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For those who are looking for more in-depth material, I'd recommend looking at Bruce Schneier's post about a workshop he organized on this topic a few months ag

For those who are looking for more in-depth material, I'd recommend looking at Bruce Schneier's post about a workshop he organized on this topic a few months ago. The comments include notes on the presentations: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-democracy.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2022/12/reimagining-d...

Animats 3y ago
Yes. The linked article is a bad book report. The "reimagining" link is useful, but it's a bunch of people with their own agendas. That shows a fundamental problem. Given a large number of people with different agendas, how does an action plan emerge? This is a problem with meetings in general. We all know what meetings that accomplish nothing are like. Democracies needs something to vote on. There's a stage before voting which involves focusing and drafting. This tends to be dominated by lobbyists and others backed to promote narrow, self-serving agendas. That part of the system sucks.
- barathr 3y ago
  My sense is that this is in its early stages as this was the first gathering of that group of folks. I imagine some good dialogue and collaborations are coming out of it, and we might see the results of that in a year or two.
- tremon 3y ago
  In my mind, voting is an implementation detail of democracy. The drafting process is much more important, as that is where all the different voices are supposed to be heard. > This tends to be dominated by lobbyists and others backed to promote narrow, self-serving agendas In a real representative democracy, this shouldn't matter (yes, I know, this veers eerily close to a no-true-scotsman argument). If all the participants promote their own self-serving agendas, the end result will be a mix of those agendas, weighted by how widely particular viewpoints are represented. The problem of course is firstly that systems like winner-takes-all and first-past-the-post violate democracy by silencing other voices, and secondly that lobbying is done by interests who represent nobody but themselves yet it has a hugely outsized influence on the outcome.
mlinksva 3y ago
Happy to read/search that lottery/sortition was discussed.

Animats 3y ago

Yes. The linked article is a bad book report. The "reimagining" link is useful, but it's a bunch of people with their own agendas. That shows a fundamental problem. Given a large number of people with different agendas, how does an action plan emerge? This is a problem with meetings in general. We all know what meetings that accomplish nothing are like. Democracies needs something to vote on. There's a stage before voting which involves focusing and drafting. This tends to be dominated by lobbyists and others backed to promote narrow, self-serving agendas. That part of the system sucks.

barathr 3y ago
My sense is that this is in its early stages as this was the first gathering of that group of folks. I imagine some good dialogue and collaborations are coming out of it, and we might see the results of that in a year or two.
tremon 3y ago
In my mind, voting is an implementation detail of democracy. The drafting process is much more important, as that is where all the different voices are supposed to be heard. > This tends to be dominated by lobbyists and others backed to promote narrow, self-serving agendas In a real representative democracy, this shouldn't matter (yes, I know, this veers eerily close to a no-true-scotsman argument). If all the participants promote their own self-serving agendas, the end result will be a mix of those agendas, weighted by how widely particular viewpoints are represented. The problem of course is firstly that systems like winner-takes-all and first-past-the-post violate democracy by silencing other voices, and secondly that lobbying is done by interests who represent nobody but themselves yet it has a hugely outsized influence on the outcome.

mlinksva 3y ago

Happy to read/search that lottery/sortition was discussed.