The goal of democracy is not to be good but to be fair. Democracy gives people what they deserve and in the long run they will try to make what is good for them. Making mistakes is the only way to learn (individually or collectively) so we shouldn't care too much for each error.
Elections are bad for democracy
61–70 of 86 posts
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#62Now, where is the "wisdom of the crowds" when it comes to decisions that we, "the elites", don't like? This annoys me. There is no doubt the result would have been "very fair" if it had been remain. What we are seeing now is IMO hypocrisy and contempt of ordinary people at a scary level. Now, did I want Brexit? No (I had no opinion). Do I think they should have requested more than 50% of the votes? As a conservative…
> What we are seeing now is IMO hypocrisy and contempt of ordinary people at a scary level. This isn't anything new. It's the justification for all the bureaucratic layering in government. The people are too stupid/bigoted/whatever to make decisions for themselves, so we'll make it for them.
> The people are too stupid/bigoted/whatever to make decisions for themselves, so we'll make it for them.
You make this sounds like a bad thing. Of course this is true; this is why we have governments rather than have everyone voting on every decision.
Many people are too stupid, or at least misinformed, to weigh up complex decisions. We don't ask people to vote on tax levels and spending plans because they'd tend to vote in lower taxes and higher spending.
This was very similar to what was promised by the Exit team: continued access to the internal market but that they would no longer have to pay for it. This was clearly not a viable strategy.
Some of the Brexit voters may have had a more nuanced view but the above situation was how most of them saw, and were sold it. (Not that the Remain campaign was that much more honest.)
This is why we vote in a government to make decisions for us. It's perfectly reasonable to conclude that some decisions are more complex than the average citizen has the knowledge or time and inclination to research so they can vote intelligently.
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#63(Excerpting from another post:)
Most nations are republican democracies, not democracies. People choose the best of them (or the best person running) to deal with these issues. Direct democracy, where the people decide issues directly, is actually not part of the system. The UK has had 3 nationwide referendums and the US none, AFAIK.
There's a good reason for that: The average person has no idea what they're talking about on most issues. They have other jobs and interests, or no interest. Do I want the wisdom of the crowds deciding how the military should be funded and structured, for example, or do I want elected officials who have hearings, a staff of aids, who study the issue and talk to the generals ... egads, I pay a lot of attention to public affairs, but I wouldn't want that responsibility.
Note also that while elected officials are very human and imperfect, their credentials and experience are far above average.
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#64>Our voting system worked well for decades, but now it is broken.
Now that the elites don't get the desired result, it's broken.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who decides when someone has "come to grips" with a topic? I mean, anyone who disagrees with me obviously hasn't come to grips with the issue, right?
It's very similar to jury duty. And you'd try to use similar mechanisms to keep the system fair and balanced. And it would have similar failure cases, but "system without failure cases" isn't really on the table here.
> It's very similar to jury duty. And you'd try to use similar mechanisms to keep the system fair and balanced.
Similar mechanisms to grand or petit juries? Because the latter is what most people are familiar with, but most sortition proposals would seem to be structurally more like grand juries [0]: which are, for structural reasons (including the time commitments involved) far less representative of the jury pool they are notionally drawn from than petit juries are.
And the mechanisms which keep them fair and balanced are different (though similar in one way: for both kinds of juries, one of the important methods is that most of the things they do aren't decisive on their own -- except criminal acquittals -- and are inputs to final rulings by judges; for grand juries, this is particularly true, since they act at the very beginning of the process; clearly, this common aspect of the control on juries is not present in most proposals for lawmaking-by-sortition.)
[0] For California (and some other US) jurisdictions, take this as "criminal grand juries", as civil grand juries may not even be notionally representative.
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, specifically, the people voted the wrong way on the referendum. Let's stop letting people vote on referendums. You see the same thing with the EU Constitution - the voters rejected it in two countries. That can't be allowed. So we'll do the same thing via the Lisbon Treaty, but we won't let anybody vote on that, because they might vote wrong.
