9 ms·

I know this is a parody, but a model like this could actually work. A frightening thought.

by kitsune_ 15y ago

wladimir 15y ago
It's no longer a democracy, but at least it'd be transparent and honest.
- JanezStupar 15y ago
  Democracy in classical sense means participation of the aristocracy, not wide populist participation as practiced in 20th century. I along with many of people I discuss politics agree that for wellbeing of democracy the civic duties and privileges should be limited and not available to everybody as a universal right. Ignorance is the worst enemy of democracy. Letting the ignorant majority participate in democratic process on principle alone does nothing for democracy.
  - toyg 15y ago
    Bollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the right veneral disease, whatever). The real problem is that the Greek concept of Democracy was implemented at the town level (their "cities" were really villages in the modern sense), and it has struggled to scale ever since. It's not surprising that the best "democracies" tend to be the smallest in terms of population. A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical; unfortunately, once you introduce human intermediaries / aggregators (i.e. your "representatives"), the dynamics change massively, so you introduce corrections, which further sway the dynamics, and on and on...
    - wladimir 15y ago
      A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still? And I'm not sure that there always needs to be an "ignorant majority". If people are closely involved with any aspect of lawmaking, they'll feel more responsible for being educated about political issues. Most "politically ignorant" people I know are that because they feel voting is hardly worth the time, because it only contributes indirectly and abstractly to decision processes (and politicians say one thing and do another...). I think an important responsibility of a democracy is to educate people in critical thinking and make sure they are not "ignorant".
      - hermannj314 15y ago
        It sounds like Congress needs an ignorance quorum before passing any law: "Congress shall pass no law, unless 51% of the electorate can pass a quiz on the content of said law. Also, individual legislators must abstain from voting until they receive passing marks."
      - toyg 15y ago
        It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still? The history of electronic voting is not particularly encouraging for the various "democracy in technology" theories. Besides, even if you sorted out the infrastructure requirements (see security etc), you'd still be left with the day-to-day drudgery of real politics: reading thousands of pages of bills, proposals, analysis, point, counter-point, etc etc etc, is boring and a time-sink. Which is why a professional "political class" has emerged in most countries, and why part-time politicians are invariably rich from the start (i.e. they have a lot of spare time). To fix that, we'll need good AIs to summarize and simulate. I'd actually prefer to have that over a fully-networked, always-on poll booth.
        wladimir 15y ago
        reading thousands of pages of bills, proposals, analysis, point, counter-point, etc etc etc, is boring and a time-sink A crowd-sourcing approach could certainly work here. People will go through boring work if they think it is worthwhile. Having free time is by no means restricted to the rich anymore. Github for politics? (people could do something useful online instead of playing BlaVille, for a change...) we'll need good AIs to summarize and simulate I don't believe that such AIs will be feasible any time soon. Also, it would raise even more security issues. Who controls the AI?
  - hermannj314 15y ago
    It is hard to agree or disagree with you when you don't say exactly what your eligibility criteria would be. I, for one, find felony disenfranchisement to be deplorable.
    - JanezStupar 15y ago
      Lottery would be way better than what we have today. I would also prohibit government employees from voting. With an exception of military veterans. But these are not honest criteria. I have no idea about what would be a set of good criteria. Thus far I can only see that populist rule is leading us nowhere fast.
- toyg 15y ago
  From one-head-one-vote to one-dollar-one-vote. We should call it "pecuniacy". (Note: "pecunia" is Latin for "money"; I know, the right way to do this would be to use the ancient greek equivalent for "money" and replace it for "demo", but I couldn't find it.)
  - rrhm 15y ago
    Perhaps "plutocracy" would work. The root "ploutus" is the ancient greek word for "wealth".
    - toyg 15y ago
      Yeah, but that has already assumed negative connotations; you cannot use it for tongue-in-cheek jokes.
      - georgecmu 15y ago
        leptocracy: lepton[] + cracy is exactly what you want and is an easy allusion to kleptocracy. [] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton
biot 15y ago
Actually, it's a satire since it mocks real life. If it mocked an existing creative work, it would be a parody.

I know this is a parody, but a model like this could actually work. A frightening thought.

wladimir 15y ago

It's no longer a democracy, but at least it'd be transparent and honest.

