4 ms·

> But if we could vote on individual laws and policies instead of people there would not be such difference, and people would be able to use their vote rational

by lehi 6y ago

> But if we could vote on individual laws and policies instead of people there would not be such difference, and people would be able to use their vote rationally. And if they make mistakes they will not be stuck with the mistake for four years. That's how you get Brexit.

blfr 6y ago
People got what they voted for. The alternative here is some political cabal subverting the results. Your disagreement is with democracy itself, not a particular style of voting.
- jquery 6y ago
  This. It’s okay to oppose democracy, btw. I think republics are greatly superior, myself.
  - chr1 6y ago
    I never could understand the argument about republic vs democracy. Some people say republic protects rights of minorities because representatives are voting on laws, and there is a constitution. But if majority wants a law that is unfair to a minority, amending the constitution and electing representatives who dislike the minority is not much harder than voting for a law democratically. The only way this kind of argument works, is if representatives keep lying to get elected and then not keeping their promises. And from history we know this kind of lie never ends well. There can be systems where different people have different amount of votes, but the system of determining this should be known, and accepted by the people, to not cause instability.
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  > Your disagreement is with democracy itself Nope. GP is disagreeing with direct democracy, a very specific type of government which is not usually in favor nowadays. Most democracies in the world are representative democracies, where you vote for people who then vote on issues.
  - chr1 6y ago
    For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the desires of the people who have elected them. In ideal case the results should not be different from the results of direct vote. If there is no way to elect a representative that would support certain idea, then the system is not a democracy but something defined by the method which is used to restrict the pool of available ideas or representatives. For most democracies in the world such a method was control of mass media, but now they have either to become real democracies or find another method of pretending to be a democracy.
    - lultimouomo 6y ago
      > For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the desires of the people who have elected them. Not necessarily. It is very well possible for people to vote for representative they hold in high esteem even though they do not agree with them on several matters. It is very possible for representative to go against what is the current majority opinion, and even be reelected afterwards, because in the meanwhile theirs choices have bee proven right. That's why in representative democracies there are elections for a certain role only every several years, to decrease the relevance of immediate issues on the vote, and give more importance to other factors such as broader ideals and the trustworthiness of the candidate. You can very well prefer direct democracy, but it is not the only, or the one true, kind of democracy.
      - chr1 6y ago
        For that to be democracy people would need to vote explicitly for that "monarch for four years" scheme, but people vote for campaign promises which are not being kept.
patmorgan23 6y ago
If the EU was more democratic brexit probably wouldn't have happened.
- cnorthwood 6y ago
  By many measures, the EU is more democratic than the UK. The problem is more the perception of it.
jgrowl 6y ago
It's all speculative of course, but maybe Brexit would have never happened if the population had felt like they were being listened to. Same for Trump. We have no fine granularity in shaping the country. It is only choose between these two options that both misrepresent you in different but many ways.
GrantZvolsky 6y ago
The question of whether part of UK's governance should come from Brussels is one that can only be answered by a referendum. To rule otherwise would be a breach of the peoples' right to self-determination.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Yes and no. Brexit encapsulates the problem of too much stuff being bundled into a single decision (and then administered by politicians). If the 10,000 administrative issues involved in Brexit were subject to distributed control then polities would be able to alter their relations in far more pragmatic ways rather than it being a matter of time bombs and clif edges.
weswpg 6y ago
not really, because being either "pro-brexit" or "anti-brexit" wasn't the real choice. there was a [3-choice condorcet paradox](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-condorcet/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-condorcet/) and the voters were polled on the falsely binary choice of "in or out". reducing complex trade-offs to a single vote for Team A or Team B is exactly what could be avoided with an issue-specific, liquid democratic system with a process for participatory, public discourse to achieve compromise

by lehi 6y ago

blfr 6y ago

People got what they voted for. The alternative here is some political cabal subverting the results. Your disagreement is with democracy itself, not a particular style of voting.

jquery 6y ago
This. It’s okay to oppose democracy, btw. I think republics are greatly superior, myself.
- chr1 6y ago
  I never could understand the argument about republic vs democracy. Some people say republic protects rights of minorities because representatives are voting on laws, and there is a constitution. But if majority wants a law that is unfair to a minority, amending the constitution and electing representatives who dislike the minority is not much harder than voting for a law democratically. The only way this kind of argument works, is if representatives keep lying to get elected and then not keeping their promises. And from history we know this kind of lie never ends well. There can be systems where different people have different amount of votes, but the system of determining this should be known, and accepted by the people, to not cause instability.
lultimouomo 6y ago
> Your disagreement is with democracy itself Nope. GP is disagreeing with direct democracy, a very specific type of government which is not usually in favor nowadays. Most democracies in the world are representative democracies, where you vote for people who then vote on issues.
- chr1 6y ago
  For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the desires of the people who have elected them. In ideal case the results should not be different from the results of direct vote. If there is no way to elect a representative that would support certain idea, then the system is not a democracy but something defined by the method which is used to restrict the pool of available ideas or representatives. For most democracies in the world such a method was control of mass media, but now they have either to become real democracies or find another method of pretending to be a democracy.
  - lultimouomo 6y ago
    > For the system to be a democracy the representatives have to represent the desires of the people who have elected them. Not necessarily. It is very well possible for people to vote for representative they hold in high esteem even though they do not agree with them on several matters. It is very possible for representative to go against what is the current majority opinion, and even be reelected afterwards, because in the meanwhile theirs choices have bee proven right. That's why in representative democracies there are elections for a certain role only every several years, to decrease the relevance of immediate issues on the vote, and give more importance to other factors such as broader ideals and the trustworthiness of the candidate. You can very well prefer direct democracy, but it is not the only, or the one true, kind of democracy.
    - chr1 6y ago
      For that to be democracy people would need to vote explicitly for that "monarch for four years" scheme, but people vote for campaign promises which are not being kept.

patmorgan23 6y ago

If the EU was more democratic brexit probably wouldn't have happened.

cnorthwood 6y ago
By many measures, the EU is more democratic than the UK. The problem is more the perception of it.

jgrowl 6y ago

It's all speculative of course, but maybe Brexit would have never happened if the population had felt like they were being listened to. Same for Trump. We have no fine granularity in shaping the country. It is only choose between these two options that both misrepresent you in different but many ways.

GrantZvolsky 6y ago

The question of whether part of UK's governance should come from Brussels is one that can only be answered by a referendum. To rule otherwise would be a breach of the peoples' right to self-determination.

anigbrowl 6y ago

Yes and no. Brexit encapsulates the problem of too much stuff being bundled into a single decision (and then administered by politicians). If the 10,000 administrative issues involved in Brexit were subject to distributed control then polities would be able to alter their relations in far more pragmatic ways rather than it being a matter of time bombs and clif edges.

weswpg 6y ago

not really, because being either "pro-brexit" or "anti-brexit" wasn't the real choice. there was a [3-choice condorcet paradox](https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-condorcet/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/brexit-condorcet/) and the voters were polled on the falsely binary choice of "in or out". reducing complex trade-offs to a single vote for Team A or Team B is exactly what could be avoided with an issue-specific, liquid democratic system with a process for participatory, public discourse to achieve compromise