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Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I worry that Democracy OS's idea fails to address this issue. If the politicians a

Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I worry that Democracy OS's idea fails to address this issue. If the politicians always vote with the majority, what if the majority wants to violate the rights of the minority?

frozenport 12y ago
The remedy is to require more than a majority threshold for decisions to be made. For example, a decision could require 80% agreement before it becomes law. In the USA we handle these issues with a representation by region (states) rather than by population. Solutions feel more like post-processing, then data gathering.
- wyager 12y ago
  That doesn't defend against tyranny of the majority; it just requires a larger majority. In the USA we defend against tyranny of the majority with the constitution. The constitution places strict limits on what the majority can do to the minority through governmental force.
  - jtmurphy 12y ago
    I agree with wyager. A political system should be a strong constitution that defines the rights of individuals. Something like DemocracyOS should be used to engage the population into ensuring that political actions are in fact constitutional and just.
    - rbf_ 12y ago
      I think what we really need is ConstitutionalRepublicOS which would be a bit more complicated. But by defining strong constitutional invariants with regard to individual rights perhaps we could pre-strikedown unconstitutional laws before they are enacted. That would require a more precise legal language that let's you run some kind of static analysis against against the laws however.
      - piamancini 12y ago
        maybe we could think about a two-tier system were we delegate only decisions that should be taken our of the hands of majority and to the citizens the huge number of decisions that we can make that affect our every-day lives. I think the only way for citizens to be responsible for the decisions we make is by start making them. We've outsourced decision-making for a far too long time.
        rbf_ 12y ago
        I do think some of the divisive issues that are taken up often end up cloaking other matters that should be focused upon. Perhaps with strong enough invariants and a pre enactment filter it would much harder to use divisive social issues politically. Maybe we could replace polls with votes on some things and have better recall mechanics too. I think a lot of the dysfunction is due to the fact we can and have passed radically unconstitutional laws in the past to great detriment to the entire population.
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
    - rbf_ 12y ago
      If you think about how much carnage has been caused by the fact that we can in fact pass unconstitutional laws and then it takes decades of work to strike them down due to the bottleneck we have in our court system (supreme court). Would be much better to not pass the obviously unconstitutional laws and let the courts handle complicated exceptions that were not caught.
      - saraid216 12y ago
        America is an extremely bad example of how a democracy should work. Its main claim to fame is that it's old, not that it's exemplary.
        rbf_ 12y ago
        It's not a democracy at all, purposefully so.
        saraid216 12y ago
        I really don't understand why people like you insist on this completely useless semantic argument. It's almost as pointless as debating the merits of parliamentarianism versus presidentalism.
  - frozenport 12y ago
    >>with the constitution At the federal level we can change the constitution if we get enough votes. But its hard to achieve such a consensus, as it requires more than a simple super-majority. So it always comes down to thresholds.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- piamancini 12y ago
  This is exactly the type of conversation we want to have. What institutions can we design for the internet society?
saraid216 12y ago
Ironically, the solution to tyranny of the majority is a strong executive.
- privong 12y ago
  > Ironically, the solution to tyranny of the majority is a strong executive. That isn't sufficient in and of itself, to be ironic. If the strong executive lacks stringent limits on its power and domain of influence, then it is ironic. But, a strong executive is likely necessary in even a libertarian-styled government, to protect rights by enforcing "legitimate" laws (where "legitimate" is open to interpretation and opinion). But the distinction is that the strong executive in a libertarian-style government has a strictly limited domain over which it exercises power. Strength and scope are different things, despite their frequent conflation in [American] politics.
pekk 12y ago
Who decides what the rights are? A majority?
- santisiri 12y ago
