9 ms·

They're all that bad. We have to remember that voting isn't democracy. Unless there are true alternatives, having the freedom to choose between Pepsi or Coke

They're all that bad. We have to remember that voting isn't democracy. Unless there are true alternatives, having the freedom to choose between Pepsi or Coke is no freedom at all. The system has been gamed; it's fundamentally broken. I believe that we need to have some form of direct democracy, such as allowing the public to vote directly on any bill, and if more than 25% vote in any district, their choice overrides their representatives. Don't tell me it's a technical issue -- that's cowardice. We can do this. If you were CEO of a company, you wouldn't throw up your hands in impotence as your employees ran the company into the ground. It's our country. We're in charge. No more whining. We can do this.

kevinpet 13y ago
They aren't all as bad as Feinstein. California liberals should stop with the "but we must reelect her, because otherwise someone who isn't connected to the San Francisco political machine might get elected". I'll take Boxer, Reid or even Bernie Sanders over Feinstein any day, and I'm not a liberal. Your ideas are naive and it's clear you don't understand the purpose of representative democracy. Please don't confuse one of the worst representatives with "the system is entirely broken and should be replaced with this untested system".
lifeformed 13y ago
The systems already set up to be resistant to change. There are a lot of better systems we can all think of, but there's no way to make them happen anymore. You need to consent of the people you're fighting against to put them out of power.
Ygg2 13y ago
I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? I recall someone mentioning that masses would make rather bad popular decisions with bad consequences that were hard to guess. It might be true or false. Maybe masses still did better than politicians. If you ask me, I think politics should be automated in some way. AI for that probably doesn't exist yet, but hey if they can replace surgeons, why not politicians?
- darkarmani 13y ago
  > I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? American idol?
- annnnd 13y ago
  They already replaced them - with dolls who smile and nod kindly to the camera. Real power stays hidden.
- kamjam 13y ago
  The problem with direct democracy, as I see it, is that it can be gamed just as easily for short term gain. Given how politics works in the US, as well as all the lobbyists and advertising budgets that go along with both of these I'd say that any policy that came up for a vote would be skewed one way or the other because the voter saw some "information". Imagine SOPA had gone to a public vote. Who would have won, Hollywood or the public interest?
  - Ygg2 13y ago
    The bigger problem with democracy is how to stop the majority from prosecuting minorities? If majority of people voted - e.g. would gay marriages be allowed?! Would smoking tobacco become illegal (as in same laws that govern marijuana users cover tobacco users)?
  - kibibu 13y ago
    I recall seeing a critique of California's Proposition system that everybody votes for services, nobody votes to pay for them. Of course there are also important movements like civil rights that don't always have majority support.
- david927 13y ago
  I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? While I'm American, I've lived for almost a decade in Switzerland which has direct democracy. I've seen it first-hand. that masses would make rather bad popular decisions In other words, you don't believe in Democracy. The whole point is that it comes down to the decisions of the people. Representatives were important when voting was a tough logistical problem; that's not the case anymore. Now they're a liability. There are 18 lobbyists for the finance industry per congressman, each representing a large amount of money in case what the people want contradicts what the finance industry wants. And that's just one industry. No wonder Congress currently has an approval rating of 5%. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/congress-approval-rating_n_4069899.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/congress-approval-r...] It's abysmal, we agree, so why are we so petrified of an alternative that includes working together instead?
parasight 13y ago
Exactly. It works. The Swiss are the best example. They have direct democracy and the country is far away from chaos.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  8 million people? I suspect the Bay Area might be able to make direct democracy work for a while. I wouldn't want to extrapolate that out to the West Coast though and certainly all of the states.
  - Glide 13y ago
    That's part of the allure of people championing state's rights as opposed to doing things on the federal level. Unfortunately I don't know of too many historical examples of power becoming decentralized.
  - parasight 13y ago
    Would you care to elaborate? I don't see why 8 million people should make better decisions than 80 or 800 million people. Or do you mean that people in the Bay Area make better decisions than people in other areas?
    - justin66 13y ago
      > I don't see why 8 million people should make better decisions than 80 or 800 million people. With a smaller group that is local to one another, they're more likely to share interests and understand one another. Communication is faster and clearer among the electorate and between the electorate and the elected.
    - jmccree 13y ago
