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I think democracy isn’t so great, at least not under its current form. Voters judge candidates’ charisma a lot more than their ideas. And many people simply d

by Ecco 6y ago

I think democracy isn’t so great, at least not under its current form. Voters judge candidates’ charisma a lot more than their ideas. And many people simply don’t care so much and will vote for stupid reasons, yet have the same impact that people who put a lot of effort and thinking into their decision. I think we should come with a way to vote for ideas more than persons. And that we should have some form of weighted voting.

mikeodds 6y ago
Agree strongly with voting for individual ideas/policies rather than parties. I don’t like to think about the human years devoted to out-manoeuvring another party over working towards positive outcomes. I’d appreciate anyone that could point me in the direction of this being done in the past or ideas about how it could be implemented.
- not_knuth 6y ago
  I believe the Swiss Referendum model is similar to what you are describing [0]. However, it has quite a few issues as well. The three biggest ones I can think of are: 1. Voting on single issues requires very engaged citizens that understand how their voting decisions impact the bigger scheme of things. Essentially it leads to the pitfalls of single-issue politics [1]. Political parties on the other hand, allow people to sort of vote for a direction. Ian Shapiro describes this phenomenon [2], but it is a long read. 2. The transition to and bootstrapping of such a system is very hard. It may work well in Switzerland, but that's because people are used to it and it's established. In a place like the US, where voter turnout is already low for a general election, it is hard to imagine why people would show up for specific issues. 3. If the issue at hand is very important to a small minority, but 99% of people don't really care, voter turnout will probably be low as well. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-model/a-17643284 https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics [2] https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/The%20idea%20of%20a%20political%20party%202-25-2020.pdf https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files...
not_knuth 6y ago
Very interesting. I believe my contrarian view goes in this direction, so I will add it to your comment. My impression is that democracy is really not as inevitable as a lot of us western folks would like it to be. In fact I can not help myself to the compelling thought that democracies dont exist, because of some utopian view of equality and fairness, but rather, because of chance and circumstance. In most cases were a government/authority/kingdom/whatever transitioned to a democracy it was merely, because the state was in crisis and democracy was a rallying cry people could get behind, because it promised a way of ending the misery (the examples that spring to mind are the famines of 1789 and the 1840s in Europe which triggered multiple revolutions). I think if there were no existential threat to a critical mass of people in those European countries, they would never have revolted, nor would we have so many democracies today. For a similar reason I believe the democratic movements/protests in the recent years (like the Arab Spring, or the Hong Kong protests) have not resulted in a victory for democracy, since there is no real critical mass of people whom are existentially threatened by the failure of these movements. Since I am sure someone has thought these thoughts before, I would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of articles mentioning a similar sentiment/idea.
- blueflame7 6y ago
  The US was founded as a republic because the founder's knew that most democracies end when the public discovers they can vote themselves largesses from the treasury.
dane-pgp 6y ago
Perhaps, then, there needs to be an extra layer of indirection between the voter and the office-holder. For example, voters could elect people who they thought were qualified to interview and test applicants for the roles that would hold day-to-day power. I suppose that sounds a bit like how an electoral college should/could work, or how a parliamentary system expresses confidence in a Prime Minister, but obviously I don't think those systems are perfect implementations of the principal I am aiming for. There are various types of "test" that could be used to filter applicants, such as IQ tests, polygraphs, general knowledge, psychological diagnosis, but each of those have a lot of scope for introducing false positives and negatives in the selection process, even before we consider the meta-gaming of candidates acting dishonestly and testers acting to bias the outcome. Maybe if recall elections were possible for all roles (with zero administrative cost, and 100% turnout rate) that would be enough to solve the "buyer's remorse" problem with electing someone whose ability to gain power is greater than their ability to exercise it wisely.
- blueflame7 6y ago
  That's how the electoral college was supposed to work but it never did from the 2nd election. States voted for their delegates, and the delegates would choose the executive branch. Turns out if the delegates didn't vote the way the state wanted, they didn't seem to get selected for that duty next time. Citizens would have only direct input on legislative representation.

