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A Digital Direct Democracy For the Modern Age
New submitter lordofthechia writes "Last month the White House created an online petition system through which constituents can directly voice any grievances and concerns to the US government. Any petition that reaches 25,000 signatures (5,000 originally) is promised an official reply. This weekend the first petitions will be closing, and already many have far exceeded the required number of signatures. Is this the way for the voice of the electorate to gain more weight in modern politics, or is it the web version of a placebo button? Will the President's office really consider the top pleas, which include petitions to Legalize and Regulate Marijuana, Forgive Student Loan Debt, and Abolish the TSA?"
Direct democracy is where the people are in control of the decision-making process. This is a mass-petitioning system, where the people are granted by their ruler the ability to make a plea. This is functionally no different than a king saying he will grant an audience to any mob of more than 25,000 people who appear at the castle gates (how nice of him!). There is no guarantee that the ruler will act according to the will of the people. Even calling this democracy at all is a real stretch and a betrayal of the values of the founding fathers.
Real direct democracy is possible with internet tools, but this isn't it. The options for real democracy are:
1. Mixed democracy, where we keep the current representative system, but the representatives are legally bound to act according to the input of direct-democracy-style websites. For info on this, see the E2D initiative:
http://www.e2d-i.org/
and the many national member parties:
http://www.participedia.net/wiki/E2D_International#Signatory_Parties
2. Collaborative governance, where actual decision-making is directly and solely controlled by a collaborative consensus process. This system also requires a break from the status quo of hierarchies of governing states: it is starting by providing tools to replace the governments of tiny organizations, and will scale upward from there, disrupting and replacing the current system bit by bit, peacefully and slowly. Because it is consensus-based, it avoids the pitfalls of mob rule.
For info on this, see the Metagovernment project:
http://www.metagovernment.org/
and the many constituent projects which are involved in it:
http://www.metagovernment.org/wiki/Active_projects
Obama has done this before. The number one question submitted was whether legalizing marijuana would contribute positively to the economy, in terms of providing jobs, tax revenue, and freeing up resources spent on law enforcement.
Obama laughed and said no. There was no discussion of any of the issues. I see no reason to believe he will take this any more seriously than he did before.
How long does he think he can keep up this charade of openness?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
That's always the question. WHO sees the petitions, the signature counts, the comments, etc. and evaluates them.
I once read a story which said that experienced people in Washington, when they're told "White House calling," know to ask "WHO at the White House is calling?"
This is inverse of the same question, on a MUCH bigger scale.
Now they "have to" give an official reply. Which will always be, "No."
If I recall, Obama had something similar around the last time he wanted to get elected. My money is on this being a craven hollow gesture in order to recapture those whom he excited in his first Presidential campaign.
The problem is not that he's ignorant of what many citizens want (return of habeus corpus to those accused of terrorism; prosecution of CIA torturers; cessation of free trade deals and IP legislation that favor corporations over regular citizens; cessation (or reversal) of crony capitalism by Bernanke and Geithner; etc.) The problem is that he won't actually execute those ideas.
Since a petition to force government to disclose all extra-terrestrial communications gathered over 5K votes, the serious requests will probably be treated the same way.
Allow me to summarize how this works:
[ ] Gimme!
[ ] I'm entitled!
[ ] Anybody who earns more money than me must have cheated, so yeah
[ ] Hanging chad
I think that sums it up nicely. Or, to quote someone a hell of a lot smarter than most people:
--Alexander Tytler
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Direct Democracy does not fix the problem that is caused by the majority of voters being poorly informed on the issues. The reason that the "voice of the electorate" does not have sufficient weight in modern politics is that too many of the voters do not put enough effort into understanding the issues and the actions taken by politicians. Laws which make it easier to register to vote were passed in order to make it so that the "voice of the electorate" would carry more weight, yet they had the opposite effect. Making it easier to register meant that people who could not even be bothered to go to the designated location to register some time before the election (length of time varied by state) were now voting in elections that they could not be bothered to pay attention to until a few days or weeks before the election. Campaign finance reform laws were passed to reduce the impact of corporate money on elections. They, also, had the opposite effect. Campaign finance reform laws resulted in making it harder for a challenger to unseat an incumbent, meaning that a company had to put more effort into cultivating those holding political office (since they would be there long enough to make life miserable for along time for any company that did not do so).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Good luck getting a "no" out of a politician. You'll get an answer about how there is ongoing study in something vaguely related to the topic of the question. How they know that it is important to you and your fellow Americans and that they would like to see your freedoms to fruition but need to remain concerned that these freedoms do not infringe upon others when some mysterious, unnamed group exploits these freedoms.