JanezStupar 15y ago
Democracy in classical sense means participation of the aristocracy, not wide populist participation as practiced in 20th century. I along with many of people I discuss politics agree that for wellbeing of democracy the civic duties and privileges should be limited and not available to everybody as a universal right. Ignorance is the worst enemy of democracy. Letting the ignorant majority participate in democratic process on principle alone does nothing for democracy.
- toyg 15y ago
  Bollocks. Democracy is, literally, "rule by the people"; you can twist the definition of "people", but once you do, they stop being "people" in other contexts too, and you really don't want to go there, if you really care about your fellow man (if you don't, you can pick your preferred system that favours your preferred type of assholes: with the right blood, with the right money, with the right degrees, with the right veneral disease, whatever). The real problem is that the Greek concept of Democracy was implemented at the town level (their "cities" were really villages in the modern sense), and it has struggled to scale ever since. It's not surprising that the best "democracies" tend to be the smallest in terms of population. A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical; unfortunately, once you introduce human intermediaries / aggregators (i.e. your "representatives"), the dynamics change massively, so you introduce corrections, which further sway the dynamics, and on and on...
  - wladimir 15y ago
    A literal democracy would have everyone being able to vote on any law at any level, which is clearly impractical It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still? And I'm not sure that there always needs to be an "ignorant majority". If people are closely involved with any aspect of lawmaking, they'll feel more responsible for being educated about political issues. Most "politically ignorant" people I know are that because they feel voting is hardly worth the time, because it only contributes indirectly and abstractly to decision processes (and politicians say one thing and do another...). I think an important responsibility of a democracy is to educate people in critical thinking and make sure they are not "ignorant".
    - hermannj314 15y ago
      It sounds like Congress needs an ignorance quorum before passing any law: "Congress shall pass no law, unless 51% of the electorate can pass a quiz on the content of said law. Also, individual legislators must abstain from voting until they receive passing marks."
    - toyg 15y ago
      It used to be impractical due to obvious infrastructure reasons. But with the internet, is it still? The history of electronic voting is not particularly encouraging for the various "democracy in technology" theories. Besides, even if you sorted out the infrastructure requirements (see security etc), you'd still be left with the day-to-day drudgery of real politics: reading thousands of pages of bills, proposals, analysis, point, counter-point, etc etc etc, is boring and a time-sink. Which is why a professional "political class" has emerged in most countries, and why part-time politicians are invariably rich from the start (i.e. they have a lot of spare time). To fix that, we'll need good AIs to summarize and simulate. I'd actually prefer to have that over a fully-networked, always-on poll booth.
      - wladimir 15y ago
        reading thousands of pages of bills, proposals, analysis, point, counter-point, etc etc etc, is boring and a time-sink A crowd-sourcing approach could certainly work here. People will go through boring work if they think it is worthwhile. Having free time is by no means restricted to the rich anymore. Github for politics? (people could do something useful online instead of playing BlaVille, for a change...) we'll need good AIs to summarize and simulate I don't believe that such AIs will be feasible any time soon. Also, it would raise even more security issues. Who controls the AI?
- hermannj314 15y ago
  It is hard to agree or disagree with you when you don't say exactly what your eligibility criteria would be. I, for one, find felony disenfranchisement to be deplorable.
  - JanezStupar 15y ago
    Lottery would be way better than what we have today. I would also prohibit government employees from voting. With an exception of military veterans. But these are not honest criteria. I have no idea about what would be a set of good criteria. Thus far I can only see that populist rule is leading us nowhere fast.
toyg 15y ago
From one-head-one-vote to one-dollar-one-vote. We should call it "pecuniacy". (Note: "pecunia" is Latin for "money"; I know, the right way to do this would be to use the ancient greek equivalent for "money" and replace it for "demo", but I couldn't find it.)
- rrhm 15y ago
  Perhaps "plutocracy" would work. The root "ploutus" is the ancient greek word for "wealth".
  - toyg 15y ago
    Yeah, but that has already assumed negative connotations; you cannot use it for tongue-in-cheek jokes.
    - georgecmu 15y ago
      leptocracy: lepton[] + cracy is exactly what you want and is an easy allusion to kleptocracy. [] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_lepton

biot 15y ago

Actually, it's a satire since it mocks real life. If it mocked an existing creative work, it would be a parody.