5 ms·

> But, it's actually the same tiny group of people writing their letters to the local paper and attending the council meetings over and over. > We Can't Have N

> But, it's actually the same tiny group of people writing their letters to the local paper and attending the council meetings over and over. > We Can't Have Nice Things in democracies, because of a small number of people I wonder if this is more a problem with representational government. In a democracy there would be no council to influence, instead everyone would have an equal vote on the issue.

dbingham 5y ago
I think it would still be a problem, but a lesser one. A loud minority can still influence a majority. But it's harder. The thing with direct democracy is that we'd really need to implement like a 20 hour work week to make it work. Everyone would need to find the time to get up to date on all of the issues. Or you'd end up with a minority of people who happen to know and care about each issue controlling that issue... which maybe that's okay, actually. It would be really interesting to see how a true direct democracy behaved at the government level. I've seen it work at the level of a workplace or a housing cooperative. And it does work, it's effortful, but it works. But I dunno if it's ever really been tried at the level of a government.
- mprovost 5y ago
  An option that Kim Stanley Robinson explored is his novels is a kind of draft/jury service model where voters are randomly selected to serve in government. Sometimes for a whole term, but you can also imagine something like jury service where a group is brought together to decide a single issue. They would have the time to hear both sides of the arguments, make a decision, and then disband.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    This is actually how Athenian democracy worked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection_by_lot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection...
    - watwut 5y ago
      Yes, but the citizens were only subset of population and the city was smaller then current states. It is quite possible that it would not scale to larger population and general voting rights.
      - bobthepanda 5y ago
        Sure, I was just addressing my parent comment's proposal and providing more context. I don't really care for it, although I will have to say it would probably work better in the case of opaque public bodies very few people vote for elections in (e.g. a local American school board)
- oftenwrong 5y ago
  There is a candidate for mayor in NYC that is running on a direct democracy platform: https://www.seidmanformayor.com/ https://www.seidmanformayor.com/
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Liquid Democracy is a quirky concept that would probably resolve the problem you're describing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
- mikem170 5y ago
  Could be that a lesser amount of people negotiate on an issue, which then gets voted on by everybody? I agree that the voters would need more time to learn about the issues they are voting on, but not everyone needs to be involved preparing an issue for a vote. Switzerland has a lot more democracy than any other western government that I know of. Switzerland is a federation of cantons, each averaging 300k people, each with it's own constitution and parliament, collecting its own taxes, administering its own health care, even entering into certain treaties with other countries, etc. Each canton is subdivided into municipalities, some as small as a few thousand people, that decide more local issues including police, schools, etc. Divide and conquer, so that people can decide things for themselves. The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like [0]. So they have representatives but the people have ultimate direct power over them. Higher levels of government are involved only where necessary, for issues involving multiple lower levels of government. Seems to work well for them. Many people seem to believe that government needs to be big to be effective. The opposite may be the case, as Leopold Khor convincingly argues [1], that "bigness" is the cause of many problems. [0] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-political-system.pdf https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaszpQaNwAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaszpQaNwAU
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    > The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like. This is also true of California; that's not the magic. I'd say identifying bigness as the problem is much more on target.
    - mikem170 5y ago
      The document on Switzerland said that at a federal level the ability of the people to remove laws forces representatives to proactively compromise with possibly offended groups of people before passing a law, knowing that enough signatures could force a vote to stricke any given law (I believe that a double majority is required to keep any a federal law, something about a majority of people in a majority of cantons). Similar powers exist at the local levels, also. I would think that this would tend to force issues that are not agreed upon down to a more local level, which doesn't sound like a bad thing. However I do not disagree with you that the scale California often operates at may be too large.
- DylanDmitri 5y ago
  I've wondered if you can get a system where groups of 20-30 people (so extended family, maybe a group of friends, parents at a school) appoint one of their members to research issues and vote on their behalf. I already do this by default, deferring on most local decisions to my friend who's really into politics.
  - johncearls 5y ago
    You've just invented the Republic. At least that's the way it is supposed to work. My opinion is that the House should be increased by a factor of 100. Hard to bribe that many people.
thaumasiotes 5y ago
Counterargument: the problem is not the form of the government. Rather, the problem is that the government has a say in whether you can personally construct a building on "your own" land.
- mikem170 5y ago
  My comment was more directed towards the generic problem of a small (loud? rich?) minority having undue influence over the local representatives who decide on issues. I personally would tend to agree with you on the specific issue we were talking about. I'm personally a fan of the way Japan does zoning, which allows for growth (more height and more retail) when the population density grows (industrial separate). The documentation I had showed that the Swiss set the principals for zoning at a federal level, and zoning is actually administered at the most local municipality level. I'm not sure of the Swiss implementation details. But in my ideal world that would mean a Japanese style zoning principals at the federal level, administered locally. A municipality can decide where they want industrial areas, and how to tax for their infrastructure, but local NIMBYs would have no power over what can be built on a specific plot (the federal principals would control that).
bluGill 5y ago
It is worse in a democracy. In a representative system you only need to find one person who shows up for a bunch of like minded people. In a democracy you personally need to show up every meeting not matter what else might go on in your life. There are some small town democracies where the meeting starts, does good business, but nobody will agree to adjourn for the night, when the people with things to do the next day go home the remainder just revote everything that happened earlier in the night, this time getting it to go their way. As a resident you have to stay the whole meeting to stop that - even if it means you will be fired for falling asleep at work the next day.
- mikem170 5y ago
  In a democracy everyone needs to vote. Which can be at the polls. Why do you assume that everyone needs to sit in on every legislative session? It could be that way, but I don't see where it has to be. There's a lot of ways to be democratic. For example, perhaps our block elects a representative to attend council meetings, who will inform our group on issues in front of council, maybe someone else contributes with some extra research, etc, then we decide how our block will vote in council. Just one of many possibilities.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    The devil is in the details. The only democracies I know of are in person meetings, though you are correct there are other ways. The problem is how to get people to think about the issues? Too many fail to realize the unintended consequences of their vote. Too many vote for what they think is popular not what is right.
mountainboy 5y ago
A democracy is two wolves and a chicken deciding what to eat for dinner.