  We want to figure out the right combination of rules so we can get the best out of the collective intelligence of society. Like Wikipedia: we believe this is an idea that works better in practice than in theory. Democracy is always a "Work in progress", its never a complete idea because otherwise it would be an absolutist totalitarian ideology. It's the exception to all ideologies. And adapting it to software is our biggest mission.
piamancini 12y ago
It's a super valid point. We are not claiming all decisions should be taken this way. But we can imagine a system where a large chunk of decisions can be devolved to the citizens. The constitution and the bill or rights provide a framework in the same way congress today can't legislate (or shouldn't I would say) agains our rights.
dataker 12y ago
All you need is a base of inviolable principles on a moral basis of respect, peace, etc. How one would get there is a good question.
mempko 12y ago
Constitutional democracies exist for this reason. But typically when people talk about "majority violating rights of minority", people generally mean "mass of people taking away everything from the rich". Look, even America, as a constitutional republic, took the rights away from millions of blacks for a long time. The Constitution at its inception did not save them. I really believe the rich have scared people about democracy, because really democracy scares them. Don't let it scare you.
- ams6110 12y ago
  Your example could hardly be more at odds with your premise.
- bmelton 12y ago
  > mass of people taking away everything from the rich Honestly, I don't think they do. Moreso than anything, I think they're hearkening back to when slavery was legal, women couldn't vote, and it was perfectly acceptable to assault gays in nightclubs. It's only as those minority groups gain acceptance that they start generating sympathy, really, but while gays are more and more getting acceptance in their fight for marriage equality, polygamists are still a lesser known, smaller minority, and their rights are routinely trampled, despite that all the arguments applying to same sex marriage are equally applicable to them. As it sits, 51% of the democratic party approves of some form of censorship, so it's not too hard to imagine being in a gerrymandered district in which DemocracyOS is prevalent, and losing the ability to freely exercise your first amendment rights. That said, this problem isn't unique to DemocracyOS, as we've always had people who hate the rights of others, and even managed to pass the 18th amendment as a result. The biggest problem with direct democracy is in educating people about the Constitution. We have long, embattled conflicts between Constitutional scholars on whether X aligns with the Constitution, and the "will of the people", absent that knowledge, may serve to exacerbate the issue.
danans 12y ago
A Saudi (go figure) once wisely told me: "The greatest thing about American democracy isn't the vote - many democracies have that. The greatest thing about American democracy is the Bill of Rights, which states what the majority is not allowed to do the minority".
- asgard1024 12y ago
  I think the Saudi only saw the end result and failed to appreciate the process that led to it. Many European countries have even better things, like social rights, and allowing prisoners to vote. Democracy cannot change the culture in the country. It's just a tool for decision making in politics, better than fists. It can lead to culture change, though. Democracy causes people who didn't have power previously to be involved, and different moral view is dispersed in society. If you would give Saudis the U.S. constitution, it would still take time before citizens would change the culture to consider women peers. The constitution itself doesn't guarantee the outcome either.
- santisiri 12y ago
  A great challenge we face is precisely this. Today DemocracyOS is strong at a local city-level. We don't believe we are ready for Federal level yet as we must understand how checks and balances work at this scale.
asgard1024 12y ago
Democracy does exactly that - it gives everyone the same vote, regardless what minority they come from. Therefore, it protects any minority for maximum possible extent. You don't need any formal rules on top of that; in other words, the solution to "tyranny of the majority" should not be "tyranny of the minority". (I really hate the phrase "tyranny of the majority", by the way, because it simply isn't a good way to describe democratic voting, where the majority is emergent and not determined ex ante.) But let's say, indeed, majority wants to violate the rights of minority. Stripping other people from voting rights isn't democratic (even if it's voted by everybody), because it violates the basic democratic rule, "every person should get the same power in politics". Democracy is defined by the end result (same access to power), not the procedure (voting). (In fact, democracy allows for tradeoffs where a person gets little more power in exchange for more accountability.) It's true that even without stripping other voter's rights, minorities can still be persecuted. But it is a cultural issue, which won't be resolved by formal constitutional framework. In fact, historically, it very often were elites (that you may think are