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When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of infor

When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. In this day and age, probably with a relatively tiny investment into public access points, we could very reasonably have a technically functional direct democracy. The legislative cycle is already authenticated so there's no need to solve "authenticated anonymous vote" problem, European countries already have functional eIDAS systems to back the authentication part and the legislative systems are already to some degree digitized. On one hand, the problem "what if someone sells their vote" is already present and unsolved, in the shape of lobbying. What's interesting, though, that we have built entire systems to shape public opinion and entrenched them into our daily lives, which are used by corporations and politicians alike. This begs a question: is there such a thing as unbiased public opinion without authenticated internet access? inb4: direct democracy does not mean parliamentary systems could be abolished altogether, central spaces for debate would still help solve discussion exchange problems

lelandbatey 4mo ago
Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? The memetic effects of language and communication means propaganda and similar tools of rhetoric and leveraged communication will always work, with or without an internet. There's no "solution", only "good enoughs". Direct democracy is cool, but also impractical. I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. So what's a level of direct democracy that's "good enough"? How do we make sure we're directly voting in things relevant to our lives? What if "relevant to our lives" is unrelated to our geographic location and is very interests based? If anyone can vote for anything, but most folks don't ever vote for most things, how do you prevent brigading of votes via coordination by groups who see that their group alone can swing what would be a small local vote whatever way they want by virtue of sheer numbers? How do you prevent trolls from going through every vote and just voting no on every "community center paper-and-ink budget" across the entire country? There are so many questions I have about direct democracy systems! Do you have more information?
- dguest 4mo ago
  I think everyone can agree that having O(100M) people vote on every local initiative is absurd. But a lot of countries are somewhere on the "direct" vs "representative" spectrum. The US actually abnormally lacking in direct mechanisms, for example. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country
  - tancop 4mo ago
    > The US actually abnormally lacking in direct mechanisms only on a federal level. states like california or texas are more direct than a lot of western europe in some ways. like the fact that ballot props are binding law or sheriffs and state attorneys are elected.
  - coldtea 4mo ago
    >I think everyone can agree that having O(100M) people vote on every local initiative is absurd. I'm one of those everyones, and I don't agree. Except if you mean local initiatives that don't concern 100M people, but e.g. some regional municipality. Of course then just the locals can vote, be they 100K or 1M.
    - dguest 4mo ago
      Yes! I meant local issues that don't concern 100M people. Local issues that concern a few thousand people can be (and often are) resolved by direct democracy. I guess I could argue that putting a stop sign at a particular intersection in rural Kansas could concern me, even though I don't live in Kansas, but I think very few people would make that argument in good faith.
- xinayder 4mo ago
  The Swiss succeeded in this, maybe we should look at their model and improve.
  - AnthonyMouse 4mo ago
Aeolun 4mo ago
If you make it legal to sell your vote, it’d become very obvious very quickly how much money is in politics.
Ouman 4mo ago
I am not sure the hard part of direct democracy was ever only the logistics of voting
DrScientist 4mo ago
You are confusing the ability to bring information to people, with the ability of people to consume it. As has been mentioned elsewhere on the thread - the real issue is often there are complex 2nd and third order effects, often there are devils in the details. I'm not saying people are not capable of consuming it, I'm saying people don't have the bandwidth. Direct democracy is best when it's used for very specific proposals with lots of time for debate - not every decision. If you use it for every decision, time poor citizens will end up at the mercy of professional story tellers.
- graemep 4mo ago
  An alternative would be to select representatives by lot. It would get rid of a political class, would automatically be representative (so no arguments about whether women, minorities, whoever are fairly represented) and not select for people who want power and it would mean people have the same amount of time as those in the current system.
  - DrScientist 4mo ago
    I heard this idea, or variants of it, quite a lot recently. Some of the examples I've seen it tried - I've seen the people setting it up trying to fix the outcome by carefully choosing the question, then providing expert advice on options scoped by the question. Framing of the question is a powerful tool to promote the outcome you want, and avoiding ever asking certain questions is another. Not saying it doesn't have it's place - you just need to be careful that the process isn't used to try and legitimise what would otherwise be unpopular policies via concentrated persuasion on a small number of people.
    - graemep 4mo ago
      Did you reply to the wrong comment? The idea I just put forward does not involve questions, it involves replacing one group of people with another doing the same job. Framing questions is already a problem with legislation. You can frame "do you want to increase online surveillance" as "do you want to protect children" very successfully!
remus 4mo ago
> When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. I think there is more to it. A large part of democracy is delegating decision making to people with time and expertise to investigate issues more thoroughly than most individuals can or want to. I have some broad opinions about the environment etc. but I am by no means an expert in the details, so I am happy to delegate day to day decision making to someone with more expertise who's opinions broadly align with my own. I'd agree that referendums do make more sense on "issues of conscience" though, like whether to have a death penalty, voting reform etc.
pc86 4mo ago
Representative democracy is rooted in the idea that the average person is kind of a moron. Just look at states where it's incredibly easy to get state-wide referendums on basically anything on the ballot and you'll see the legal landscape there quickly becomes a mess.
echelon 4mo ago
> When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. REPLACE FED CHAIR WITH DOVE OR HAWK? BUILD NEW STRATEGIC BOMBERS? START A WAR WITH IRAN? VOTE NOW! Imagine the chaos. Imagine all the ads.
SubmarineClub 4mo ago
> idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy In the US at least, no it is not. The founders were incredibly concerned about the ‘passions of the mob’ and deliberately built a system that they hoped would temper the excesses of the public. And after seeing the wacko stuff going on in California, I can’t blame them!
analog8374 4mo ago
2 ideas about direct democracy. Selling your vote becomes a nonissue when everybody is doing it. An LLM informed by a reddit-style discussion tree might be a good way to implement the policy-creating part of a direct democracy.

