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Personally I don't think democracy scales well. It works at the "small nation state" level to the extent that it's better than anything else we've come up with,

Personally I don't think democracy scales well. It works at the "small nation state" level to the extent that it's better than anything else we've come up with, and there's a limit to what a small nation state can do while still being traded with by other countries etc. I don't actually think democracy works well even at the scale of the USA - witness the group of old white men who have a tenacious grip on power despite being out of touch with those they "govern". Scaling it even further up makes it less and less likely to be useful, IMHO. Democracy requires accountability to keep its leaders in line, and once the number of people a "representative" is responsible for gets past a nominal number, that representation becomes meaningless, the accountability drops, and the control over unconscionable excess recedes. People will disagree, and that's fine - that's democracy :)

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The US is a case where it's an obvious lack of democracy (2 senators per state, the electoral college) to blame so it's a strange example of democracy not scaling well. Americans overall poll as very reasonable people, it's just not reflected in their lawmaking. Note there is a solid 30% who seem to choose the worst possible option in polls but I'd argue that is result of the lack of democracy and they've been trained into that over decades.
ompogUe 3y ago
Representative democracy might not scale well, but that was designed when it was an 8 day horse ride back to the districts. You really wanted someone with "boots on the ground" at the seat of power to represent you. But we don't know what "real" democracy would look like. I see it as everyone who wants can join in the documented conversations about the nuts and bolts of governance (forums, rfp's, rfc's), and everyone who wanted could join in voting for those with a button click. With full transparency of the tools, the process, and the results.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

The US is a case where it's an obvious lack of democracy (2 senators per state, the electoral college) to blame so it's a strange example of democracy not scaling well. Americans overall poll as very reasonable people, it's just not reflected in their lawmaking. Note there is a solid 30% who seem to choose the worst possible option in polls but I'd argue that is result of the lack of democracy and they've been trained into that over decades.

ompogUe 3y ago

Representative democracy might not scale well, but that was designed when it was an 8 day horse ride back to the districts. You really wanted someone with "boots on the ground" at the seat of power to represent you. But we don't know what "real" democracy would look like. I see it as everyone who wants can join in the documented conversations about the nuts and bolts of governance (forums, rfp's, rfc's), and everyone who wanted could join in voting for those with a button click. With full transparency of the tools, the process, and the results.