the solution) who participated or even organized these persecutions. For example, in the U.S., there is a large minority of people in prison who are not protected by democracy, because they don't have voting rights. I would appreciate proof of any claim as to how any sort of republican institutions in the U.S. helps these people be protected. I don't see that. Someone wrote below that the solution could be super-majority vote, like 80% of citizens to agree to change the constitution. I think that's a wrong idea, which doesn't give enough credit to people. This can possibly protect a minority, but it can also delay progress in helping minority. The minority that needs to be overruled in super-majority voting can keep the status quo longer than desired by most, and that's unfair too. We don't know what the future morality will be; it may be different in positive, not negative, fashion compared to today's morality. We could perhaps say, though, that the future society will be more happy with their own morality than ours (because they can compare the two, we cannot); therefore, it should be possible for them not be too conservative and implement it. Anyway, this debate is always rather academic, because politicians only rarely vote with the majority. (And no, pre-war Germany is not a good example, as I already explained above.)
- saraid216 12y ago
  > (I really hate the phrase "tyranny of the majority", by the way, because it simply isn't a good way to describe democratic voting, where the majority is emergent and not determined ex ante.) Nothing about the phrase actually requires the tyranny be remotely permanent, and nothing about the concept of tyranny requires it either. Indeed, it's actually more poignant that the tyranny is both ephemeral and, more importantly, inevitable. This is the real issue. It's easy to comprehend the issue by looking at semi-permanent states [1], like Marxist class divisions or political polarization, but those are consequences. When you place something to a vote and fail to achieve consensus, you have a majority whose will is being enacted upon a minority. This is commonly celebrated by moronic catchphrases such as, "the right side of history," but you still have a winner and a loser. And when the ephemeral majority seems to crystallize from the aether into an unmistakable demographic of some kind, you really have to wonder about this "emergent majority" concept. The fundamental American problem is that it is incapable of trusting its government. (I can't speak to other governments; I don't live under those.) This lack of trust is well-founded, but that doesn't make it any less crippling. I said below that the appropriate counter to the tyrannical majority is a strong executive. The executive is capable of saying, "No," to a popular opinion in a way that the legislature cannot. (Indeed, this is a role Americans have shoved onto the judiciary, which means we can't actually say no until someone files a lawsuit.) The interplay between the legislature and the executive (the vote, the veto, the super-majority overrule, the refusal to enforce, the impeachment) is exactly the solution being proposed. None of it works without an executive willing to exercise its options. See Obama's refusal to enforce immigration laws, for instance. (For the sake of this "academic debate", let's presume that he could enforce them to the letter if he wanted to.) That is a check against tyranny of the majority. So naturally, well... see for yourself [2]. This isn't meant as an anti-Republican statement; it's just the most recent example I could bring to mind off the top of my head. The trust part comes back when you ask, "Why doesn't a minority group tyrannized by a majority group just leave?" You know, secede. This comes back to the emergent majority you spoke of: if you trust the majority to, you know, not be dicks about it [3]. To not always be the majority, then secession isn't necessary. You can expect that the issues will change and you'll be in the majority. Of course, what's happened with the polarized political class in America is that you stick around because you figure you can win next time. This is a problem. It is the exact opposite of what you need to make sure that a majority is an emergent majority. Instead of melting back into an indeterminate goo and forming new majority/minority groups in each vote, you have battle lines being drawn for a budding civil war. And that's as far as I've figured out. [1] "State" as in "state of being", not as in "nation-state". My thesaurus powers have failed me. [2] http://judiciary.house.gov/index.cfm/2015/3/at-the-flick-of-a-switch http://judiciary.house.gov/index.cfm/2015/3/at-the-flick-of-... [3] Book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Anxieties-Citizenship-Education/dp/0226014673/ http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Anxieties-Citizenshi...
jonawesomegreen 12y ago
The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, — when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. -James Madison 1787 http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison

frozenport 12y ago

The remedy is to require more than a majority threshold for decisions to be made. For example, a decision could require 80% agreement before it becomes law. In the USA we handle these issues with a representation by region (states) rather than by population. Solutions feel more like post-processing, then data gathering.

wyager 12y ago
That doesn't defend against tyranny of the majority; it just requires a larger majority. In the USA we defend against tyranny of the majority with the constitution. The constitution places strict limits on what the majority can do to the minority through governmental force.
- jtmurphy 12y ago
  I agree with wyager. A political system should be a strong constitution that defines the rights of individuals. Something like DemocracyOS should be used to engage the population into ensuring that political actions are in fact constitutional and just.
  - rbf_ 12y ago
    I think what we really need is ConstitutionalRepublicOS which would be a bit more complicated. But by defining strong constitutional invariants with regard to individual rights perhaps we could pre-strikedown unconstitutional laws before they are enacted. That would require a more precise legal language that let's you run some kind of static analysis against against the laws however.
    - piamancini 12y ago
      maybe we could think about a two-tier system were we delegate only decisions that should be taken our of the hands of majority and to the citizens the huge number of decisions that we can make that affect our every-day lives. I think the only way for citizens to be responsible for the decisions we make is by start making them. We've outsourced decision-making for a far too long time.
      - rbf_ 12y ago
        I do think some of the divisive issues that are taken up often end up cloaking other matters that should be focused upon. Perhaps with strong enough invariants and a pre enactment filter it would much harder to use divisive social issues politically. Maybe we could replace polls with votes on some things and have better recall mechanics too. I think a lot of the dysfunction is due to the fact we can and have passed radically unconstitutional laws in the past to great detriment to the entire population.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
  - rbf_ 12y ago
    If you think about how much carnage has been caused by the fact that we can in fact pass unconstitutional laws and then it takes decades of work to strike them down due to the bottleneck we have in our court system (supreme court). Would be much better to not pass the obviously unconstitutional laws and let the courts handle complicated exceptions that were not caught.
    - saraid216 12y ago
      America is an extremely bad example of how a democracy should work. Its main claim to fame is that it's old, not that it's exemplary.
      - rbf_ 12y ago
        It's not a democracy at all, purposefully so.
        saraid216 12y ago
        I really don't understand why people like you insist on this completely useless semantic argument. It's almost as pointless as debating the merits of parliamentarianism versus presidentalism.
- frozenport 12y ago
  >>with the constitution At the federal level we can change the constitution if we get enough votes. But its hard to achieve such a consensus, as it requires more than a simple super-majority. So it always comes down to thresholds.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
piamancini 12y ago
This is exactly the type of conversation we want to have. What institutions can we design for the internet society?

saraid216 12y ago

Ironically, the solution to tyranny of the majority is a strong executive.

privong 12y ago
> Ironically, the solution to tyranny of the majority is a strong executive. That isn't sufficient in and of itself, to be ironic. If the strong executive lacks stringent limits on its power and domain of influence, then it is ironic. But, a strong executive is likely necessary in even a libertarian-styled government, to protect rights by enforcing "legitimate" laws (where "legitimate" is open to interpretation and opinion). But the distinction is that the strong executive in a libertarian-style government has a strictly limited domain over which it exercises power. Strength and scope are different things, despite their frequent conflation in [American] politics.

pekk 12y ago

Who decides what the rights are? A majority?

santisiri 12y ago
We want to figure out the right combination of rules so we can get the best out of the collective intelligence of society. Like Wikipedia: we believe this is an idea that works better in practice than in theory. Democracy is always a "Work in progress", its never a complete idea because otherwise it would be an absolutist totalitarian ideology. It's the exception to all ideologies. And adapting it to software is our biggest mission.

piamancini 12y ago

It's a super valid point. We are not claiming all decisions should be taken this way. But we can imagine a system where a large chunk of decisions can be devolved to the citizens. The constitution and the bill or rights provide a framework in the same way congress today can't legislate (or shouldn't I would say) agains our rights.

dataker 12y ago

All you need is a base of inviolable principles on a moral basis of respect, peace, etc. How one would get there is a good question.