      It's not just the pure numbers, but geographical and cultural range. 8 million people in an area (16k sqmi) smaller than the US State of West Virginia(24k sqmi) are going to have an easier time understanding and voting on issues affecting everyone than 300+ million people in an area over 9 millon square miles. Direct democracy in the US could end up with even worse tyranny of the majority issues than already experienced. (Example, detonating multiple nuclear weapons in the state of Nevada in the 50s. It might have passed in a national vote, but likely not a vote only in Nevada.)
scrrr 13y ago
Got an example of a political elite ever changing things so that they have less power?
- gaius 13y ago
  The dismantling of the British Empire.
  - discardorama 13y ago
    I think the GP forgot to put "willingly" in there. The Brits, after WW2, were exhausted. India had been clamoring for independence for ~50 years. And after the war, you suddenly had a million young men in India, well trained in arms and warfare; these men would have been hard to control with force. So they had no choice. Once India fell (i.e. became independent), the dominoes started falling, and soon the sun had set on the British Empire.
- freehunter 13y ago
  George Washington turned down the title of king and set major restrictions on what the president could do. He set a precedent of only serving two terms (eight years), which almost every other president followed even though they didn't have to by law. The only exception was Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms but died in office. The 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms to eight years was passed shortly after that. That's pretty much the only example I know of.
- davidw 13y ago
  It looks like things are improving in Myanmar, although it's too early to tell for sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Reforms_and_transition_towards_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Reforms_and_transition_to... Another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy I'm not very knowledgeable about the details, but it looks like he was basically handed the keys, and worked to transition to a democracy, rather than hold power.
- david927 13y ago
pjc50 13y ago
Plenty of people here have been employees watching helplessly as managers run the company into the ground. Voting is not so crucial to democracy as pluralism: having lots of groups involved and making a difference. It's generally not feasible for people to really keep up with politics on an individual basis, so you need activists or union representatives or religious leaders or NGOs to do the legwork. But the US suffers from being very fragmented, fractious and individualistic. In that environment it's hard to promote a third alternative that sufficient numbers of people can get behind.
Peaker 13y ago
The alternative to the US system isn't direct democracy. First-past-the-post is the main problem. Better democratic systems are used all over the world where actual parties that represent a spectrum of opinions get actually elected. Direct democracy has huge drawbacks as well.
- TheLegace 13y ago
  I agree it's the problem in Canada as well. For the first time a third party was able to come ahead of one of the two parties, but this had disastrous effects as it provided the opposition party a majority government and overall weakened the power of the center-left and left. And right now I have to decide if my vote will mean anything if I vote for the third party. The third party's platform will be mixed proportional representation. Which I hope we see one day so maybe this won't be such an issue any more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU
discardorama 13y ago
While I agree mostly with you about direct democracy, there's a catch: direct democracy needs an informed electorate. But then, if the electorate is informed, it won't vote for the current crop of representatives anyways. I guess the driver behind the success of direct democracy isn't the fact that voters can vote directly; it's the fact that voters actually have to think before casting their votes.
EGreg 13y ago
What we need is strong fundamental protections of "rights", which no representatives can overrule. Direct democracy can be far worse, since when the majority becomes fickle and wants to kill someone (such as Socrates) who is there to stop them? And worse, it's usually the VOCAL ACTIVIST minority that goes and votes or intimidates others, such as the nazi party. Thinking direct democracy will solve everything is naive. Here are some links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interests And by the way getting 25% of people to vote is not easy, without fines being imposed on the non-voters. Facebook wasn't even able to get 3% of people to vote, and that was online clicking a button. Publius (federalist papers) wrote about democracies that they: have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (Federalist 10) The founders of the USA are kind of like the writers of the initial codebase and the protocol for amending it. Before there was programming, there was ... legal constitution writing.
- thangalin 13y ago
  The problem with direct democracy is that it does not necessarily encourage deliberation nor the dissemination of factual information (i.e., education). There are other ways of implementing direct democracy without having the system subjected to the whims and follies of special interest groups. https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/ https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/ Read the idea, review the mock-ups, and please provide constructive critiques on how the idea can be improved. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518237
  - EGreg 13y ago
    See this: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135
    - thangalin 13y ago
      It's interesting, though I cannot envision how any system that does not enforce complete anonymity can avoid either corruption or domination by special interest groups.
brianpgordon 13y ago
The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter. -Winston Churchill

