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Of course I'm presupposing that voting on individual issues for a country as large and diverse as the US is a terrible idea, because it's a terrible idea. That

Of course I'm presupposing that voting on individual issues for a country as large and diverse as the US is a terrible idea, because it's a terrible idea. That is, definitionally, anarchy, and does not create a stable or fair government for anyone. I did presuppose that you understood that. Maybe that was not appropriate, but I'm not willing to discuss it, because I find it, a priori, a non-starter. This is well trod intellectual ground, and if you're curious, you can find ample writings debating the topic of a direct democracy vs. a representative democracy elsewhere that'll more accurately frame the discussion than anything I could come up with off the top of my head for free on HN. Given that a direct democracy results in substantially negative outcomes for the people who participate, therefore a representative democracy is about voting for the person, not the policy, and in that environment, the will of the people is indeed expressed as the selection of their representative, not on any isolated "What if you could magically have something with no downsides?" issue based polling. Narrowly focusing on one specific issue is naive. the US doesn't exist in a single-issue bubble, it exists in a complex web of political and practical (not to mention entirely unpredictable) needs which all have to be balanced simultaneously. If you want to pretend legislators can snap their fingers and make any individual issue "just happen" that's fine, but it's not reflective of reality on any level. You will continue to be confused and disappointed if you decide to live that way.

mindslight 5y ago
I've made no claim to the contrary, and I agree at the very least that any proposal for direct democracy would be quite complicated even if it sounds simple. But that doesn't really have bearing on what I said. Voter opinion on individual issues is merely one metric we can use to evaluate how well the "will of the voters" is being represented. Another one, more focused on representational government, would be whether most voters are happy with the vote they cast, or whether they feel they had to compromise and vote "strategically". These questions are important for being able to discuss changes to our system. For example, posing the question of whether RCV/Condorcet would represent the will of the voters better than party-controlled primaries plus first past the post.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Voter opinion on individual issues is not a valid metric for evaluating how well the "will of the voters" is being represented.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    Do you care to back up that assertion with some reasoning? To me, seeing that 91% of people support medical marijuana while representatives continue to do nothing is pretty damning. Just for context here, I don't have a personal stake in the marijuana question. I just think such a governance failure is galling.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      > Do you care to back up that assertion with some reasoning? I already did. > Narrowly focusing on one specific issue is naive. the US doesn't exist in a single-issue bubble, it exists in a complex web of political and practical (not to mention entirely unpredictable) needs which all have to be balanced simultaneously. If you want to pretend legislators can snap their fingers and make any individual issue "just happen" that's fine, but it's not reflective of reality on any level. You will continue to be confused and disappointed if you decide to live that way. What's more interesting is why you'd claim I hadn't, when I very clearly did. It's almost like you're not even reading what I'm writing...
      - mindslight 5y ago
        I was focused on responding to what I perceived to be the core of your argument, and that got lost by the wayside. To me, the core of the argument continues with my Condorcet point. Specifically about this point, I disagree. You're greatly exaggerating the intrinsic difficulty of change - witness any "emergency" bill that gets passed after a few months with very little debate. I agree there are bureaucratic difficulties in general, but when discussing how well representatives represent the will of the voters, the inefficiency due to those difficulties are still quite relevant! The argument you're making basically lets you write off any outside metrics that aren't the ballot box - deferring to the opaque paternalism of "that's just how the system works" and shutting down any criticism of the representative bureaucracy itself. Furthermore on the topic of marijuana deillegalization, most of those bureaucratic difficulties simply do not exist. No legal regime needs to be pondered and crafted, rather the laws that criminalized it in the first place simply need to be repealed - strike them by number and name. That we're likely to end up with more complex legislation rather than a straightforward repeal is entirely due to the corruption of the system where all of these incumbent moneyed interests get their says before the will of the voters can become law. That corruption is exactly what you're defending by rejecting basic objective critiques of the system's effectiveness.

mindslight 5y ago

I've made no claim to the contrary, and I agree at the very least that any proposal for direct democracy would be quite complicated even if it sounds simple. But that doesn't really have bearing on what I said. Voter opinion on individual issues is merely one metric we can use to evaluate how well the "will of the voters" is being represented. Another one, more focused on representational government, would be whether most voters are happy with the vote they cast, or whether they feel they had to compromise and vote "strategically". These questions are important for being able to discuss changes to our system. For example, posing the question of whether RCV/Condorcet would represent the will of the voters better than party-controlled primaries plus first past the post.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Voter opinion on individual issues is not a valid metric for evaluating how well the "will of the voters" is being represented.
- mindslight 5y ago
  Do you care to back up that assertion with some reasoning? To me, seeing that 91% of people support medical marijuana while representatives continue to do nothing is pretty damning. Just for context here, I don't have a personal stake in the marijuana question. I just think such a governance failure is galling.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    > Do you care to back up that assertion with some reasoning? I already did. > Narrowly focusing on one specific issue is naive. the US doesn't exist in a single-issue bubble, it exists in a complex web of political and practical (not to mention entirely unpredictable) needs which all have to be balanced simultaneously. If you want to pretend legislators can snap their fingers and make any individual issue "just happen" that's fine, but it's not reflective of reality on any level. You will continue to be confused and disappointed if you decide to live that way. What's more interesting is why you'd claim I hadn't, when I very clearly did. It's almost like you're not even reading what I'm writing...
    - mindslight 5y ago
      I was focused on responding to what I perceived to be the core of your argument, and that got lost by the wayside. To me, the core of the argument continues with my Condorcet point. Specifically about this point, I disagree. You're greatly exaggerating the intrinsic difficulty of change - witness any "emergency" bill that gets passed after a few months with very little debate. I agree there are bureaucratic difficulties in general, but when discussing how well representatives represent the will of the voters, the inefficiency due to those difficulties are still quite relevant! The argument you're making basically lets you write off any outside metrics that aren't the ballot box - deferring to the opaque paternalism of "that's just how the system works" and shutting down any criticism of the representative bureaucracy itself. Furthermore on the topic of marijuana deillegalization, most of those bureaucratic difficulties simply do not exist. No legal regime needs to be pondered and crafted, rather the laws that criminalized it in the first place simply need to be repealed - strike them by number and name. That we're likely to end up with more complex legislation rather than a straightforward repeal is entirely due to the corruption of the system where all of these incumbent moneyed interests get their says before the will of the voters can become law. That corruption is exactly what you're defending by rejecting basic objective critiques of the system's effectiveness.