mempko 12y ago

Constitutional democracies exist for this reason. But typically when people talk about "majority violating rights of minority", people generally mean "mass of people taking away everything from the rich". Look, even America, as a constitutional republic, took the rights away from millions of blacks for a long time. The Constitution at its inception did not save them. I really believe the rich have scared people about democracy, because really democracy scares them. Don't let it scare you.

ams6110 12y ago
Your example could hardly be more at odds with your premise.
bmelton 12y ago
> mass of people taking away everything from the rich Honestly, I don't think they do. Moreso than anything, I think they're hearkening back to when slavery was legal, women couldn't vote, and it was perfectly acceptable to assault gays in nightclubs. It's only as those minority groups gain acceptance that they start generating sympathy, really, but while gays are more and more getting acceptance in their fight for marriage equality, polygamists are still a lesser known, smaller minority, and their rights are routinely trampled, despite that all the arguments applying to same sex marriage are equally applicable to them. As it sits, 51% of the democratic party approves of some form of censorship, so it's not too hard to imagine being in a gerrymandered district in which DemocracyOS is prevalent, and losing the ability to freely exercise your first amendment rights. That said, this problem isn't unique to DemocracyOS, as we've always had people who hate the rights of others, and even managed to pass the 18th amendment as a result. The biggest problem with direct democracy is in educating people about the Constitution. We have long, embattled conflicts between Constitutional scholars on whether X aligns with the Constitution, and the "will of the people", absent that knowledge, may serve to exacerbate the issue.

danans 12y ago

A Saudi (go figure) once wisely told me: "The greatest thing about American democracy isn't the vote - many democracies have that. The greatest thing about American democracy is the Bill of Rights, which states what the majority is not allowed to do the minority".

asgard1024 12y ago
I think the Saudi only saw the end result and failed to appreciate the process that led to it. Many European countries have even better things, like social rights, and allowing prisoners to vote. Democracy cannot change the culture in the country. It's just a tool for decision making in politics, better than fists. It can lead to culture change, though. Democracy causes people who didn't have power previously to be involved, and different moral view is dispersed in society. If you would give Saudis the U.S. constitution, it would still take time before citizens would change the culture to consider women peers. The constitution itself doesn't guarantee the outcome either.
santisiri 12y ago
A great challenge we face is precisely this. Today DemocracyOS is strong at a local city-level. We don't believe we are ready for Federal level yet as we must understand how checks and balances work at this scale.

asgard1024 12y ago

Democracy does exactly that - it gives everyone the same vote, regardless what minority they come from. Therefore, it protects any minority for maximum possible extent. You don't need any formal rules on top of that; in other words, the solution to "tyranny of the majority" should not be "tyranny of the minority". (I really hate the phrase "tyranny of the majority", by the way, because it simply isn't a good way to describe democratic voting, where the majority is emergent and not determined ex ante.) But let's say, indeed, majority wants to violate the rights of minority. Stripping other people from voting rights isn't democratic (even if it's voted by everybody), because it violates the basic democratic rule, "every person should get the same power in politics". Democracy is defined by the end result (same access to power), not the procedure (voting). (In fact, democracy allows for tradeoffs where a person gets little more power in exchange for more accountability.) It's true that even without stripping other voter's rights, minorities can still be persecuted. But it is a cultural issue, which won't be resolved by formal constitutional framework. In fact, historically, it very often were elites (that you may think are the solution) who participated or even organized these persecutions. For example, in the U.S., there is a large minority of people in prison who are not protected by democracy, because they don't have voting rights. I would appreciate proof of any claim as to how any sort of republican institutions in the U.S. helps these people be protected. I don't see that. Someone wrote below that the solution could be super-majority vote, like 80% of citizens to agree to change the constitution. I think that's a wrong idea, which doesn't give enough credit to people. This can possibly protect a minority, but it can also delay progress in helping minority. The minority that needs to be overruled in super-majority voting can keep the status quo longer than desired by most, and that's unfair too. We don't know what the future morality will be; it may be different in positive, not negative, fashion compared to today's morality. We could perhaps say, though, that the future society will be more happy with their own morality than ours (because they can compare the two, we cannot); therefore, it should be possible for them not be too conservative and implement it. Anyway, this debate is always rather academic, because politicians only rarely vote with the majority. (And no, pre-war Germany is not a good example, as I already explained above.)

