5 ms·

The firewall is who is accountable, who is responsible to the electorate. "Broken" no, a feature yes, because exploiting technical flaws in a country's digital

The firewall is who is accountable, who is responsible to the electorate. "Broken" no, a feature yes, because exploiting technical flaws in a country's digital ID for an attacker becomes more troublesome if each country has a (an even slightly) different implementation. Labeling it "broken" - we all are using the same password for every account anyways, aren't we?

malermeister 4y ago
But we're talking about the EU here, the second largest democracy in the world. Of course they're accountable to the electorate. This isn't a dictatorship.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- woodpanel 4y ago
  Totally democratic. Of course. Europeans love it. From Berlin xHainers to Parissienne Bobos, from Munich Schwabing to Noord Amsterdam, there isn't a single citizen in the EU with discomfort of his vote becoming dilluted from a x-millionth to an x-hundredmillionth. That's why Ursula von der Leyen is so popular.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    But thats just... yknow, how democracies work. More voters = less power/vote. Are you just unhappy the electorate is so large? What would the appropriate size be? Mayoral? Households? That'd really maximize the power of your vote. But then, how would we organize at the level beyond that? Warring tribes? Go back to when Germany and France were constantly at war? I don't love vdL either. I think the EU is in need of reform. But I still think it's fundamentally a good idea and I think vote dilution is just inherent to a large democracy.
    - jokethrowaway 4y ago
      The appropriate solution would be to reduce the power of the institutions, ideally down to the individual level and allow corporations to provide the services citizens need. Vote with your money, don't dictate the rest of the country with your wants.
      - malermeister 4y ago
        The thing about voting with your money is that rich people get a lot of votes that way while the poor get neglected. In other words, it's antidemocratic.
    - potatototoo99 4y ago
      There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design. I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet. I'm guessing all these pushes for further integration are an attempt at de facto making it impossible to secede, even if not legally.
      - malermeister 4y ago
        > There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design. [citation needed]. Please don't just throw out wild claims without any proof. As far as I'm aware, every single element of the EU is democratically legitimized in one way or another. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? > I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet. Why would they? If you don't want to be on our boat, feel free to sink on your own. We don't need the dead weight.
      - timeon 4y ago
        > and that's by design. And that design is there to keep sovereignty of membership countries - so it is strange that you are surprised that there is still the ability of countries to secede the union. Most powerful entities in EU are national governments of countries. Who is appointing Commissioners? Member states. Similar like national governments are appointing its ministers. Then there is veto and of course, who has last word in everything? Heads of states / prime ministers.
  - illiac786 4y ago
    Diluted? EU has significantly more power than any single country. More than the sum of the power of each country taken individually. Hence, mathematically, your vote has more power in the EU.
    - jokethrowaway 4y ago
      When your vote has a very large denominator it's worthless. You have no chance to influence anything. Democracy is a scam, it's just an oligarchy. The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public into electing their people and then these people will do whatever the elite want.
      - illiac786 4y ago
        Large power of EU = very large nominator, more than compensating for the larger denominator. That was my point above. "Democracy is a scam" = trolling, please refer to the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public" => that I agree with, but this is really old and has always been like that, not only in democracies. I'd even say that democracies are the places where this is happening the least, compares to state-owned news like Russia or China.
- mantas 4y ago
  Too many abstraction layers and too much happening behind closed doors withotu elected politicians present. As a citizen of EU member, I find it very hard to define EU as a democracy. We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything. Now it feels like oligarchy managed by lobby groups no matter what you vote for.
  - scrollaway 4y ago
    > We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything. Ah, yes, nothing like asking 450M people for their opinion on something they know nothing about. This is how Brexit happened, isn't it?
