislating. Might end lobbying pretty quick.

sokoloff 6y ago

I’m not sure it’s quite so simple as “they change their mind”. In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y. Doesn’t mean you changed your mind on Z or strict-Y, but you can’t get everything you want because other Americans want other things and they can’t get everything they want either. Maybe a lesser politician would only have gotten W and half of X... I’m not sure what penalty would be appropriate that would be better than standing for re-election and having the people weigh in. Voters who were strict-Y or any-Z might choose to not vote to re-elect. Voters who care about and got more X than par and a little bit of Y would be inclined to re-elect.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I think you're providing a great perspective into the complexity of the problem. If it was easy and straight forward, I presume it would have been solved a long ago. Penalty is tricky because the analysis of the problem has gray areas and its not strictly black or white. We need an umpire that can enforce and have oversight.
mistermann 6y ago
> In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y. Doesn’t mean you changed your mind on Z or strict-Y, but you can’t get everything you want because other Americans want other things and they can’t get everything they want either. Maybe a lesser politician would only have gotten W and half of X If I owned a company and the people I hired to manage it were playing games like this, and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them. Yes, I realize "it's complex", but complexity is a continuum, not a binary. With respect to the article, is it not true that the President has some substantial ability to float ideas into the public consciousness, that would put the heat on the state and municipal politicians to come up with some better systems to manage law enforcement and officer interactions with the public? And if the federal level truly has no power whatsoever in instituting reform or enforcing federal laws (what's the FBI do again?), I don't see why a comprehensive framework with recommendations for operational reform and greater transparency couldn't come from the top down. If there's nothing to be held accountable to, and no one to do the holding, I don't see why people are surprised when law enforcement restraint is largely left up to the goodwill of individual officers. This whole situation and the way it is discussed seems rather absurd to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  There are 100 Senators and 435 Representatives. They don't all run on the same set of promises (or else we'd presumably get all of those outcomes). Often their platform promises are in conflict with each other. They make deals with each other to get some of what they represent their constituents want in exchange for some of what the others' constituents want. This is necessary (and I believe by and large healthy) behavior when you're trying to govern ~350 million people.

hysan 6y ago

One reason for this is because once elected, there is very little that the population can do to hold the official accountable. You can’t remove officials for not fulfilling their promises. They can also delay until it’s too late by saying, “I’m working on it.” Then once out of office, they are accountable for nothing. Job safety is built into the position for good reason. However, it’s been perverted to allow officials to do whatever they want. Fixing this balance is not simple, but I believe would be a crucial step towards realizing a functional democratic system.

systemvoltage 6y ago
I am curious, what would such a system look like? I am thinking that a "promise" is not a quantitative term. It needs to be ratified into specific data oriented actions that can go through a litmus test whether it was fulfilled or betrayed. After that, one idea is to have an accountability score tracked by bureaucracy and have that printed on the ballot along with their principle accomplishments in the supplement. Another idea is to have a penalty score of not meeting prior promises as a dilution factor to the number of votes. If a politician only met 90% of the promises, they will lose 10% of the voting power of the public (like a 0.X multiplier to the votes). Just thinking out loud, there may be major issues with these ideas.
- someguyorother 6y ago
  A control theory idea: use continuous voting. When the support falls below some threshold (e.g. 50%), kick the candidate out. But now you'll get an unstable system where candidates get kicked out all the time and are too populist because they don't expect to live long. So add a low-pass filter. When the moving average of the candidate's support falls below the threshold and a definite other candidate's support is high enough, replace the incumbent with that challenger. You might even increase the duration of the moving average with time, like the doubling trick in multi-armed bandits. The logic is that a candidate who has shown that he can weather the initial period without getting voted out can be trusted with more long-term decisions, i.e. actions speak louder than words.
  - 6y ago

chr1 6y ago

The idea about presentations is very good, but it alone won't fix the problem. We need to be able to vote for individual decisions instead of people, and we on hn are best positioned to fix the democracy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423

secabeen 6y ago
This is what gets you Brexit. The entire future of a country changed on a 50-49 vote that 6 months later, would probably go at least 52-47 the other way.
- chr1 6y ago
  I disagree, this will save us from situations like Brexit, because if referendum is not an expensive and slow process, you can hold it multiple times, until the vote stabilizes, you can require significant difference for decisions changing status quo, and most importantly you won't have to vote on a huge number of issues as one thing, people would be able to vote on small issues they care about, and use vote trading as described in the link to find a better compromise. Now it is easy to spend lots of money to mislead many people right before the big and expensive referendum, but if a new referendum can happen any day, spending lots of money on campaigns would become unviable.
mistermann 6y ago
It's interesting how the idea of some form of direct democracy never even comes up in conversation. Of course I wouldn't expect any current or former politician to suggest the idea, but even in conversation on HN or in the general public, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it before. Of course, there will be no shortage of overly enthusiastic (and absolutely confident) defeatism "We 'can't' do it because x, y, z" (complexities with security, ensuring the person casting the vote is indeed the actual person, excess amount of uninformed populism, etc.) So how about this: for the first <x> years, make it non-binding and simply observe the results. If the votes have no power, so much for the disingenuous claims that "we don't dare try it, and it won't work anyways", because it completely derisks the situation. So then, when you have people still guaranteeing doom, I reckon there's a pretty good chance that would make a good shortlist of people who should no longer be allowed anywhere near the political process. I would love to know why people are adamantly opposed to having a honest, transparent, and fact-checked public conversation on the idea.

js8 6y ago

> One big problem is that the elected after being elected, choose to not follow or dilute those promises. There is no accountability. So time and again, democracy fails as they just change their minds after being elected. One solution to this is more direct democracy. When people can propose initiatives and vote on them in referendums, it is harder for politicians to ignore that agenda. This works pretty well in Switzerland.

ativzzz 6y ago
> This works pretty well in Switzerland. Democracy that works in a country of 8.6 million does not scale up to work for a country of 330 million.
- kgin 6y ago
  Considering how often this is the explanation for why we can’t have nice things, I’m beginning to think our country is too big.
- js8 6y ago
  Yeah, I get it. It's lot more idiots. Also lot more people who don't know that vote counting can actually be done in logarithmic time.
LiquidSky 6y ago
>This works pretty well in Switzerland. The place where women couldn't vote in federal elections until 1971, and in local elections as late as 1990?
- js8 6y ago
  The source which told you that should also have explained that you can actually have women voting in direct democracy as any other citizens, there is nothing preventing that. You don't need to do it in person on a square, either. (It's a known fact, yes, in general, people do vote more socially conservatively in referendums, often backing up status quo. But that doesn't prevent progressive politicians to come up with better proposals.) In any case, if we use your logic, US would be perfect country for this, being one of the last countries on Earth that doesn't have universal health care system. Interestingly, many U.S. states do have some direct democracy provisions, courtesy of the progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century. But what I heard it was sabotaged at federal level by the administration at the time, because U.S. wanted to get a bit involved in WW1 and it could potentially prevent that.