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To understand this, you need to understand what our current republic was designed to be a solution for. Read the Federalist papers, #11 is a good place to start

by ada1981 12y ago

To understand this, you need to understand what our current republic was designed to be a solution for. Read the Federalist papers, #11 is a good place to start. You will discover that the motivation for the establishment of a republic was actually to limit the will of the people and to protect the "opulent minority" ie, the wealthy. The system was explicitly designed, overtly, to preserve the power of the elite and making it extremely difficult for the majority to organize and get anything done. So, our government actually does exactly what is was designed to do, and it does it quite well. Direct Democracy is a solution to a different problem.

ada1981 12y ago
Further, years ago I designed a system that is a proxy based direct democracy system. We called it dynamic democracy. Someone in the bay actually quit his job and began organizing an ngo around it after I had a conversation with him. Basically, you have the right to vote on everything, but you can also proxy your vote to someone else on any issue, category of issues, etc. You can always override a proxied vote, but you can find someone you trust, who is an expert, and let them vote for you. This allows for you to save time, but some people who really wanted to put time and effort in would get more votes proxied to them. Of course, if they proxy their vote to someone else, it would influence all the votes tied to them. You could see how voting blocs would emerge organically.
- filoeleven 12y ago
  I like this idea, and a Google search shows that it's still being thought about. This is one of those things that would be really interesting to try in a small slice of the real world to see what the people participating in it think of the system. I wonder how difficult it would be to get a group to sign on. It also appears to me to be close to what the electoral college was intended to do: you do not vote directly for a representative; you vote for a member of the community whose opinion you trust to take the time to do the research on the candidates and pick the one who best represents the community's interest. That may have worked well when local communities were often more homogeneous than they are today, now it's just a weird artifact. With dynamic democracy, the ability to always override your proxy seems like it would mitigate the problem of accepting a representative "whole hog" and ensure that for the issues you find important you can always make your choice known. What about the disadvantages of this kind of system? There are bound to be tradeoffs but given my cursory understanding (and enthusiasm for some kind of change) those are harder for me to see.

by ada1981 12y ago

ada1981 12y ago

Further, years ago I designed a system that is a proxy based direct democracy system. We called it dynamic democracy. Someone in the bay actually quit his job and began organizing an ngo around it after I had a conversation with him. Basically, you have the right to vote on everything, but you can also proxy your vote to someone else on any issue, category of issues, etc. You can always override a proxied vote, but you can find someone you trust, who is an expert, and let them vote for you. This allows for you to save time, but some people who really wanted to put time and effort in would get more votes proxied to them. Of course, if they proxy their vote to someone else, it would influence all the votes tied to them. You could see how voting blocs would emerge organically.

filoeleven 12y ago
I like this idea, and a Google search shows that it's still being thought about. This is one of those things that would be really interesting to try in a small slice of the real world to see what the people participating in it think of the system. I wonder how difficult it would be to get a group to sign on. It also appears to me to be close to what the electoral college was intended to do: you do not vote directly for a representative; you vote for a member of the community whose opinion you trust to take the time to do the research on the candidates and pick the one who best represents the community's interest. That may have worked well when local communities were often more homogeneous than they are today, now it's just a weird artifact. With dynamic democracy, the ability to always override your proxy seems like it would mitigate the problem of accepting a representative "whole hog" and ensure that for the issues you find important you can always make your choice known. What about the disadvantages of this kind of system? There are bound to be tradeoffs but given my cursory understanding (and enthusiasm for some kind of change) those are harder for me to see.