kevinpet 13y ago

They aren't all as bad as Feinstein. California liberals should stop with the "but we must reelect her, because otherwise someone who isn't connected to the San Francisco political machine might get elected". I'll take Boxer, Reid or even Bernie Sanders over Feinstein any day, and I'm not a liberal. Your ideas are naive and it's clear you don't understand the purpose of representative democracy. Please don't confuse one of the worst representatives with "the system is entirely broken and should be replaced with this untested system".

lifeformed 13y ago

The systems already set up to be resistant to change. There are a lot of better systems we can all think of, but there's no way to make them happen anymore. You need to consent of the people you're fighting against to put them out of power.

Ygg2 13y ago

I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? I recall someone mentioning that masses would make rather bad popular decisions with bad consequences that were hard to guess. It might be true or false. Maybe masses still did better than politicians. If you ask me, I think politics should be automated in some way. AI for that probably doesn't exist yet, but hey if they can replace surgeons, why not politicians?

darkarmani 13y ago
> I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? American idol?
annnnd 13y ago
They already replaced them - with dolls who smile and nod kindly to the camera. Real power stays hidden.
kamjam 13y ago
The problem with direct democracy, as I see it, is that it can be gamed just as easily for short term gain. Given how politics works in the US, as well as all the lobbyists and advertising budgets that go along with both of these I'd say that any policy that came up for a vote would be skewed one way or the other because the voter saw some "information". Imagine SOPA had gone to a public vote. Who would have won, Hollywood or the public interest?
- Ygg2 13y ago
  The bigger problem with democracy is how to stop the majority from prosecuting minorities? If majority of people voted - e.g. would gay marriages be allowed?! Would smoking tobacco become illegal (as in same laws that govern marijuana users cover tobacco users)?
- kibibu 13y ago
  I recall seeing a critique of California's Proposition system that everybody votes for services, nobody votes to pay for them. Of course there are also important movements like civil rights that don't always have majority support.
david927 13y ago
I hate to sound condescending, but what are experiences with direct democracy? While I'm American, I've lived for almost a decade in Switzerland which has direct democracy. I've seen it first-hand. that masses would make rather bad popular decisions In other words, you don't believe in Democracy. The whole point is that it comes down to the decisions of the people. Representatives were important when voting was a tough logistical problem; that's not the case anymore. Now they're a liability. There are 18 lobbyists for the finance industry per congressman, each representing a large amount of money in case what the people want contradicts what the finance industry wants. And that's just one industry. No wonder Congress currently has an approval rating of 5%. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/congress-approval-rating_n_4069899.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/congress-approval-r...] It's abysmal, we agree, so why are we so petrified of an alternative that includes working together instead?

parasight 13y ago

Exactly. It works. The Swiss are the best example. They have direct democracy and the country is far away from chaos.

jusben1369 13y ago
8 million people? I suspect the Bay Area might be able to make direct democracy work for a while. I wouldn't want to extrapolate that out to the West Coast though and certainly all of the states.
- Glide 13y ago
  That's part of the allure of people championing state's rights as opposed to doing things on the federal level. Unfortunately I don't know of too many historical examples of power becoming decentralized.
- parasight 13y ago
  Would you care to elaborate? I don't see why 8 million people should make better decisions than 80 or 800 million people. Or do you mean that people in the Bay Area make better decisions than people in other areas?
  - justin66 13y ago
    > I don't see why 8 million people should make better decisions than 80 or 800 million people. With a smaller group that is local to one another, they're more likely to share interests and understand one another. Communication is faster and clearer among the electorate and between the electorate and the elected.
  - jmccree 13y ago
    It's not just the pure numbers, but geographical and cultural range. 8 million people in an area (16k sqmi) smaller than the US State of West Virginia(24k sqmi) are going to have an easier time understanding and voting on issues affecting everyone than 300+ million people in an area over 9 millon square miles. Direct democracy in the US could end up with even worse tyranny of the majority issues than already experienced. (Example, detonating multiple nuclear weapons in the state of Nevada in the 50s. It might have passed in a national vote, but likely not a vote only in Nevada.)