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I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, so I have very few meaningful ways of participating in the US political process. My congressman is a social-conservative Republican in a safe Republican district, so there is essentially no chance of ever getting rid of him. I did recently re-register Republican so that I could vote against him twice, once in the primary and once in the general election -- not that it will accomplish anything. Another benefit of being registered Republican is that I can vote against Rick Perry in the primary. And that's about it -- that's all I can do in electoral politics, and it ain't much. I'd love to have a chance to vote for a politician who was against the USA-PATRIOT Act, but I can't, because it has essentially 100% support in both of the major parties. Ditto for ending the disastrous War on Drugs, or for kicking America's habit of getting involved in multiple simultaneous wars thousands of miles away from home; all of these issues have zero traction in either of the two major parties.
So this petition thing may not be much, but I'll take what I can get. It might make it harder for politicians to claim that absolutely nobody cares about certain issues, and that would be a good thing.
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A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, if you can get 51% to vote for taking you life, your liberty, or your property -- you lost under mob rule. What I want is a rule of law, wherein government is limited by law and in practice to the domains in which it is permitted to act. You know, like a constitutional republic for example.
Neither the Democrats or the Republicans seem to be interested in this form of governance though.
Interesting how the second-highest petition appears to be to free a guy who was jailed for ripping off millions of dollars and abused hundreds of illegal workers, including child laborers; and was caught trying to skip the country when he was charged. (if Wikipedia is accurate) He has more votes than the petition to recognize the 99% !
The Greeks did not have computers, an internet, nor collaborative Web 2.0 technologies and concepts. These change things, and Greek direct democracy cannot be compared to the new forms being developed today.
The principle behind Metagovernment is that decisions are only made when there is a consensus. This means that mob rule and tyranny of the majority is impossible. Just because 80% of the people want it at that moment doesn't mean it's right... wait until almost everyone is on board, and you know you have found something good.
Now consensus might sound like an impossible goal, but it really isn't. The reason it is so hard to achieve these days is because we have a two-party system where each side benefits from distinguishing themselves from the others: in other words, they abhor a consensus. They thrive on conflict, and play up stupid issues to keep us divided.
When we mature beyond political parties, a consensus system will not be that hard to deal with. This is because collaborative governance tools are designed to push people toward consensus by helping them to find common ground. Without the interruption of politicians, this is not only possible, but truly wonderful. Synthesis is a much, much better form of decision-making than compromise.
You may ask what do we do if we can't find consensus? The answer is obvious: nothing! There is no reason to make a law if society isn't in consensus on it. That is the road to tyranny, suppression, and everything else bad in government. Real government of, by, and for the people must be about all of the people. If something is so urgent that it must be dealt with, then people will find a way to come to consensus... or else they don't really even agree on the urgency, do they?
The projects in Metagovernment have put a lot of thought into their systems, and some of them are extremely sophisticated. As they mature and gain adoption, they will mature. The fact that there are many different projects means that the real-world marketplace of ideas will pick the best solution going forward, providing yet another check on their potential to fail.
Now I am sure you can find some imperfections in all of this, but compare it to the status quo before you judge. Can a collaborative governance system really be worse than the plutocratic, authoritarian, tyrannic demagoguery we have now?
There's something like that in Latvia. The constitution explicitly gives legislative power to both the parliament and the people. There's a provision that states that the people may prepare a proposed law or constitutional amendment, and if it's signed by 10% of the voters, the parliament is obliged to vote on the proposed law/amendment. If the parliament votes against it, then it must go on a nationwide referendum where the people can override the parliament's vote and have the law passed.
Begin with the recognition that modern democracies face a new kind of needle in the haystack problem.
Say the world needs a new needle... In response, swarms of people begin throwing ideas into a pile. Unfortunately, most of those ideas turn out to be so poorly conceived or expressed that they're no better than hay. And, good or not, many are essentially similar. The result is a giant haystack.
The challenge is to encourage the best needle inventors (and their constructive critics) to collaborate in forging truly brilliant new needles, while everyone participates in picking hay off the pile while holding high their favorite needles. (This assumes that haymakers will prove vigilant at identifying other peoples' hay, if not their own.)
My suggestion for a solution is an interactively crowd-sourced social moderation mechanism.
1) The mechanism's content entry interface would force novelty, ensuring that a minimal number of needle and hay duplications are added to the pile. It would display the extent to which a proposed entry matches a predecessor, blocking any piling on of outright duplicates.
2) Needle vs. hay sorting would be applied as soon as an item is added to the pile. Anyone can help sort, but no one can add an item until he or she has already sorted an assigned allotment of preceding entries. The design would inculcate systemic behaviors that favor amplification of signal before noise.
3) The tool would provide visualizations of the sorted results that illustrate coalescence of preferences. This part of the solution is already in operation as a ranked choice voting service at various sites I've built on the Web, on Facebook, and as a mobile-optimized html interface. (Running examples include WeVote.net, Mayor2011.com, and AmericanQuorum.com)
The system seeks to provide the fairest possible method for vetting options in multi-candidate elections, and can be used to solve the needle haystack problem I've just described. I call this solution coalescent bubbling. This approach to interactive crowd-sourcing offers utility far beyond improving the quality of political discourse in the US and elsewhere. It would be appropriate for reality show contests, corporate self-governance mechanisms, peer to peer educational environments, and more.
The shortcomings of the current implementations at the links cited above are many. Most notably, the ranked-preference system now in place only allows participants to settle on a consensus, and does not yet offer tools by which they can collaboratively reflect in forging one. The haystack metaphor invites questions about the challenges of booby traps and deceptive lures being added to the pile. And this short comment makes no clear connection between the operation of the mechanism and the question of how to ensure political legitimacy and how to provide enforcement of results.
Nevertheless, despite the many open and unresolved issues, I believe that pursuit of a solution along these lines is warranted.
Supposing this is true (which I doubt is anything like universal), please explain how this is worse than the status quo.
In the status quo there isn't even anything like 80% consensus on anything. Rather there is usually 50% (or usually much less) which are imposing their will without even consulting the rest.
And in reality it is only the richest, most powerful, most influential, and most power-hungry who have nay (and thus complete) control.That's more like 1% imposing their will on the rest.
To answer your last question first: Yes, absolutely, and even more than that it certainly would be.
Consensus is not a good thing.
Go outside. Ask 1,000 people for directions to somewhere that they don't have a firm grasp exactly where is located. You'll get a bunch of answers. A few of them may be right, many of them will not be.
There's only one, or at most very few, right answers. There's innumerable wrong answers. Consensus would be mixing the right answers with the wrong answers. That leaves you with a wrong answer.
I imagine that an overwhelming majority of people would agree that Fred Phelps should shut up. That's already a consensus. They're also wrong. He shouldn't shut up. Some states have passed laws so that the ways in which he was exercising his free speech are prohibited, but he's still allowed that free speech -- just not at the time and in the place he'd prefer, because how he was doing things was getting him the most attention. Even if the majority decides and agrees to a thing, it still may be a violation of someone's rights.
Direct democracy is 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on who gets eaten for dinner. Compromise is 3 wolves and 1 sheep agreeing to only eat half the sheep.
We've got a system that was designed to be democratic while also eternally preserving the rights of that sheep. It's not ideal, but compromise, consensus, direct democracy? Good fucking lord those ideas are so much worse
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
One of his openness promises was that he "will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days."
He signed the non-emergency SCHIP program extension on Feb 4, 2009, only hours after it passed Congress.
But it will be a very politely worded "No," to make it look like the administration actually read it and gave it serious consideration. That way the petitioner can tell himself "Wow, the President really cares what I have to say," completely oblivious to the fact that the response was actually written by a low-level staffer who skimmed over the petition for less than a minute before writing a canned response.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Completely ignoring the political consequences of this effort, I'd like to comment on the technological implementation of the site. It's very pretty and all that, but it makes it almost impossible to browse through all the petitions. Every time to click on one to view and sign it, when you go back the list has reset itself to the beginning (and cleared any search terms you entered) so you have to click through to where you were all over again. And it will only show 8 results per page. Seems like it's designed to make things get lost in the shuffle and its users frustrated.
Go outside. Ask 1,000 people for directions to somewhere that they don't have a firm grasp exactly where is located. You'll get a bunch of answers. A few of them may be right, many of them will not be.
Your analysis assumes a static system, where you ask people a question and get an answer. Collaborative governance is a continuous process: consensus is never achieved at the outset: it is attained by debate, collaboration, and synthesis. All original proposals get rejected, and most subsequent ones do, until some genius comes up with something that actually works for everyone. That is something actually worthy of consensus.
Direct democracy is 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on who gets eaten for dinner.
No, what you are describing is majority rule. It has nothing to do with consensus governance.
By comparison, I would describe our current system as three wolves charged with the safety of a thousand sheep. Guess what the wolves have for dinner every night??
My point was that there are some answers, some solutions, which are *simply right*. Maybe that's to do nothing, even, but they are just.. exactly.. right. And, sometimes, a majority of people would disagree.
That doesn't mean it's not right. That means that a majority of people are wrong.
When you have something which is simply right, you can't compromise, you can't try and reach consensus. That would only dilute the right solution and make it wrong. Wanna invade Canada? Wanna strip-search 8 year old girls who try to fly on a plane? Wanna demand that people answer their location of origin and destination when stopped by police?
There's only one single right answer to all those issues: No. Even if 99% of the population disagrees, the right answer is still no. You can't compromise. You can't plead and make concessions. There's only one right answer.
Direct democracy fucks up those sorts of things. Constantly. Continually. If you think knee-jerk reactionaryism is rampant in our government now, just gander over to public opinion polls. There's your direct democracy. Holy mother of shit god, THAT is knee-jerk reactionaryism -- damn the facts, full emotional appeal ahead! Let's all do something so we feel like we've done something and to hell with the consequences! We're all in agreement, consensus has been reached, WE'RE FUCKING BANNING GRAPEFRUIT!
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Wait, where's the crazy here?
Legalizing, regulating, and taxing marijuana. Not crazy. Crazy would be suggesting that the status quo is ok.
Forgiving student loan debt. An extreme solution to an extreme problem. Again, crazy would be suggesting that the status quo is ok.
The TSA? Every single dollar spent on the TSA has been wasted. They have caught not a single terrorist, and pretty much spend their time harassing grandmas and truckers. You despise it for good reason, yet don't want it abolished? You're the one who is crazy.
Which one of these is not a genuine concern?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So now we turn to South Park to justify our views? :P
The motive behind a crime is *THE* number one factor used in judging sentencing. What do you think the difference is between first-degree murder and manslaughter? It's all about motive. Did you plan in detail how to kill the person, channelling your hatred toward your carefully plotted ends, or did you unintentionally, spur-of-the-moment end up causing someone's death? You better believe that matters!
Hate crime law is all about *motive*. It's the basic premise that committing a crime because you view their whole "group" (which they have no choice whether or not to belong to) as bad is a particularly vile motive. And you know what? I agree with that premise.
As for the "tyranny of the masses", you can still have delegated voting (I've long wished for such a system) while having a strong judiciary to protect minority views. There's no reason why delegated voting must inherently disempower the judiciary any more than our current crazy system tries to. The judiciary is the of the few against the many. They have to hear in detail the facts of the case instead of relying on broad stereotypes and cursory knowledge like the masses do, and they must make judgements based on broad principles that apply equally to everyone. At least, that's how the judiciary is supposed to work; it will never be perfect, of course.
A neat bit of history: Chile's Allende government, before being overthrown by Pinochet, was working on a project called "Cybersyn", which has been dubbed "The Socialist Internet". This was back in the early 1970s, and they were struggling with the issue of how to manage a planned economy in the modern age. They basically invented their own version of the internet, where terminals all over the country would maintain bidirectional communication with a set of central servers for data exchange. The initial incarnation was designed to provide the government information about what needed to be produced, where, and when it needed to be in other locations (they got it mostly up and running only shortly before Allende was overthrown). The longer term picture, however, was to allow anyone with an ID card to fetch information from the government (speeches, laws, etc) and to vote on the issues of the day (starting with what they wanted produced, but later extending to referendums and the like).
After taking over, Pinochet's people couldn't figure out what to make of the system, and only thinking of it in the context of it being a tool for managing planned economies, destroyed it.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
The whole concept of consensus decision-making works against demagoguery and reactionism. As long as there are still enough reasonable people around, then they can prevent hysteria from ruling the day. That is nothing like the stupid forms of direct democracy we have today, such as the referendum system in California. Nothing. Here's the long form.
Now as for there being a right answer that 99% of the people can't see... let's just say for the sake of argument that you are right. How is the status quo not much, much worse? Does Barak Obama or George W Bush or your city mayor or the president of your school board know what that right thing is? Policitians are the least likely to know what is right: the only thing they care about is what keeps them in power. Period. So how can it possibly be worse to have a consensus system?
Now to take issue with the idea of there being a right answer: if nobody thinks it is right, then how do you know it is right? Hindsight? Well, that's all we have in the status quo.
I still don't see what you are saying is better than collaborative governance. Totalitarianism by Jesus? That's just not an option.
The currently #13 petition is to end software patents. Sign it now!
I believe Parent's point is that even in a consensus based system such as you speak of, there isn't actually real consensus. Parent said 80%. I'll say 51%. You asked how this system is any worse. I don't believe this system will necessarily lead everyone to become involved in government. There's always going to be people who refuse to be part of the solution. This is part of the reason our current system has this appearance of the 1% imposing their will on the rest. All the lobbying money in the world couldn't save a politician in campaign with 100% voter registration and 100% voter turnout. The reason why the rich can bully the poor is partly because the rich tend to be politically proactive as opposed to reactive. A consensus system might help us get that 100% involvement, and it might not, but this system probably has the advantage there.
What happens when a decision must be made but a consensus cannot be reached? I believe in a strong president who has many powers because I believe that the president must ultimately lead alone rather than seek consensus on every issue. How does a consensus based system work in situations where a decision must be made, but cannot be made due to a stalemate? How does a consensus based system prevent knee-jerk reactions?
Also, I simply don't trust that the average man knows enough to make an intelligent decision regarding every issue. I am a bit of an elitist, old school Republican. I believe that learned men and woman ought to lead the nation, not the common clay so to speak. The vast majority of private citizens likely lack the background knowledge to have worthwhile input, but do have the passion to form a judgment. I think that road to tyranny and suppression you mentioned can still be reached in this system if the consensus wills it. Really, doesn't a consensus system rely on the assumption that the participants are mostly reasonable moderate thinking people who are tolerant of dissenting opinions?
Policitians are the least likely to know what is right: the only thing they care about is what keeps them in power.
Actually, I think it may be even worse than that. With 540 elected officials in the Federal government alone (one president, one vice-president, one hundred elected senators, and 338 congressmen and women), I would wager that someone has the right answer to every problem our nation faces. It's just that most of them are more interested in being popular than in being right.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Okay.
"Get your hand out of my pocket."
"If you want to force me to give you money, do it the honest way and try to mug me, instead of hiding behind the badges of the police and the power of the tax collector."
"Why is it one "man one vote", but it's "fair" that I pay tens of thousands in income tax every year while half of all "taxpayers" don't pay income tax, and you're howling that I should pay even MORE?"
"Stop demanding that I subsidize you in the same breath that you demonize me."
"Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book, buy some land, buy some land, buy some goddamned land, FUCK SPINNING RIMS."
"If you dropped out of high school to push drugs, or majored in Underwater Basket Weaving/Humanities/Latin Left-Handed Shaman Women's Studies, it's YOUR fault you're poor, and you have no right to demand I support you."
Clear enough?
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
I understand where your sentiment comes from. But it assumes a fair game with dice that aren't loaded. Here's the big news you've been waiting for: The game is not fair. Opportunities are not equal. The dice are loaded. Examples are everywhere and countless, if you only look.
I actually pay tens of thousands in income taxes as well. It's infuriating. But not because poor people want my money. It's infuriating because I want my taxes to go to world class education in my community and my country as a whole. I want strong infrastructure, public resources from parks to transportation, a world class work force making things that improve our world, cannabis smokers out of jail, foreign soil not invaded or occupied, health care for everyone (no I don't think the poor pregnant woman should have her baby on the sidewalk, nor do I think working for a giant corporation should reward you with better health care than a hard working small biz owner can get, it's a right, like fresh water). Anyway, I'm happy to pay for things that make this country better, -for everyone-. Why aren't you?
also, your attitude about people poorer than yourself smacks of willful malicious ignorance. Grow up in an inner city school, grown up with one ill parent, grow up worrying about your next handful of food, turn 18 with no outfit for a job interview and no money to buy one and parents who can't help. Such people must work incredibly hard at multiple jobs to afford a shitty life. They have no time for luxuries like higher education, networking with professionals, or even simple computer training. They have no money for things like sport coats and decent teeth or transportation to an interview or a job. They are stuck. So if you still have a rock for heart after pondering all this consider this: would you rather build up the people and communities around you or build up walls to keep them out when they come for you?
Operator, give me the number for 911!