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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 rhetor

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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago
The Swiss succeeded in this, maybe we should look at their model and improve.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
  Switzerland is a country with a total population approximately the size of the state of New Jersey. This being too centralized for most things, they then further divided that population into 26 cantons ranging in size from approximately the size of New Hampshire at the high end to "that number of people would be classified as a town rather than a city" at the low end. The median size looks to be around 200,000 people, so maybe start by dividing the US population into cantons of around that size and doing most of the rulemaking at that level.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
po1nt 3mo ago
The best level of democracy is no democracy. The problem of voting for road repairs is a problem we created by democracy. We voted ourselves into a system we can't escape, just because people back in the days couldn't fully comprehend side effects of their collective decisions. Very few people realize that there is option to not use government cohersion as a solution to everything. I know this is unpopular opinion. The system is designed for this to be unpopular opinion. But the problem is not the democracy, but the level of power we give to the government. If the only power of government would be to pick flag colors and national anthem, no one would care about it. No one cares about UK having a king, because it doesn't change a thing.
- oarsinsync 3mo ago
  > No one cares about UK having a king, because it doesn't change a thing. Which is the position the Monarchy absolutely wants you to have, and they definitely don't want you to know that they have veto power over all laws, and regularly intervene and get laws modified so that they're not included in scope. Meanwhile they just gave themselves a massive pay rise, at a time when government is cutting public spending in all areas.
  - nephihaha 3mo ago
    The BBC is monarchist to the core. A lot of people say the BBC is biased in one political direction or another, but they often forget about monarchism. One notable example of their privilege was when Andrew George MP dared to ask a question in parliament about the Duchy of Cornwall, only to be told he wasn't allowed to. (The Duchy of Cornwall is a kind of slush fund for the heir to throne. Charles had it before he became king. It has tax breaks, and also the ability to seize property and mine on people's land.)
  - ligne 3mo ago
    In theory the King can veto any law he wants. In practice he couldn't without causing a monumental constitutional crisis that would probably end his reign. His unofficial ability to influence government policy is the real issue, but one that is definitely not limited to that one guy with the special blood.
coldtea 3mo ago
>Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? Doesn't really matter except philosophically. There's something close enough to unbiased public opinion when there are no government propaganda campaings, censorship, press owned by conglomerates, and corporate messaging.
- TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
  In most political systems the two functions of government are rationing and ideological control for the poor and profiteering for the rich. The media provide marketing and propaganda support for both. It's very hard to have truly independent media.
AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
> I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. The best way to do this is through a combination of subsidiarity and constitutional rights. You have a central government but its primary purpose is to set out and uphold fundamental rights. It essentially sets out what the local governments can't do, so you can't have ex post facto laws, censor speech, detain people without trial, try to enforce local laws on actions performed in remote jurisdictions, etc. In particular, the central government should not be in the business of regulating private conduct. Only the local governments do that. Then you don't have to be worried about appropriations for road maintenance in some other county because you don't live there. Whereas the appropriations in your county are coming out of your pocket, and aren't such a far away thing that your vote is being diluted into irrelevance, so then maybe you want to be paying some attention to that.
dbspin 3mo ago
> 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"? This particular question has an extremely simple answer - derived from the decades of practical development of consensus based systems in democratic spaces (art spaces, leftist political groups etc). You vote / participate in the consensus decision making of the issues that are most important to you. It's that simple. Every issue is democratically decided, and you just 'tune in' to the ones that matter to you. In terms of brigading / trolling are harder. In consensus institutions they're usually dealt with by limiting the amount of blocking (forcing tabling of an issue) and ensuring that voting / consensus participation is limited to those who are actively involved in the community. This is obviously far more complex on a societal level. Overall this requires a bigger investment of time, but you're in no way required to care about everything. Over time though, the group / institution / society, is forced to grow up. Or at least grow out of the learned helplessness that dominates contemporary representative democracy.
iamnothere 3mo ago
A solution is “liquid democracy”, or instantly revocable delegation of your vote. With good UX, you could build a system that allows you to have a nominal representative you trust for different types of votes, with manual override for votes you want to make yourself. It would require some procedural changes to ensure that people have time to read and debate bills. (This otherwise great in theory idea is mooted by the fact that remote legislative votes are a terrible idea, as security is a shitshow literally everywhere.)

dguest 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo 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 3mo ago

The Swiss succeeded in this, maybe we should look at their model and improve.