lelandbatey 4mo ago

Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? The memetic effects of language and communication means propaganda and similar tools of rhetoric and leveraged communication will always work, with or without an internet. There's no "solution", only "good enoughs". Direct democracy is cool, but also impractical. I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. So what's a level of direct democracy that's "good enough"? How do we make sure we're directly voting in things relevant to our lives? What if "relevant to our lives" is unrelated to our geographic location and is very interests based? If anyone can vote for anything, but most folks don't ever vote for most things, how do you prevent brigading of votes via coordination by groups who see that their group alone can swing what would be a small local vote whatever way they want by virtue of sheer numbers? How do you prevent trolls from going through every vote and just voting no on every "community center paper-and-ink budget" across the entire country? There are so many questions I have about direct democracy systems! Do you have more information?

dguest 4mo ago
I think everyone can agree that having O(100M) people vote on every local initiative is absurd. But a lot of countries are somewhere on the "direct" vs "representative" spectrum. The US actually abnormally lacking in direct mechanisms, for example. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country
- tancop 4mo ago
  > The US actually abnormally lacking in direct mechanisms only on a federal level. states like california or texas are more direct than a lot of western europe in some ways. like the fact that ballot props are binding law or sheriffs and state attorneys are elected.
- coldtea 4mo ago
  >I think everyone can agree that having O(100M) people vote on every local initiative is absurd. I'm one of those everyones, and I don't agree. Except if you mean local initiatives that don't concern 100M people, but e.g. some regional municipality. Of course then just the locals can vote, be they 100K or 1M.
  - dguest 4mo ago
    Yes! I meant local issues that don't concern 100M people. Local issues that concern a few thousand people can be (and often are) resolved by direct democracy. I guess I could argue that putting a stop sign at a particular intersection in rural Kansas could concern me, even though I don't live in Kansas, but I think very few people would make that argument in good faith.
xinayder 4mo ago
The Swiss succeeded in this, maybe we should look at their model and improve.
- AnthonyMouse 4mo ago

Aeolun 4mo ago

If you make it legal to sell your vote, it’d become very obvious very quickly how much money is in politics.

Ouman 4mo ago

I am not sure the hard part of direct democracy was ever only the logistics of voting

DrScientist 4mo ago

You are confusing the ability to bring information to people, with the ability of people to consume it. As has been mentioned elsewhere on the thread - the real issue is often there are complex 2nd and third order effects, often there are devils in the details. I'm not saying people are not capable of consuming it, I'm saying people don't have the bandwidth. Direct democracy is best when it's used for very specific proposals with lots of time for debate - not every decision. If you use it for every decision, time poor citizens will end up at the mercy of professional story tellers.

graemep 4mo ago
An alternative would be to select representatives by lot. It would get rid of a political class, would automatically be representative (so no arguments about whether women, minorities, whoever are fairly represented) and not select for people who want power and it would mean people have the same amount of time as those in the current system.
- DrScientist 4mo ago
  I heard this idea, or variants of it, quite a lot recently. Some of the examples I've seen it tried - I've seen the people setting it up trying to fix the outcome by carefully choosing the question, then providing expert advice on options scoped by the question. Framing of the question is a powerful tool to promote the outcome you want, and avoiding ever asking certain questions is another. Not saying it doesn't have it's place - you just need to be careful that the process isn't used to try and legitimise what would otherwise be unpopular policies via concentrated persuasion on a small number of people.
  - graemep 4mo ago
    Did you reply to the wrong comment? The idea I just put forward does not involve questions, it involves replacing one group of people with another doing the same job. Framing questions is already a problem with legislation. You can frame "do you want to increase online surveillance" as "do you want to protect children" very successfully!

remus 4mo ago

> When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. I think there is more to it. A large part of democracy is delegating decision making to people with time and expertise to investigate issues more thoroughly than most individuals can or want to. I have some broad opinions about the environment etc. but I am by no means an expert in the details, so I am happy to delegate day to day decision making to someone with more expertise who's opinions broadly align with my own. I'd agree that referendums do make more sense on "issues of conscience" though, like whether to have a death penalty, voting reform etc.

pc86 4mo ago

Representative democracy is rooted in the idea that the average person is kind of a moron. Just look at states where it's incredibly easy to get state-wide referendums on basically anything on the ballot and you'll see the legal landscape there quickly becomes a mess.

echelon 4mo ago

> When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. REPLACE FED CHAIR WITH DOVE OR HAWK? BUILD NEW STRATEGIC BOMBERS? START A WAR WITH IRAN? VOTE NOW! Imagine the chaos. Imagine all the ads.

SubmarineClub 4mo ago

> idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy In the US at least, no it is not. The founders were incredibly concerned about the ‘passions of the mob’ and deliberately built a system that they hoped would temper the excesses of the public. And after seeing the wacko stuff going on in California, I can’t blame them!

analog8374 4mo ago

2 ideas about direct democracy. Selling your vote becomes a nonissue when everybody is doing it. An LLM informed by a reddit-style discussion tree might be a good way to implement the policy-creating part of a direct democracy.