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I don't love the idea of having to vote on every single thing. There's too much to learn -- being properly informed is a full time job. San Francisco and CA in

I don't love the idea of having to vote on every single thing. There's too much to learn -- being properly informed is a full time job. San Francisco and CA in general have a lot of "direct democracy" items on ballots (a couple dozen props each cycle) and nobody really understands more than one or two at the level they probably should. I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago
Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business... direct democracy doesn't prevent money and influence, which are really the root of political parties.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business Did they? Ballotpedia says that the support side outspent the oppose side 10:1, but maybe californians just like their cheap taxi/delivery service (just like they like their cheap apparel/electronics manufactured in developing countries), or they thought that AB-5 is riddled with exemptions already?
dantheman 6y ago
I think that the scope of government has grown so big that it's impossible for representatives to know what's going on, let alone understand the domains. The problem is they're trying to do too much.
- throwawayboise 6y ago
  If the representatives don't know, what hope do the voters have?
  - zhoujianfu 6y ago
    What generally happens is people who don’t understand or know effectively become random “noise” and cancel each other out. Then those who are informed/care become the “signal” and you get a pretty good representative decision in the end. Better than with politician I’d say. It’s kind of like “ask the audience” in who wants to be a millionaire..
filoeleven 6y ago
Liquid Democracy. > Voters can either vote directly or delegate their vote to other participants; voters may also select different delegates for different issues. In other words, individual A of a society can delegate their power to another individual B – and withdraw such power again at any time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
- adjkant 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this, this sounds like a great combination solution I've never heard of!
- nl 6y ago
  The obvious issue with liquid democracy is vote buying. There are various proposals to fix this (from banning to "what's the problem?") but nothing that seems to address the issue that it's really easy to corrupt.
  - kuang_eleven 6y ago
    There are quite a few permutations on liquid democracy, some of which stake out different points on openness vs. susceptibility to vote buying. For example, you could have only people who have delegates have open votes, while those that don't have anyone delegated to them can vote or delegate secretly. This isn't much worse than our current delegative system, which admittedly does have an issue with vote-buying!
roenxi 6y ago
It'd be inconvenient for you, but there are some big advantages. The number of people involved is too large to be bought off by corporate interests, for example. Politicians aren't fully informed about these issues either, there are a lot of examples where they vote laws through where it is pretty simple to deduce they haven't read the bill. The current legal framework in the US is so large and complicated nobody understands it all either, raising questions about how the politicians could even theoretically understand what they are dealing with. The quality of the decisions would rise under direct democracy, and laws would probably become more general and the body of law would shrink to something more manageable.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
>> I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either Do you believe that most politicians have read the full text of the bills they vote on?

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business... direct democracy doesn't prevent money and influence, which are really the root of political parties.

gruez 6y ago
>Indeed, the fact that Uber managed to straight up buy a way to undo the law to suit their business Did they? Ballotpedia says that the support side outspent the oppose side 10:1, but maybe californians just like their cheap taxi/delivery service (just like they like their cheap apparel/electronics manufactured in developing countries), or they thought that AB-5 is riddled with exemptions already?

dantheman 6y ago

I think that the scope of government has grown so big that it's impossible for representatives to know what's going on, let alone understand the domains. The problem is they're trying to do too much.

throwawayboise 6y ago
If the representatives don't know, what hope do the voters have?
- zhoujianfu 6y ago
  What generally happens is people who don’t understand or know effectively become random “noise” and cancel each other out. Then those who are informed/care become the “signal” and you get a pretty good representative decision in the end. Better than with politician I’d say. It’s kind of like “ask the audience” in who wants to be a millionaire..

filoeleven 6y ago

Liquid Democracy. > Voters can either vote directly or delegate their vote to other participants; voters may also select different delegates for different issues. In other words, individual A of a society can delegate their power to another individual B – and withdraw such power again at any time. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

adjkant 6y ago
Thanks for sharing this, this sounds like a great combination solution I've never heard of!
nl 6y ago
The obvious issue with liquid democracy is vote buying. There are various proposals to fix this (from banning to "what's the problem?") but nothing that seems to address the issue that it's really easy to corrupt.
- kuang_eleven 6y ago
  There are quite a few permutations on liquid democracy, some of which stake out different points on openness vs. susceptibility to vote buying. For example, you could have only people who have delegates have open votes, while those that don't have anyone delegated to them can vote or delegate secretly. This isn't much worse than our current delegative system, which admittedly does have an issue with vote-buying!

roenxi 6y ago

It'd be inconvenient for you, but there are some big advantages. The number of people involved is too large to be bought off by corporate interests, for example. Politicians aren't fully informed about these issues either, there are a lot of examples where they vote laws through where it is pretty simple to deduce they haven't read the bill. The current legal framework in the US is so large and complicated nobody understands it all either, raising questions about how the politicians could even theoretically understand what they are dealing with. The quality of the decisions would rise under direct democracy, and laws would probably become more general and the body of law would shrink to something more manageable.

rufus_foreman 6y ago

>> I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either Do you believe that most politicians have read the full text of the bills they vote on?