dbingham 5y ago

I think it would still be a problem, but a lesser one. A loud minority can still influence a majority. But it's harder. The thing with direct democracy is that we'd really need to implement like a 20 hour work week to make it work. Everyone would need to find the time to get up to date on all of the issues. Or you'd end up with a minority of people who happen to know and care about each issue controlling that issue... which maybe that's okay, actually. It would be really interesting to see how a true direct democracy behaved at the government level. I've seen it work at the level of a workplace or a housing cooperative. And it does work, it's effortful, but it works. But I dunno if it's ever really been tried at the level of a government.

mprovost 5y ago
An option that Kim Stanley Robinson explored is his novels is a kind of draft/jury service model where voters are randomly selected to serve in government. Sometimes for a whole term, but you can also imagine something like jury service where a group is brought together to decide a single issue. They would have the time to hear both sides of the arguments, make a decision, and then disband.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  This is actually how Athenian democracy worked. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection_by_lot https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Selection...
  - watwut 5y ago
    Yes, but the citizens were only subset of population and the city was smaller then current states. It is quite possible that it would not scale to larger population and general voting rights.
    - bobthepanda 5y ago
      Sure, I was just addressing my parent comment's proposal and providing more context. I don't really care for it, although I will have to say it would probably work better in the case of opaque public bodies very few people vote for elections in (e.g. a local American school board)
oftenwrong 5y ago
There is a candidate for mayor in NYC that is running on a direct democracy platform: https://www.seidmanformayor.com/ https://www.seidmanformayor.com/
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
Liquid Democracy is a quirky concept that would probably resolve the problem you're describing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
mikem170 5y ago
Could be that a lesser amount of people negotiate on an issue, which then gets voted on by everybody? I agree that the voters would need more time to learn about the issues they are voting on, but not everyone needs to be involved preparing an issue for a vote. Switzerland has a lot more democracy than any other western government that I know of. Switzerland is a federation of cantons, each averaging 300k people, each with it's own constitution and parliament, collecting its own taxes, administering its own health care, even entering into certain treaties with other countries, etc. Each canton is subdivided into municipalities, some as small as a few thousand people, that decide more local issues including police, schools, etc. Divide and conquer, so that people can decide things for themselves. The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like [0]. So they have representatives but the people have ultimate direct power over them. Higher levels of government are involved only where necessary, for issues involving multiple lower levels of government. Seems to work well for them. Many people seem to believe that government needs to be big to be effective. The opposite may be the case, as Leopold Khor convincingly argues [1], that "bigness" is the cause of many problems. [0] https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-political-system.pdf https://wolf-linder.ch/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Swiss-poli... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaszpQaNwAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaszpQaNwAU
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > The magic seems to be that the people, via referendum, can add and/or delete laws they don't like. This is also true of California; that's not the magic. I'd say identifying bigness as the problem is much more on target.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    The document on Switzerland said that at a federal level the ability of the people to remove laws forces representatives to proactively compromise with possibly offended groups of people before passing a law, knowing that enough signatures could force a vote to stricke any given law (I believe that a double majority is required to keep any a federal law, something about a majority of people in a majority of cantons). Similar powers exist at the local levels, also. I would think that this would tend to force issues that are not agreed upon down to a more local level, which doesn't sound like a bad thing. However I do not disagree with you that the scale California often operates at may be too large.
DylanDmitri 5y ago
I've wondered if you can get a system where groups of 20-30 people (so extended family, maybe a group of friends, parents at a school) appoint one of their members to research issues and vote on their behalf. I already do this by default, deferring on most local decisions to my friend who's really into politics.
- johncearls 5y ago
  You've just invented the Republic. At least that's the way it is supposed to work. My opinion is that the House should be increased by a factor of 100. Hard to bribe that many people.

thaumasiotes 5y ago

Counterargument: the problem is not the form of the government. Rather, the problem is that the government has a say in whether you can personally construct a building on "your own" land.

mikem170 5y ago
My comment was more directed towards the generic problem of a small (loud? rich?) minority having undue influence over the local representatives who decide on issues. I personally would tend to agree with you on the specific issue we were talking about. I'm personally a fan of the way Japan does zoning, which allows for growth (more height and more retail) when the population density grows (industrial separate). The documentation I had showed that the Swiss set the principals for zoning at a federal level, and zoning is actually administered at the most local municipality level. I'm not sure of the Swiss implementation details. But in my ideal world that would mean a Japanese style zoning principals at the federal level, administered locally. A municipality can decide where they want industrial areas, and how to tax for their infrastructure, but local NIMBYs would have no power over what can be built on a specific plot (the federal principals would control that).

bluGill 5y ago

It is worse in a democracy. In a representative system you only need to find one person who shows up for a bunch of like minded people. In a democracy you personally need to show up every meeting not matter what else might go on in your life. There are some small town democracies where the meeting starts, does good business, but nobody will agree to adjourn for the night, when the people with things to do the next day go home the remainder just revote everything that happened earlier in the night, this time getting it to go their way. As a resident you have to stay the whole meeting to stop that - even if it means you will be fired for falling asleep at work the next day.

mikem170 5y ago
In a democracy everyone needs to vote. Which can be at the polls. Why do you assume that everyone needs to sit in on every legislative session? It could be that way, but I don't see where it has to be. There's a lot of ways to be democratic. For example, perhaps our block elects a representative to attend council meetings, who will inform our group on issues in front of council, maybe someone else contributes with some extra research, etc, then we decide how our block will vote in council. Just one of many possibilities.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The devil is in the details. The only democracies I know of are in person meetings, though you are correct there are other ways. The problem is how to get people to think about the issues? Too many fail to realize the unintended consequences of their vote. Too many vote for what they think is popular not what is right.

mountainboy 5y ago

A democracy is two wolves and a chicken deciding what to eat for dinner.