Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 140 posts

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

#21

Post by skummetmaelk »

losteric wrote: post #16
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 pers…

Which will never ever happen. Who has time to critically evaluate every single decision that needs to be made by an effective government?

That is assuming of course you could make everyone rational.

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

#22

Post by apeace »

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?

I don't necessarily ascribe to direct democracy ideas, but if you want to learn about why some people think it's a good idea, check out "The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement" by David Graeber.

It chronicles his experiences in the Occupy Wall Street movement and expounds upon the value of direct democracy.

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

#23

Post by skummetmaelk »

banach wrote: post #17
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…

How is Joe going to know whether the tarriffs for imported salami should be 4% or 6.5%. How will he know that he made the right decision afterwards?

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

#24

Post by thriftwy »

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?

These days I think that direct democracy is better than bureaucracy.

Why won't it? Provided that it's deployed slowly and tenderly.

Maybe Average Joe doesn't understand your area. Then you have two options:

- Educate Average Joe about the issue.

- Make sure that Average Joe doesn't vote on the issue and only concerned citizens do. This usually requires that issue poses no nuisances for Average Joe.

But right now, when legislators don't understand anything and create bad policy, we have ZERO options. Zero is less than two.

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

#25

Post by manigandham »

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?

> Why would Average Joe do any better?

They wouldn't. It only works when the electorate is educated and rational - and that is almost never the case.

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

#26

Post by thriftwy »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #23
banach wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How is Joe going to know whether the tarriffs for imported salami should be 4% or 6.5%. How will he know that he made the right decision afterwards?

Maybe it doesn't make much difference? Maybe fine-tuning salami tarriffs is something that should not be done, and relevant legislators should be freed to perhaps produce salami themself?

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

#27

Post by harel »

I've been advocating blockchaining democracy for a while now. At the time I even bought a domain for this (continuousreferendum.com, which lapsed by now). Never had the time to learn enough to do this. I'm really really glad someone did. The future is right there. Now the real hard stuff is to get governments to transition to being 'pilots' and not 'navigators'.

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

#28

Post by Spivak »

manigandham wrote: post #25
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?

> Why would Average Joe do any better? They wouldn't. It only works when the electorate is educated and rational - and that is almost never the case.

They would. So long as your the Average Joe makes the correct decision 51% of the time in the long run we'll turn out fine.

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

#29

Post by AmIFirstToThink »

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?

1. It's harder to bribe all Joes.

Much easier to bribe 500 people in a 300 million people. Actually, you may just have to bribe 100 or so, enough to tilt partisan things in your favor.

2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to.

You can have gun rights and abortion rights. You can have social safety net programs and curb illegal immigration. You can be tough on crimes and treat drug addiction as mental issue. You can have higher taxes but lower regulations. You can have higher military spending but no wasteful spending. You can have higher marginal tax rate while having simple tax code.

3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling

4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person.

5. It might have been difficult in the past, but in the internet age in USA, direct democracy has less things that would work against it. More information available, more means to communicate available, decent education available.

6. Find best people for the job. Ideas can come from anywhere. Implementer can come from anywhere. You won't get "I implement my idea, not you". "You stole my idea". etc.

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

#30

Post by skummetmaelk »

thriftwy wrote: post #26
skummetmaelk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Joe going to know whether the tarriffs for imported salami should be 4% or 6.5%. How will he know that he made the right decision afterwards?

Maybe it doesn't make much difference? Maybe fine-tuning salami tarriffs is something that should not be done, and relevant legislators should be freed to perhaps produce salami themself?

In real government there are thousands of small decisions on small boring issues that combine to have huge effects.

Sometimes I feel like people think politics is only about debating the big things that split party lines like gay marriage and abortion.

Post reply on HN