    - mantas 4y ago
      Do we want democracy? Or ruling by oligarchs, hoping that oligarch you like will end up ruling? Obviously democracy needs educated citizens who don't take the responsibility lightly. That's why citizenship shall be a big privilege with even bigger responsibilities. We have to have a lively discussion. Otherwise it's people who cry loudest win. I love Brexit as a democratical move. People voteds and government followed through. Now citizens will live out consequences, for better or worse. And they can make next decision accordingly. That's so much better than enlightened oligarchy guarding the masses from their own wrong feelings. That's like raising kids. If you guard kids from their own painful decisions, they'll never learn. Eventually they'll be adults and they'll keep doing dumb decisions. You have to let them experience some pain to teach them a lesson.
- argentier 4y ago
  The EU is not a democracy. Its only democratic organ is toothless. It is an association of democracies, led by an undemocratic executive that is increasingly out of control. At the moment it is busily destroying its own economy in a way that is baffling to many of its citizens. If it doesn't evolve into something more democratic it probably hasn't long to go.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    The executive is appointed by democratically elected officials. Y'know, the same way the US president is elected by electors, or Prime Ministers are elected by parlaments. Most democracies work this way.
    - argentier 4y ago
      In fact it's quite different. The US president campaigns before a democratic election. The people know who they can choose before they vote. Same with the UK. There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission. Why the downvote btw? This isn't reddit.
      - teh64 4y ago
        I the US, the electoral college could vote for someone completely different, who might not even be part of the campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector The chances of it happening are low, but the vote of the people might not be upheld.
      - M2Ys4U 4y ago
        >There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission. Err, yes there is. The directly-elected European Parliament first elects the President of the European Commission, and then has to vote to appoint the entire Commission.[0] And before they do they they hold hearings with each of the different commissioner-nominees to evaluate their suitability for the role, demanding that people are replaced or given different portfolios if they are not suitable. Nominations for the role of President must take in to account the results of the election,[0] and the European Council nominates somebody from the largest party in Parliament. I wish that Parliament had stuck to its guns in 2014/2019 and rejected the nominees that weren't spitzenkandidaten but hopefully the new proposals tabled by Parliament creating transnational lists for Parliament will change this.[1] [0] Article 17(7) of the Treaty on European Union [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220429IPR28242/meps-begin-revising-rules-on-eu-elections-calling-for-pan-european-constituency https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220429IP...
- jules 4y ago
  From my vote to this decision there are so many layers of abstraction that I wouldn't even begin to have a clue who to vote for and in which election if I do or do not want this E-ID. At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best. How often the platforms of the elected parties get translated into reality is another question, but it can at least plausibly be described as demos kratos. Maybe the EU is "democracy" in some modern sense of the word, but in the original sense of the word it is not. (I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. Maybe it is in fact better to have elites deciding.)
  - petre 4y ago
    It's usually the pirate party or the greens. They have no representatives in my country, so good luck with that. Greece is a democracy, the EU is a bureaucracy.
  - toyg 4y ago
    > At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best. I fail to see how you cannot do that in European Parliament elections. If anything, EUP elections are more democratic than average, by way of using a proportional-representation system that matches voters' preferences more closely than almost any European voting system. And if you're saying, "but it's the Commission proposing laws!", they don't pull stuff out of thin air: the Commission effectively tries to implement an agenda that European Council members agree together. And who is EuroCouncil? National governments, whom you vote for. Also, the Commission doesn't work alone - directives are effectively drafted in concert with Parliament committees, because in the end they have to be approved by such Parliament.