Yes, the same thing happened with the NL referendum on the EU constitution. The reason people voted "no" was because they had never been asked before, so this was their first chance to have their voice heard. That's about the only part of the article I agree with: if you're going to do referendums, then do them regularly. Referenda are only a useful tool if the public feel they really are involved in the process. Oth…
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Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the whole article? His most significant proposal is that modern democracies adjust their procedures to use something called "sortition" that dates back to ancient Greece. In sortition, rather than polling the entire populace about complicated issues on which they are likely not well informed, we select a balanced random sample of people from the populace , provide them information, and then allow them to…
I read the whole article, and my criticism was addressed at sortition. > In sortition, rather than polling the entire populace about complicated issues on which they are likely not well informed, we select a balanced random sample of people from the populace , provide them information, and then allow them to engage each other on the issue. Then we have those people vote. This is utopian, and fraught with difficulties…
If you'd like an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens%27_Assembly_on_Electo...
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sortition is based on chance, instead of agreeableness. Referendums are a great idea, but I think that the British yes/no vote was way too simple to game. Using hindsight to save the day, given that there appears to be no gameplan for where to go now, maybe the different options should have been explored before putting it to a vote: * remain in the EU * leave the EU, remain in the single market * leave the single mar…
I wonder if a referendum constructed in that way would actually make decision making worse. As I see it, the public have voted to Leave, but some of the options for Leave are actually quite appealing, and would even appeal to some pragmatic Remainers (Norway-style EFTA agreement, join Schengen, negotiate trade agreements with the EU from the outside on a common basis with other EFTA countries, allow Eurozone to integ…
I'm not sure what you mean with "make decision making worse". Are you suggesting that having the EFTA option explicitly listed might have made even less people choose "remain in EU"? I'd say that in that case, the government has been given a clear mandate on what route to pursue. Right now, I don't think the Leave side has any idea if the public wants the EFTA option, the "own island first" option, or the chunnel option.
Thinking about that last option some more, maybe it would make sense to put a nuclear option (like "destroy chunnel") on the ballot, to weed out the spiteful votes from the constructive ones. Even if you explain beforehand that the chunnel will never be closed -- some people just need to vent.
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same could have been said of the horse until someone tried a train for the first time. We've never tried sortition on a large scale, and on smaller scales it's already been shown effective. A perfect opportunity to experiment with it would be the Canadian senate, IMO. Also note: sortition is a form of democracy. In fact I would argue it's the most democratic process proposed which does not run a risk of mob rule.…
I see the appeal of sortition, and I'd like to see it tried. My biggest concern is that, in any transition to election-by-lot, the chosen representatives are at a disadvantage compared to the lobbyists and the national bureaucracy. I worry that these entrenched interests would find it very easy to manipulate representatives who have much less policy experience than they do.
I don't want sortition to replace our two-house electoral system. But I would like to see more regular people involved in politics. Maybe we could replace a part of the parliament seats with "public" seats (i.e. have 30% of the lower house filled with a sortition-based draft)?
Doing it this way means that you can still guarantee a continuity of government, and replace the sortition seats every six months (maybe with voluntary term extension). You'd not replace general electoral voting, but the article doesn't make a strong case that it's really broken anyway.
Re: Elections are bad for democracy
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if a referendum constructed in that way would actually make decision making worse. As I see it, the public have voted to Leave, but some of the options for Leave are actually quite appealing, and would even appeal to some pragmatic Remainers (Norway-style EFTA agreement, join Schengen, negotiate trade agreements with the EU from the outside on a common basis with other EFTA countries, allow Eurozone to integ…
I'm not sure what you mean with "make decision making worse". Are you suggesting that having the EFTA option explicitly listed might have made even less people choose "remain in EU"? I'd say that in that case, the government has been given a clear mandate on what route to pursue. Right now, I don't think the Leave side has any idea if the public wants the EFTA option, the "own island first" option, or the chunnel opt…
I'm saying that if we're agreed that EFTA is the moderate Brexit option, having nuclear options (destroy chunnel) on the ballot means that you effectively give a democratic mandate for the nuclear implementation (which let's face it, will always be appealing to a substantial minority, see Corbyn) and sideline moderate voices.
Saying that the public are in control of the direction of travel but leaving the experts in charge of the implementation (as long as it doesn't go against the wishes of the public, i.e. politicians can't just choose not to invoke Article 50, but saying they're free to explore constructive EFTA options) seems preferable.