scrrr 13y ago

Got an example of a political elite ever changing things so that they have less power?

gaius 13y ago
The dismantling of the British Empire.
- discardorama 13y ago
  I think the GP forgot to put "willingly" in there. The Brits, after WW2, were exhausted. India had been clamoring for independence for ~50 years. And after the war, you suddenly had a million young men in India, well trained in arms and warfare; these men would have been hard to control with force. So they had no choice. Once India fell (i.e. became independent), the dominoes started falling, and soon the sun had set on the British Empire.
freehunter 13y ago
George Washington turned down the title of king and set major restrictions on what the president could do. He set a precedent of only serving two terms (eight years), which almost every other president followed even though they didn't have to by law. The only exception was Franklin Roosevelt, who was elected to four terms but died in office. The 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms to eight years was passed shortly after that. That's pretty much the only example I know of.
davidw 13y ago
It looks like things are improving in Myanmar, although it's too early to tell for sure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Reforms_and_transition_towards_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma#Reforms_and_transition_to... Another one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_transition_to_democracy I'm not very knowledgeable about the details, but it looks like he was basically handed the keys, and worked to transition to a democracy, rather than hold power.
david927 13y ago

pjc50 13y ago

Plenty of people here have been employees watching helplessly as managers run the company into the ground. Voting is not so crucial to democracy as pluralism: having lots of groups involved and making a difference. It's generally not feasible for people to really keep up with politics on an individual basis, so you need activists or union representatives or religious leaders or NGOs to do the legwork. But the US suffers from being very fragmented, fractious and individualistic. In that environment it's hard to promote a third alternative that sufficient numbers of people can get behind.

Peaker 13y ago

The alternative to the US system isn't direct democracy. First-past-the-post is the main problem. Better democratic systems are used all over the world where actual parties that represent a spectrum of opinions get actually elected. Direct democracy has huge drawbacks as well.

TheLegace 13y ago
I agree it's the problem in Canada as well. For the first time a third party was able to come ahead of one of the two parties, but this had disastrous effects as it provided the opposition party a majority government and overall weakened the power of the center-left and left. And right now I have to decide if my vote will mean anything if I vote for the third party. The third party's platform will be mixed proportional representation. Which I hope we see one day so maybe this won't be such an issue any more. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU

discardorama 13y ago

While I agree mostly with you about direct democracy, there's a catch: direct democracy needs an informed electorate. But then, if the electorate is informed, it won't vote for the current crop of representatives anyways. I guess the driver behind the success of direct democracy isn't the fact that voters can vote directly; it's the fact that voters actually have to think before casting their votes.

EGreg 13y ago

What we need is strong fundamental protections of "rights", which no representatives can overrule. Direct democracy can be far worse, since when the majority becomes fickle and wants to kill someone (such as Socrates) who is there to stop them? And worse, it's usually the VOCAL ACTIVIST minority that goes and votes or intimidates others, such as the nazi party. Thinking direct democracy will solve everything is naive. Here are some links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interests And by the way getting 25% of people to vote is not easy, without fines being imposed on the non-voters. Facebook wasn't even able to get 3% of people to vote, and that was online clicking a button. Publius (federalist papers) wrote about democracies that they: have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. (Federalist 10) The founders of the USA are kind of like the writers of the initial codebase and the protocol for amending it. Before there was programming, there was ... legal constitution writing.

thangalin 13y ago
The problem with direct democracy is that it does not necessarily encourage deliberation nor the dissemination of factual information (i.e., education). There are other ways of implementing direct democracy without having the system subjected to the whims and follies of special interest groups. https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/ https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-politics/ Read the idea, review the mock-ups, and please provide constructive critiques on how the idea can be improved. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6518237
- EGreg 13y ago
  See this: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=135
  - thangalin 13y ago
    It's interesting, though I cannot envision how any system that does not enforce complete anonymity can avoid either corruption or domination by special interest groups.

brianpgordon 13y ago

The strongest argument against democracy is a five minute discussion with the average voter. -Winston Churchill