malermeister 4y ago

But we're talking about the EU here, the second largest democracy in the world. Of course they're accountable to the electorate. This isn't a dictatorship.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
woodpanel 4y ago
Totally democratic. Of course. Europeans love it. From Berlin xHainers to Parissienne Bobos, from Munich Schwabing to Noord Amsterdam, there isn't a single citizen in the EU with discomfort of his vote becoming dilluted from a x-millionth to an x-hundredmillionth. That's why Ursula von der Leyen is so popular.
- malermeister 4y ago
  But thats just... yknow, how democracies work. More voters = less power/vote. Are you just unhappy the electorate is so large? What would the appropriate size be? Mayoral? Households? That'd really maximize the power of your vote. But then, how would we organize at the level beyond that? Warring tribes? Go back to when Germany and France were constantly at war? I don't love vdL either. I think the EU is in need of reform. But I still think it's fundamentally a good idea and I think vote dilution is just inherent to a large democracy.
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    The appropriate solution would be to reduce the power of the institutions, ideally down to the individual level and allow corporations to provide the services citizens need. Vote with your money, don't dictate the rest of the country with your wants.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      The thing about voting with your money is that rich people get a lot of votes that way while the poor get neglected. In other words, it's antidemocratic.
  - potatototoo99 4y ago
    There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design. I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet. I'm guessing all these pushes for further integration are an attempt at de facto making it impossible to secede, even if not legally.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      > There's not much democracy in the EU, and that's by design. [citation needed]. Please don't just throw out wild claims without any proof. As far as I'm aware, every single element of the EU is democratically legitimized in one way or another. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? > I'm only surprised they haven't got rid of the ability of countries to secede the union yet. Why would they? If you don't want to be on our boat, feel free to sink on your own. We don't need the dead weight.
    - timeon 4y ago
      > and that's by design. And that design is there to keep sovereignty of membership countries - so it is strange that you are surprised that there is still the ability of countries to secede the union. Most powerful entities in EU are national governments of countries. Who is appointing Commissioners? Member states. Similar like national governments are appointing its ministers. Then there is veto and of course, who has last word in everything? Heads of states / prime ministers.
- illiac786 4y ago
  Diluted? EU has significantly more power than any single country. More than the sum of the power of each country taken individually. Hence, mathematically, your vote has more power in the EU.
  - jokethrowaway 4y ago
    When your vote has a very large denominator it's worthless. You have no chance to influence anything. Democracy is a scam, it's just an oligarchy. The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public into electing their people and then these people will do whatever the elite want.
    - illiac786 4y ago
      Large power of EU = very large nominator, more than compensating for the larger denominator. That was my point above. "Democracy is a scam" = trolling, please refer to the guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "The wealthiest will do media campaigns to manipulate the public" => that I agree with, but this is really old and has always been like that, not only in democracies. I'd even say that democracies are the places where this is happening the least, compares to state-owned news like Russia or China.
mantas 4y ago
Too many abstraction layers and too much happening behind closed doors withotu elected politicians present. As a citizen of EU member, I find it very hard to define EU as a democracy. We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything. Now it feels like oligarchy managed by lobby groups no matter what you vote for.
- scrollaway 4y ago
  > We need Swiss-style referendums-on-everything. Ah, yes, nothing like asking 450M people for their opinion on something they know nothing about. This is how Brexit happened, isn't it?
  - mantas 4y ago
    Do we want democracy? Or ruling by oligarchs, hoping that oligarch you like will end up ruling? Obviously democracy needs educated citizens who don't take the responsibility lightly. That's why citizenship shall be a big privilege with even bigger responsibilities. We have to have a lively discussion. Otherwise it's people who cry loudest win. I love Brexit as a democratical move. People voteds and government followed through. Now citizens will live out consequences, for better or worse. And they can make next decision accordingly. That's so much better than enlightened oligarchy guarding the masses from their own wrong feelings. That's like raising kids. If you guard kids from their own painful decisions, they'll never learn. Eventually they'll be adults and they'll keep doing dumb decisions. You have to let them experience some pain to teach them a lesson.
argentier 4y ago
The EU is not a democracy. Its only democratic organ is toothless. It is an association of democracies, led by an undemocratic executive that is increasingly out of control. At the moment it is busily destroying its own economy in a way that is baffling to many of its citizens. If it doesn't evolve into something more democratic it probably hasn't long to go.
- malermeister 4y ago
  The executive is appointed by democratically elected officials. Y'know, the same way the US president is elected by electors, or Prime Ministers are elected by parlaments. Most democracies work this way.
  - argentier 4y ago
    In fact it's quite different. The US president campaigns before a democratic election. The people know who they can choose before they vote. Same with the UK. There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission. Why the downvote btw? This isn't reddit.
    - teh64 4y ago
      I the US, the electoral college could vote for someone completely different, who might not even be part of the campaign: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faithless_elector The chances of it happening are low, but the vote of the people might not be upheld.
    - M2Ys4U 4y ago
      >There is no democratic vote, with or without proxy, before the appointment of the Commission. Err, yes there is. The directly-elected European Parliament first elects the President of the European Commission, and then has to vote to appoint the entire Commission.[0] And before they do they they hold hearings with each of the different commissioner-nominees to evaluate their suitability for the role, demanding that people are replaced or given different portfolios if they are not suitable. Nominations for the role of President must take in to account the results of the election,[0] and the European Council nominates somebody from the largest party in Parliament. I wish that Parliament had stuck to its guns in 2014/2019 and rejected the nominees that weren't spitzenkandidaten but hopefully the new proposals tabled by Parliament creating transnational lists for Parliament will change this.[1] [0] Article 17(7) of the Treaty on European Union [1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220429IPR28242/meps-begin-revising-rules-on-eu-elections-calling-for-pan-european-constituency https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220429IP...
jules 4y ago
From my vote to this decision there are so many layers of abstraction that I wouldn't even begin to have a clue who to vote for and in which election if I do or do not want this E-ID. At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best. How often the platforms of the elected parties get translated into reality is another question, but it can at least plausibly be described as demos kratos. Maybe the EU is "democracy" in some modern sense of the word, but in the original sense of the word it is not. (I'm not even saying that's a bad thing. Maybe it is in fact better to have elites deciding.)
- petre 4y ago
  It's usually the pirate party or the greens. They have no representatives in my country, so good luck with that. Greece is a democracy, the EU is a bureaucracy.
- toyg 4y ago
  > At least in national elections there are parties campaigning with a platform and then I can decide which platform I like best. I fail to see how you cannot do that in European Parliament elections. If anything, EUP elections are more democratic than average, by way of using a proportional-representation system that matches voters' preferences more closely than almost any European voting system. And if you're saying, "but it's the Commission proposing laws!", they don't pull stuff out of thin air: the Commission effectively tries to implement an agenda that European Council members agree together. And who is EuroCouncil? National governments, whom you vote for. Also, the Commission doesn't work alone - directives are effectively drafted in concert with Parliament committees, because in the end they have to be approved by such Parliament.