saraid216 12y ago
> (I really hate the phrase "tyranny of the majority", by the way, because it simply isn't a good way to describe democratic voting, where the majority is emergent and not determined ex ante.) Nothing about the phrase actually requires the tyranny be remotely permanent, and nothing about the concept of tyranny requires it either. Indeed, it's actually more poignant that the tyranny is both ephemeral and, more importantly, inevitable. This is the real issue. It's easy to comprehend the issue by looking at semi-permanent states [1], like Marxist class divisions or political polarization, but those are consequences. When you place something to a vote and fail to achieve consensus, you have a majority whose will is being enacted upon a minority. This is commonly celebrated by moronic catchphrases such as, "the right side of history," but you still have a winner and a loser. And when the ephemeral majority seems to crystallize from the aether into an unmistakable demographic of some kind, you really have to wonder about this "emergent majority" concept. The fundamental American problem is that it is incapable of trusting its government. (I can't speak to other governments; I don't live under those.) This lack of trust is well-founded, but that doesn't make it any less crippling. I said below that the appropriate counter to the tyrannical majority is a strong executive. The executive is capable of saying, "No," to a popular opinion in a way that the legislature cannot. (Indeed, this is a role Americans have shoved onto the judiciary, which means we can't actually say no until someone files a lawsuit.) The interplay between the legislature and the executive (the vote, the veto, the super-majority overrule, the refusal to enforce, the impeachment) is exactly the solution being proposed. None of it works without an executive willing to exercise its options. See Obama's refusal to enforce immigration laws, for instance. (For the sake of this "academic debate", let's presume that he could enforce them to the letter if he wanted to.) That is a check against tyranny of the majority. So naturally, well... see for yourself [2]. This isn't meant as an anti-Republican statement; it's just the most recent example I could bring to mind off the top of my head. The trust part comes back when you ask, "Why doesn't a minority group tyrannized by a majority group just leave?" You know, secede. This comes back to the emergent majority you spoke of: if you trust the majority to, you know, not be dicks about it [3]. To not always be the majority, then secession isn't necessary. You can expect that the issues will change and you'll be in the majority. Of course, what's happened with the polarized political class in America is that you stick around because you figure you can win next time. This is a problem. It is the exact opposite of what you need to make sure that a majority is an emergent majority. Instead of melting back into an indeterminate goo and forming new majority/minority groups in each vote, you have battle lines being drawn for a budding civil war. And that's as far as I've figured out. [1] "State" as in "state of being", not as in "nation-state". My thesaurus powers have failed me. [2] http://judiciary.house.gov/index.cfm/2015/3/at-the-flick-of-a-switch http://judiciary.house.gov/index.cfm/2015/3/at-the-flick-of-... [3] Book recommendation: http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Anxieties-Citizenship-Education/dp/0226014673/ http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Strangers-Anxieties-Citizenshi...

jonawesomegreen 12y ago

The man who is possessed of wealth, who lolls on his sofa or rolls in his carriage, cannot judge the wants or feelings of the day-laborer. The government we mean to erect is intended to last for ages. The landed interest, at present, is prevalent; but in process of time, when we approximate to the states and kingdoms of Europe, — when the number of landholders shall be comparatively small, through the various means of trade and manufactures, will not the landed interest be overbalanced in future elections, and unless wisely provided against, what will become of your government? In England, at this day, if elections were open to all classes of people, the property of landed proprietors would be insecure. An agrarian law would soon take place. If these observations be just, our government ought to secure the permanent interests of the country against innovation. Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability. -James Madison 1787 http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison http://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison