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DemocracyOS

democracyos.org

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Re: DemocracyOS

#121
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A metaphor is a type of analogy, just so you know. Also, could you elaborate on what is so infuriating?

#1 An OS does different things, you might want DemocracyUI #2 Its a technical term out of place that redefines what an OS does, as a member of the technical community feel a sense of ownership for a term that I routinely use. Its infuriating when you mess with something that is mine.

The kind of hardware we deal with it's called Congress. There's where the party we've built comes into place.

Re: DemocracyOS

#122
post #9

Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I worry that Democracy OS's idea fails to address this issue. If the politicians always vote with the majority, what if the majority wants to violate the rights of the minority?

A Saudi (go figure) once wisely told me: "The greatest thing about American democracy isn't the vote - many democracies have that. The greatest thing about American democracy is the Bill of Rights, which states what the majority is not allowed to do the minority".

Re: DemocracyOS

#123

The technical quality of the project has been so far debatable[1][2]. The Partido de la Red results seem to reveal a problem that is obvious at first sight: the underrepresentation of those who need representation the most[3]. I have doubts about whether direct democracy is a good idea, at all[4]. Summarizing, dividing the burden of decision making is inefficient for the population at large, and it does not guarantee…

It's not "direct democracy". It's just democracy. If you trace back the term used by the Greeks, they called both the technology and the concept agora. Etymologically, agora means "speaking in public", "thinking with others" and in many verses it's used as antonym of war. Democracy is always a work in progress. Otherwise it would be a totalitarian concept. So what we are trying to understand is simply democracy but f…

> It's not "direct democracy". It's just democracy.

Uh? I think we are in a Representative Democracy[1] and what DemocracyOS proposes is a Direct Democracy[2]. It is not "just democracy" since both Representative and Direct democracies are forms of democracy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

Re: DemocracyOS

#124
post #9

Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I worry that Democracy OS's idea fails to address this issue. If the politicians always vote with the majority, what if the majority wants to violate the rights of the minority?

Democracy does exactly that - it gives everyone the same vote, regardless what minority they come from. Therefore, it protects any minority for maximum possible extent. You don't need any formal rules on top of that; in other words, the solution to "tyranny of the majority" should not be "tyranny of the minority". (I really hate the phrase "tyranny of the majority", by the way, because it simply isn't a good way to describe democratic voting, where the majority is emergent and not determined ex ante.)

But let's say, indeed, majority wants to violate the rights of minority. Stripping other people from voting rights isn't democratic (even if it's voted by everybody), because it violates the basic democratic rule, "every person should get the same power in politics". Democracy is defined by the end result (same access to power), not the procedure (voting). (In fact, democracy allows for tradeoffs where a person gets little more power in exchange for more accountability.)

It's true that even without stripping other voter's rights, minorities can still be persecuted. But it is a cultural issue, which won't be resolved by formal constitutional framework. In fact, historically, it very often were elites (that you may think are the solution) who participated or even organized these persecutions.

For example, in the U.S., there is a large minority of people in prison who are not protected by democracy, because they don't have voting rights. I would appreciate proof of any claim as to how any sort of republican institutions in the U.S. helps these people be protected. I don't see that.

Someone wrote below that the solution could be super-majority vote, like 80% of citizens to agree to change the constitution. I think that's a wrong idea, which doesn't give enough credit to people. This can possibly protect a minority, but it can also delay progress in helping minority. The minority that needs to be overruled in super-majority voting can keep the status quo longer than desired by most, and that's unfair too. We don't know what the future morality will be; it may be different in positive, not negative, fashion compared to today's morality. We could perhaps say, though, that the future society will be more happy with their own morality than ours (because they can compare the two, we cannot); therefore, it should be possible for them not be too conservative and implement it.

Anyway, this debate is always rather academic, because politicians only rarely vote with the majority. (And no, pre-war Germany is not a good example, as I already explained above.)

Re: DemocracyOS

#125
post #122
post #9

Political systems should protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority. I worry that Democracy OS's idea fails to address this issue. If the politicians always vote with the majority, what if the majority wants to violate the rights of the minority?

A Saudi (go figure) once wisely told me: "The greatest thing about American democracy isn't the vote - many democracies have that. The greatest thing about American democracy is the Bill of Rights, which states what the majority is not allowed to do the minority".

I think the Saudi only saw the end result and failed to appreciate the process that led to it. Many European countries have even better things, like social rights, and allowing prisoners to vote.

Democracy cannot change the culture in the country. It's just a tool for decision making in politics, better than fists. It can lead to culture change, though. Democracy causes people who didn't have power previously to be involved, and different moral view is dispersed in society.

If you would give Saudis the U.S. constitution, it would still take time before citizens would change the culture to consider women peers. The constitution itself doesn't guarantee the outcome either.

Re: DemocracyOS

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this has the fun distinction of actually being functioning code in active use. I'm pretty happy to see some "open source governance" that isn't just talk. I'm only aware of one another project that has crossed that line.

I'm actually pitching a similar idea to a major corporation. Here is a reading list if you are interested in the subject. There have been (at least) four conferences on the subject of online deliberation. https://www.loomio.org/ http://wikis.evergreen.edu/civicintelligence/index.php/ELibe... http://odbook.stanford.edu/static/filedocument/2009/11/15/Ch... http://www.publicsphereproject.org/ncn/ http://online-deliberat…

Huh. I was briefly exposed to CSCW in college, but somehow I never made the leap to its relevance to modern democratic procedure. Very neat. Thank you for the list.

Re: DemocracyOS

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "direct democracy". It's just democracy. If you trace back the term used by the Greeks, they called both the technology and the concept agora. Etymologically, agora means "speaking in public", "thinking with others" and in many verses it's used as antonym of war. Democracy is always a work in progress. Otherwise it would be a totalitarian concept. So what we are trying to understand is simply democracy but f…

> It's not "direct democracy". It's just democracy. Uh? I think we are in a Representative Democracy[1] and what DemocracyOS proposes is a Direct Democracy[2]. It is not "just democracy" since both Representative and Direct democracies are forms of democracy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy

You're to tied to theory, I'm talking from an abstraction: democracy as a force in society unleashed when no single ideology dominates a culture.

Re: DemocracyOS

#129
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is an extremely bad example of how a democracy should work. Its main claim to fame is that it's old , not that it's exemplary.

It's not a democracy at all, purposefully so.

I really don't understand why people like you insist on this completely useless semantic argument. It's almost as pointless as debating the merits of parliamentarianism versus presidentalism.

Re: DemocracyOS

#130
post #56

As a Brazilian, I find this initiative to be extremely important. However, I've recently seen 'democratic' videos urging for a military dictatorship. Millions of Facebook users shared the message and ~1M people protested last sunday, while trying to kick out our president. So I wonder if, contradictorily, some might exploit DemocracyOS to install anti-democratic regimes. Is there a way to ensure such thing won't happ…

>However, I've recently seen 'democratic' videos urging for a military dictatorship.

How is that democratic, or even 'democratic'?

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