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It was just a quick quip how we regard as "democratic" a country (?) called "United Kingdom", language is funny like that. Sure, UK is a great place to live fo

It was just a quick quip how we regard as "democratic" a country (?) called "United Kingdom", language is funny like that. Sure, UK is a great place to live for many of their citizens, and a great country overall, culture and so forth. It's not for nothing we are speaking their language and not Esperanto or something. But it's not a democracy, and that is fine. If you ask me (I know you didn't, but just in case), not even the Nordic countries or Switzerland pass the main test of democracy: not being able to vote for everything, but being able to vote "No" to anything and everything. That should probably be the hallmark of a democracy. Even the toga-wearing Greeks did not have democracy to such an extent. In an ideal world, every ballot would have as a first option the option "No". I said in some other HN comment [1], a second point would be to tie the duration of the mandate to the voter turnout, if 30% vote, then the mandate is not 100%, but 30% also of the 4/5 years mandate. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35300083 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35300083

jen20 3y ago
Tying mandate to turnout is actually a very interesting idea. Has this ever been tried?
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- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  I am afraid it's rather original. Afraid since originality in politics increases the chance of assassination, or even worse, marginalization. One technical issue to solve beforehand is reducing the cost of elections by 6-7 orders of magnitude. 2020 US election costed $14 billion (presidential and congressional) [1], 2020 India election costed $7 billlion [2]. It's completely unsustainable. Sending 500 million HTTPS messages using Amazon SES costs around $50,000. Perhaps elections should cost a bit more, but not with much, in order to be able to run them every other day/month. The fact that our societies are unable to hold elections often and at the cost of spam emails is also a sign we are not trending towards increasing democracy. [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-electi... [2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/india/why-indias-election-is-among-the-worlds-most-expensive/articleshow/68367262.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabh...
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hgomersall 3y ago
The problem is that people are very bad at assessing what is in their best interest. For sure, the result is a pretty thorny ethical debate, but you can't deny that the ability of the electorate to veto things would not necessarily result in an improvement.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  In general I believe people are bad at assessing their best interest as a failure of education (too few teachers, too many students), perhaps with the rise of personal artificial mentors this will be better. Being able to vote "No" or "No One" may see no improvement, but it would at least give a true option to the 30%-60% of people (various countries) who never vote, a protest vote which is actually significant, especially if voting "No" further decreases the mandate time. I guess in general we should ask ourselves if the principles on which we build the society are for increasing democracy or for decreasing it. And then we can label it as "democratic" or not, but the rate of change towards a heightened democracy is more important than a single scalar "democracy index". Hence my initial repartee about a 1,300 old society which steadfastly had and has bishops, lords, kings as instruments of power or power-adjacent implementers of power.

jen20 3y ago

Tying mandate to turnout is actually a very interesting idea. Has this ever been tried?

deleted 3y ago
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ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
I am afraid it's rather original. Afraid since originality in politics increases the chance of assassination, or even worse, marginalization. One technical issue to solve beforehand is reducing the cost of elections by 6-7 orders of magnitude. 2020 US election costed $14 billion (presidential and congressional) [1], 2020 India election costed $7 billlion [2]. It's completely unsustainable. Sending 500 million HTTPS messages using Amazon SES costs around $50,000. Perhaps elections should cost a bit more, but not with much, in order to be able to run them every other day/month. The fact that our societies are unable to hold elections often and at the cost of spam emails is also a sign we are not trending towards increasing democracy. [1] https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-electi... [2] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabha/india/why-indias-election-is-among-the-worlds-most-expensive/articleshow/68367262.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/elections/lok-sabh...
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hgomersall 3y ago

The problem is that people are very bad at assessing what is in their best interest. For sure, the result is a pretty thorny ethical debate, but you can't deny that the ability of the electorate to veto things would not necessarily result in an improvement.

ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
In general I believe people are bad at assessing their best interest as a failure of education (too few teachers, too many students), perhaps with the rise of personal artificial mentors this will be better. Being able to vote "No" or "No One" may see no improvement, but it would at least give a true option to the 30%-60% of people (various countries) who never vote, a protest vote which is actually significant, especially if voting "No" further decreases the mandate time. I guess in general we should ask ourselves if the principles on which we build the society are for increasing democracy or for decreasing it. And then we can label it as "democratic" or not, but the rate of change towards a heightened democracy is more important than a single scalar "democracy index". Hence my initial repartee about a 1,300 old society which steadfastly had and has bishops, lords, kings as instruments of power or power-adjacent implementers of power.