71–80 of 140 posts
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?
No matter what form of government you support, I think the organizational model can be represented as some form of game (in the game-theory sense) that can be replicated and compared to other organizational models. For example, imagine a wide scale battle simulation where players join a team based on how the chain of command is organized. This would allow you to test centralized/decentralized/hybrid models or organization in a way that gets better over time.
My prediction is that a hybrid model would win. Instead of a pure top-down, or bottom-up model - you'd have something like a RAFT protocol organizing the squads. This way there's no general you can take out, and there's consensus among what the battle plan is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Well, you can. But will that really happen? Especiall…
Supreme Court can still function to validate laws against founding constitutional rights.
But, I do agree, majority will have its way most of the time. If minority has a grievance, it has to address the same way people holding any other minority of opinion would deal with it... make majority see things your way.
Gay partners should be able to adopt. Make majority see it your way. We should have not criminalize marijuana use. Make majority see it your way.
In fact Civil rights have more advantages than people with majority race, ethnicity, religion but holding a minority opinion e.g. euthanasia. At least for Civil Rights there are courts to go to, majority has agreed to have that as a recourse just for Civil Rights opinions.
I honestly think minority Civil Rights are only possible when majority is doing good, economically and emotionally. Because, Civil Rights need to be enforced through education, and might of the state, which is the majority at the end of the day.
Sure, Gay rights and no slavery exists in USA, mostly because majority sees it that way. In Saudi Arabia or in ISIS territories those rights don't exist.
Civil Rights only exists where majority agrees that Civil Rights deserve to be honored. If they didn't, it wouldn't. We can feel as uncomfortable as we want about it, but that's just how the world operates. Unless there are technological advantages where one assumes god position enforcing Civil Rights of each individual without any external dependency, I don't see if that way of how the world operates could ever be changed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
What's the correct decision? All the people voting completely against their interests now think they're making the correct decision. Not all decisions or votes are equal and the outcome of an election can change what can even be voted on and by whom for the next round.
“The next time there is an Arab Spring, the people will be able to replace their leaders with code.“
Aside from security, Luddites, equal access, hardware failures, trust issues, power shortages, and many other issues with depending on technology for gov to function...
How does code beat guns?
First 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 ev…
Personal identity seems like a generally intractable problem, despite the lofty goals stated in the introduction. And without it, the document is built on a foundation of sand. An argument that I find myself having quite frequently about Bitcoin and pseudonymity is that pseudonymity and concealing identity is not a feature of the system, but rather that defining two-way identity in any sort of useful way is such a di…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Well, you can. But will that really happen? Especiall…
I didn't say it was full proof. It was the best compromise given how the world works. Supreme Court can still function to validate laws against founding constitutional rights. But, I do agree, majority will have its way most of the time. If minority has a grievance, it has to address the same way people holding any other minority of opinion would deal with it... make majority see things your way. Gay partners should…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>It's easy to influence all Joes on the social media platforms virtually all of them use.
And that is a good thing. If they can be influenced in a bad way quickly, then they can be influenced in a good way, or away from bad way, quickly as well.
Representative democracy was a compromise of the days where direct democracy was not possible due to limits of communication. Not so in this day and age, you can have answer from people over the internet in few hours. Thought leaders would still continue to exist and influence people. But, representatives with limited attention span, limited brain power, limited time of the day, demands from multiple concerns, personal influences of experience and needs, won't wield so much power.
>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.
Bureaucracy exists in representatives democracy as well. It will continue to exist in direct democracy. Hire the best that people want, not political appointments.
>Representatives are not rulers.
I don't know. We, in USA, has developed a class of people, who "represent" people for ages and generations. They do polling of people to find issues that would result into they winning the race to be representative and then do what they want to do once they win. Electing a representative has a huge disconnect with what people want done.
>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.
Absolutely. No different than a representative trying to secure vote. But, with representative democracy people cede control for two years, four years, six years at a time. With direct democracy you get a chance every day to influence decision making.
>More information overload. More false information supporting your preexisting views.
really? Who is this external arbitrator of what is false and what is true? Can that arbitrator make mistakes? I believe there are more good people than bad, and many eyes examining what is true vs few arbitrators of truth, is better.
>At least their aides and bureaucrats can be ugly and socially inept as long as they are good at what they do.
A case for entertaining plumber or soldier, ha? I wouldn't mind knowing if the plumber can sing. lol. People would vote on a policy, a plan and a cost and an executive (Roman Consul) to carry it out. Hiring decisions would be left to the Consul. There would be a sense of Civic Duty and people would pay more attention, in a generation or two, education in schools would emphasize Civic Duties. Representative democracy, almost half the people don't even vote, knowing it doesn't matter much what the representative claimed in the election and what transpired.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say it was full proof. It was the best compromise given how the world works. Supreme Court can still function to validate laws against founding constitutional rights. But, I do agree, majority will have its way most of the time. If minority has a grievance, it has to address the same way people holding any other minority of opinion would deal with it... make majority see things your way. Gay partners should…
That's explicitly not how our system works. If you have a claim to a right rooted in the Constitution, you do not need to convince the majority to see things your way. Your rights emanating from the Constitution (and further from the Constitution of your state) trump the majority.
You could have direct democracy on issues (Brexit e.g.) within representative democracy.
Majority agrees with this form of government including Supreme Court and Constitutional Rights. If 99% of USA agreed to not follow constitution, would Supreme Courts be able to enforce their opinions? Majority agrees to give that power to Supreme Court and is upholding it everyday.
If you think we gave our constitution to ISIS today, they would function the same way, without buying into it?
Forgive my cynicism but... “The next time there is an Arab Spring, the people will be able to replace their leaders with code.“ Aside from security, Luddites, equal access, hardware failures, trust issues, power shortages, and many other issues with depending on technology for gov to function... How does code beat guns?
How does anything beat guns? In theory, the U.S. armed forces could depose the government, but culture and tradition ensure that it defers to democratic institutions. In a country with a history of coups, especially coups that have deposed harmful regimes, coups are regarded in a more positive light. They are thinkable and therefore possible. In the United States, given our history, things would have to change a lot (even much more than electing an incompetent, incontinent buffoon as president) before a coup would become possible. Direct democracy would be tenuous at first, perhaps assuming more and more responsibility over time under the watch of a representative government that gradually became a caretaker bureaucracy, with the trust and respect held by representative democracy institutions gradually transferring to the direct democracy institutions.