AnthonyMouse 3mo ago
Switzerland is a country with a total population approximately the size of the state of New Jersey. This being too centralized for most things, they then further divided that population into 26 cantons ranging in size from approximately the size of New Hampshire at the high end to "that number of people would be classified as a town rather than a city" at the low end. The median size looks to be around 200,000 people, so maybe start by dividing the US population into cantons of around that size and doing most of the rulemaking at that level.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]

po1nt 3mo ago

The best level of democracy is no democracy. The problem of voting for road repairs is a problem we created by democracy. We voted ourselves into a system we can't escape, just because people back in the days couldn't fully comprehend side effects of their collective decisions. Very few people realize that there is option to not use government cohersion as a solution to everything. I know this is unpopular opinion. The system is designed for this to be unpopular opinion. But the problem is not the democracy, but the level of power we give to the government. If the only power of government would be to pick flag colors and national anthem, no one would care about it. No one cares about UK having a king, because it doesn't change a thing.

oarsinsync 3mo ago
> No one cares about UK having a king, because it doesn't change a thing. Which is the position the Monarchy absolutely wants you to have, and they definitely don't want you to know that they have veto power over all laws, and regularly intervene and get laws modified so that they're not included in scope. Meanwhile they just gave themselves a massive pay rise, at a time when government is cutting public spending in all areas.
- nephihaha 3mo ago
  The BBC is monarchist to the core. A lot of people say the BBC is biased in one political direction or another, but they often forget about monarchism. One notable example of their privilege was when Andrew George MP dared to ask a question in parliament about the Duchy of Cornwall, only to be told he wasn't allowed to. (The Duchy of Cornwall is a kind of slush fund for the heir to throne. Charles had it before he became king. It has tax breaks, and also the ability to seize property and mine on people's land.)
- ligne 3mo ago
  In theory the King can veto any law he wants. In practice he couldn't without causing a monumental constitutional crisis that would probably end his reign. His unofficial ability to influence government policy is the real issue, but one that is definitely not limited to that one guy with the special blood.

coldtea 3mo ago

>Is there such a thing as "unbiased public opinion" at all though? Doesn't really matter except philosophically. There's something close enough to unbiased public opinion when there are no government propaganda campaings, censorship, press owned by conglomerates, and corporate messaging.

TheOtherHobbes 3mo ago
In most political systems the two functions of government are rationing and ideological control for the poor and profiteering for the rich. The media provide marketing and propaganda support for both. It's very hard to have truly independent media.

AnthonyMouse 3mo ago

> I do not want to vote on every counties appropriations for road maintenance. The best way to do this is through a combination of subsidiarity and constitutional rights. You have a central government but its primary purpose is to set out and uphold fundamental rights. It essentially sets out what the local governments can't do, so you can't have ex post facto laws, censor speech, detain people without trial, try to enforce local laws on actions performed in remote jurisdictions, etc. In particular, the central government should not be in the business of regulating private conduct. Only the local governments do that. Then you don't have to be worried about appropriations for road maintenance in some other county because you don't live there. Whereas the appropriations in your county are coming out of your pocket, and aren't such a far away thing that your vote is being diluted into irrelevance, so then maybe you want to be paying some attention to that.

dbspin 3mo ago

> 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"? This particular question has an extremely simple answer - derived from the decades of practical development of consensus based systems in democratic spaces (art spaces, leftist political groups etc). You vote / participate in the consensus decision making of the issues that are most important to you. It's that simple. Every issue is democratically decided, and you just 'tune in' to the ones that matter to you. In terms of brigading / trolling are harder. In consensus institutions they're usually dealt with by limiting the amount of blocking (forcing tabling of an issue) and ensuring that voting / consensus participation is limited to those who are actively involved in the community. This is obviously far more complex on a societal level. Overall this requires a bigger investment of time, but you're in no way required to care about everything. Over time though, the group / institution / society, is forced to grow up. Or at least grow out of the learned helplessness that dominates contemporary representative democracy.

iamnothere 3mo ago

A solution is “liquid democracy”, or instantly revocable delegation of your vote. With good UX, you could build a system that allows you to have a nominal representative you trust for different types of votes, with manual override for votes you want to make yourself. It would require some procedural changes to ensure that people have time to read and debate bills. (This otherwise great in theory idea is mooted by the fact that remote legislative votes are a terrible idea, as security is a shitshow literally everywhere.)