A hybrid direct-represenative sort of organization could be formed using votebots to make decisions for people who don't have time to participate, but who could review the decisions later and change represenative bots if they don't like it based on their historical performance.
Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
41–50 of 140 posts
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't have any confirmations that these small decisions actually matter much.
You can have salami makers lobby for 6,5% import tax then salami sellers lobby for 4% import tax for years before the same parliament, this consuming resources of society but bringing zero value to society at large.
On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, whe…
Joe does not have the time to be informed about the pros and cons of every decision that the government needs to ask him about. It's simply not practical. Direct democracy would be handing over the machinery of government to marketing companies fed by lobbies.
We don't need Joe voting on every single issue.
Just give Joe 100 voting credits at the start of cycle and let him spend in on whatever votes he likes - or not.
Separation of scope also helps - a.k.a. moving issues from statewide scope and to relevant provinces/communes.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#44First of all, regardless of all the claims made in the document, I find it awesome to see such a gigantic writeup that tries to be at least a bit internally consistent. It reminds me of Bit451 [1][2], although that one was simply insane.
So about Cicada: the document quickly notes that the 'human unique identifier' is at the core of the proposal. It is claimed that it "allows us to prevent Sybil attacks and ensure everyone has a voice in the system". It promises to do this with cryptography and 'biocryptics', a word which isn't really that widely used in the research community. It seems to mostly refer to anonymous biometrics authentication systems [3][4]. In that field I can find nothing about preventing Sybil attacks.
Additionally, preventing Sybil attacks in a decentralized system, by relying on a biometric measurement that is fully under the control of an attacker seems doomed to fail. No matter how much cryptography you throw at it.
There must either be some central party designating trust in a certain (anonymous) biometric, or there needs to be a web of trust that is sufficiently connected and resistant to manipulation. A combination, with good checks and balances and distribution of power, seems to be the way to go most of the time.
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8728231
[3] https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/publications/article-1462...
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#45Do 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 addicti…
> 1. It's harder to bribe all Joes.
It's easy to influence all Joes on the social media platforms virtually all of them use.
> 2. Direct democracy would not follow party lines, there is no need to.
Party line is less of a problem in countries with sensible representative democracies, i.e not FPTP.
> 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.
I completely agree with you here, but like others you only talk about the big issues. Not the small day-to-day operation that must also be handled as well as all the small "boring" issues that face any real government.
> 3. Because any other forms of rulers get disconnected form people as soon as they start ruling.
Representatives are not rulers.
> 4. No "too-big-to-fail" ruler (dictator, king, plutocrat, oligarch, meritocratic, strongman). Entire country doesn't depend on single charismatic person.
I guarantee that if direct democracy was implemented you would have charismatic personalities telling people how to vote on day one. And they would be much better than influencers trying to use reason too.
> 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.
More information overload. More false information supporting your preexisting views.
> 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.
Just like today it would be the most charismatic that flow to the top. Perhaps it would be even worse since today only the representatives have to be charismatic. At least their aides and bureaucrats can be ugly and socially inept as long as they are good at what they do.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Joe does not have the time to be informed about the pros and cons of every decision that the government needs to ask him about. It's simply not practical. Direct democracy would be handing over the machinery of government to marketing companies fed by lobbies.
We don't need Joe voting on every single issue. Just give Joe 100 voting credits at the start of cycle and let him spend in on whatever votes he likes - or not. Separation of scope also helps - a.k.a. moving issues from statewide scope and to relevant provinces/communes.
If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack.
In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't have any confirmations that these small decisions actually matter much. You can have salami makers lobby for 6,5% import tax then salami sellers lobby for 4% import tax for years before the same parliament, this consuming resources of society but bringing zero value to society at large. On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.
> On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.
Why not do this for everything? In fact, politicians already have armies of expert advisors that they just choose not to listen to when their analysis does not conform to party lines or personal agenda. This is what should be fixed instead of trying to pass such a huge reform.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have any confirmations that these small decisions actually matter much. You can have salami makers lobby for 6,5% import tax then salami sellers lobby for 4% import tax for years before the same parliament, this consuming resources of society but bringing zero value to society at large. On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work.
> On other hand, we can still leave such decisions to relevant professionals and pass laws to gauge their work. Why not do this for everything? In fact, politicians already have armies of expert advisors that they just choose not to listen to when their analysis does not conform to party lines or personal agenda. This is what should be fixed instead of trying to pass such a huge reform.
I don't have faith in expert advisors. They often live in their own bubble and resist reality with impunity.
Society should be able to command them on issues that raise enough attention. "So what if you think that you should scan everybody at airports, admit 2M immigrants annually and log all phone calls? You're not doing that, effective immediately."
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#49Governments 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…
That's why systems like Liquid Democracy have delegation features. You don't elect representatives, but you can delegate ("lend", if you will) your vote on certain issues to them. And revoke the delegation at any time. Maybe Cicada could be equipped with something like this, but sentences like "The concept is so new that the word representativeless does not even exist. We had to invent it." don't look like the author…
Delegation doesn't mitigate large groups' tendencies to, in moments of emotional fervor, make incredibly stupid decisions that they wouldn't if forced to the a few weeks to think about it.
This is the difference between e.g. the Californian and Swiss referendum systems [1]. California directly enacts popular thought into law. That makes lawmaking a game of finding moments when you can make the majority disinterested while sending an active minority ballistic, and then freezing that moment into law. Switzerland, on the other hand, lets leaders counter-propose and negotiate with the population. It also has mandatory waiting periods.
Broad direct democracy has a poor history because it tends to empower mobs. This is a bigger problem than the expertise issue that delegation addresses.
Re: Cicada: A Distributed Direct Democracy and Decentralized Application Platform
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't need Joe voting on every single issue. Just give Joe 100 voting credits at the start of cycle and let him spend in on whatever votes he likes - or not. Separation of scope also helps - a.k.a. moving issues from statewide scope and to relevant provinces/communes.
If you give out voting credits, influencers will call for votes on many small, but hot, topics to expend all votes and then ram through what they want. It's too easy to hack. In most western democracies, not necessarily America. Representatives can be held accountable and any corruption is usually exposed with dire consequences for their party.
It's also easy to counter. I can think how and so can you.
What's the point of "ramming through" if it gets repealed in terror at the start of next cycle? Very potent point is that laws should be tried and then most of them should be repealed. Only a minority of laws should survive to permanence.
Right now we pretend that we're capable of writing good laws from the first attempt.