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Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

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Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#11

Post by neilwilson »

LukeB42 wrote: post #9
skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

Because you're talking about Averaged Joes instead of a singular political career. Direct democracy, I'm guessing, would amortise absolute power corrupting absolutely by spreading the power thinly across the population.

Averaged Joes are not independent entities. They network. So you don't get the effect.

What you get is design by committee. Or more accurate design by committee of factions.

The idea that democracy is a great way of solving all problems is just as much an ideology as rule by technocrat.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#12

Post by erispoe »

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote.

Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerland vote twice a year, they barely ever go above 50% turnout.

That kind of system would be interesting for signature collection, however. It would then be easier, more fair and more secure to collect signatures to put something on the ballot. Today you really need money to do that.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#13

Post by skummetmaelk »

reitanqild wrote: post #10
skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

AFAIK we have known for a long time that we are smarter together. See under "Variance and standard deviation" in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton for a well known example. That said I personally think this is an extreme case. I'll also admit that people - including me - are scaringly easy to manipulate in cases that are more complicated than this. Generally I'm more in favour of the Swiss system where y…

The Swiss have expert legislators that actually make the laws the way they want.

Grossly simplified, the populace can force a decision, but the specific implementation of the decision is created by lawmakers and later accepted by the population. If it is rejected the lawmakers get to have another go.

It is of course more direct than in America, though it is more a case of voters saying "We want this" and legislators saying "Ok, we tried to implement it in the best way we could. Do you accept?".

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#16

Post by losteric »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

Direct democracy works IF we have an educated electorate. Which America does not have, and will not have for at least a generation... all the same, it can work.

An educated electorate does not imply subject matter expertise, it means ubiquitous critical thinking abilities... the ability to debate, ask good questions, analyze the credibility and argument of a subject matter expert, and having the humbleness to be persuaded.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#17

Post by banach »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #5

Do people really think pure direct democracy is a good idea? Why? We already have a problem with legislators not understanding anything about many areas they are expected to create policy on. Why would Average Joe do any better?

It depends on ow you organize it, but ideally most decisions would be taken on the level of the people who are affected by it. If Joe doesn't understand before the election, he will understand after, and if he doesn't like the result, he can call for a new election.

However, modern DD systems should support delegator/liquid democracy (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy) which subsumes the benefits of representative democracy, while letting voters take back their vote from their delegate at any time.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#18

Post by LukeB42 »

neilwilson wrote: post #11
LukeB42 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you're talking about Averaged Joes instead of a singular political career. Direct democracy, I'm guessing, would amortise absolute power corrupting absolutely by spreading the power thinly across the population.

Averaged Joes are not independent entities. They network. So you don't get the effect. What you get is design by committee. Or more accurate design by committee of factions. The idea that democracy is a great way of solving all problems is just as much an ideology as rule by technocrat.

Arguing the converse would be arguing that one representatives soul has more inherent decisive import than those represented and that's difficult to qualify or quantify unless the representative entity's God himself.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#19

Post by clarkevans »

I suggest the people who want to "fix politics" get involved and start very small: look at a single ward within a city. Don't try to replace representative democracy -- enhance it, automate it. If you've got a theory, start small, and run on it. Go out and get votes. Then, once you've been elected actually see the real world problems that exist. Or, even simpler, volunteer in a local state representative's office for a good few years till you understand the actual challenges. Make their job and their constituents involvement better. Radical change starts with modest beginnings.

Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

#20

Post by nickpsecurity »

erispoe wrote: post #12

Governments take thousands of decisions. Can we really expect people to dedicate their time to vote all the time on these decisions? We risk ending up with a "democracy" where the power is really in the end of people having enough time and / or skin in the game to actually vote. Voter fatigue is already a known effect where places that vote the most are also the ones with the lowest turnout. California and Switzerlan…

On that last point, remember we have things like Civitas we can use:

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/civitas/

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