by Ecco 6y ago

mikeodds 6y ago

Agree strongly with voting for individual ideas/policies rather than parties. I don’t like to think about the human years devoted to out-manoeuvring another party over working towards positive outcomes. I’d appreciate anyone that could point me in the direction of this being done in the past or ideas about how it could be implemented.

not_knuth 6y ago
I believe the Swiss Referendum model is similar to what you are describing [0]. However, it has quite a few issues as well. The three biggest ones I can think of are: 1. Voting on single issues requires very engaged citizens that understand how their voting decisions impact the bigger scheme of things. Essentially it leads to the pitfalls of single-issue politics [1]. Political parties on the other hand, allow people to sort of vote for a direction. Ian Shapiro describes this phenomenon [2], but it is a long read. 2. The transition to and bootstrapping of such a system is very hard. It may work well in Switzerland, but that's because people are used to it and it's established. In a place like the US, where voter turnout is already low for a general election, it is hard to imagine why people would show up for specific issues. 3. If the issue at hand is very important to a small minority, but 99% of people don't really care, voter turnout will probably be low as well. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-model/a-17643284 https://www.dw.com/en/pros-and-cons-of-the-swiss-referendum-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics [2] https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/The%20idea%20of%20a%20political%20party%202-25-2020.pdf https://shapiro.macmillan.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files...

not_knuth 6y ago

Very interesting. I believe my contrarian view goes in this direction, so I will add it to your comment. My impression is that democracy is really not as inevitable as a lot of us western folks would like it to be. In fact I can not help myself to the compelling thought that democracies dont exist, because of some utopian view of equality and fairness, but rather, because of chance and circumstance. In most cases were a government/authority/kingdom/whatever transitioned to a democracy it was merely, because the state was in crisis and democracy was a rallying cry people could get behind, because it promised a way of ending the misery (the examples that spring to mind are the famines of 1789 and the 1840s in Europe which triggered multiple revolutions). I think if there were no existential threat to a critical mass of people in those European countries, they would never have revolted, nor would we have so many democracies today. For a similar reason I believe the democratic movements/protests in the recent years (like the Arab Spring, or the Hong Kong protests) have not resulted in a victory for democracy, since there is no real critical mass of people whom are existentially threatened by the failure of these movements. Since I am sure someone has thought these thoughts before, I would be grateful if someone could point me in the direction of articles mentioning a similar sentiment/idea.

blueflame7 6y ago
The US was founded as a republic because the founder's knew that most democracies end when the public discovers they can vote themselves largesses from the treasury.

dane-pgp 6y ago

Perhaps, then, there needs to be an extra layer of indirection between the voter and the office-holder. For example, voters could elect people who they thought were qualified to interview and test applicants for the roles that would hold day-to-day power. I suppose that sounds a bit like how an electoral college should/could work, or how a parliamentary system expresses confidence in a Prime Minister, but obviously I don't think those systems are perfect implementations of the principal I am aiming for. There are various types of "test" that could be used to filter applicants, such as IQ tests, polygraphs, general knowledge, psychological diagnosis, but each of those have a lot of scope for introducing false positives and negatives in the selection process, even before we consider the meta-gaming of candidates acting dishonestly and testers acting to bias the outcome. Maybe if recall elections were possible for all roles (with zero administrative cost, and 100% turnout rate) that would be enough to solve the "buyer's remorse" problem with electing someone whose ability to gain power is greater than their ability to exercise it wisely.

blueflame7 6y ago
That's how the electoral college was supposed to work but it never did from the 2nd election. States voted for their delegates, and the delegates would choose the executive branch. Turns out if the delegates didn't vote the way the state wanted, they didn't seem to get selected for that duty next time. Citizens would have only direct input on legislative representation.