Slashdot Mirror
Could Crowd-Sourced Direct Democracy Work?
maccallr writes "The Occupy movement is getting everyone talking about how to fix the world's economic (and social, environmental, ...) problems. It is even trialling new forms of 'open' democracy. Trouble is, it's easy to criticize the physical occupiers for being unrepresentative of the general population — and much of their debating time is spent on practical rather than policy issues. Well-meaning but naive occupiers could be susceptible to exploitation by the political establishment and vested interests. In the UK, virtual occupiers are using Google Moderator to propose and debate policy in the comfort of their homes (where, presumably, it is easier to find out stuff you didn't know). Could something like this be done on a massive scale (national or global) to reach consensus on what needs to be done? How do you maximize participation by 'normal folk' on complex issues? What level of participation could be considered quorate? How do you deal with block votes? What can we learn from electronic petitions and Iceland's crowd-sourced constitution? Is the 'Occupy' branding appropriate? What other pitfalls are there? Or are existing models of democracy and dictatorship fit for purpose?"
One issue I see with a global version of something like this is all of the people in the world who haven't even heard of the Internet.
The main reason being that people in general are stupid. Everyone thinks they know better than anyone else without actually knowing anything at all. They just have a need to comment and vote about it, saying they know better. Added problem is the impulse decisions to any problem that comes along, selfish thinking and group stupidity as a whole voting out any expert that actually knows about things.
Direct, 100% democracy also leads to huge problems for minorities. If back in the 90's older people would have been thinking that computers and machines are destroying the world, they would had just banned them from all geeks. No reasoning, majority just thinks so. Similarly, and even more noticeable, it leads to huge problems for sexual minorities, ladyboys, "rich" people (those who actually create jobs and make things happen) or anyone else the majority as a whole starts to hate. It's akin to mob justice. Full democracy is never good.
However, and I cannot stress this enough, people in general just are incredibly stupid.
People who actually have jobs and a life will be under represented as the people who have nothing better to do besides sit around and watch TV would be over represented.
Over time democracies degenerate into mob rule. A constitutional republic -- the constitution to protect individual rights, republic to pick someone to represent you -- is much preferred.
How is the issue of mob rule addressed? I agree that our system in the US is not the most efficient, there are valid arguments that inefficiency and designed in different perspectives are there to provide a moderating effect. To create a little time for thought and debate.
None of the above should be interpreted to be support for the current dysfunctional behavior of the US Congress. I'm just questioning the wisdom of just going with whatever the majority thinks.
Wait, I thought they were the 99%! Is the submitter implying that perhaps the OWS group is over-represented by individuals who do not represent the majority of the population?
Shock! Horror!
Next we'll hear that most protestors are over-educated, over-privileged personal debt hogs with a massive common sense deficiency and a network of online friends that cyber-squat comment forums with a fervor matched only by the Ron Paul devotees!
Yeah, well a lot of people are talking about how annoying occupy is. Remember - civil disobedience is still disobedience.
No thermostat can be built without hysteresis and no democracy can be successful without provisions for preventing the mob from changing it's mind after every vote.
Direct democracy can never work with more than a small number of people as it only takes 50% of the population plus one person to completely fuck over the rest of the people.
Hmm, how about all females are, by law, required to be sex slaves. All blacks are required to be farmers as they are built for outside and demanding work. Nature designed them that way, so they should do what they're made for and nothing else. Lets vote on it! Oh, and don't tell your wives we're voting tomorrow.
You're not supposed to have a direct vote. You're supposed to get someone who'll look after your interests while balancing those of others.
It confuses technological means with good governance. As others have mentioned upthread, the major consideration of mob rule is no different than without technology. Read your Federalist Papers, then get back to me.
Dog is my co-pilot.
California is almost a "direct-democracy" due to the large number of ballot measures voted on by the public. California is a disaster. Direct democracy doesn't work because people are not fully educated on all the issues and to become fully educated would take away from their time spent doing other, more interesting activities.
Pollster: Hey, you!
Guy: Huh?
P: What do you do?
G: I have a Master's degree in puppetry.
P: Wow! That's... a thing!
G: Thanks!
P: So how do you think the Global Economic Steering Committee should plan for the next 5 years? Should they continue to implement the existing computable general equilibrium models or switch over to the new Klein-Mobius models that have arisen from the joint econometric project at MIT and Oxford?
G: Um. Wait, what was that about a joint?
P: Do you feel the current IS/LM techniques are effectively pushing both the local and global economic realities toward the general equilibrium point, or is the locus of points generated by the algorithms simply not reflecting actual market trends?
G: Did you say lotus? I can do the lotus position.
P: Is there someone else here we can talk to?
We need voter qualification tests. Counting everyone's vote equally is silly. Stupid people's votes should not be equal to smarter people's votes.
It could work, as long as sunset clauses are built into all resulting legislation in case something doesn't work out as well as planned. There's nothing worse than a bad law that can't easily be repealed, and this difficulty also prevents good laws from having a chance at being passed.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Trouble is, it's easy to criticize the physical occupiers for being unrepresentative of the general population
Yeah, well, that's going to happen when you claim to represent 99% of the population. It's easy because it's true.
People vote for what they want, not necessarily what they need.
In more words: it depends on the quantity and makeup of those who actually vote. Personally, I wouldn't like the idea of a country run by voters that have nothing better to do than sit around all day 'liking' potential legislation. GOML, etc.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
"People are stupid" always strikes me as a stupid rationale for why the world doesn't work like the stupid speaker wants it to.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...we get some bigger tubes.
This would only work if there were a constitution that specifically sets out to protect people so that the majority cannot vote in laws that initiate harm against someone else. One man should not be allowed to vote away the freedoms of another.
there's a risk that this subject line will automatically have people going "-1" automatically. this will demonstrate, graphically, how democracy is the weakest form of government.
if on the other hand, this message gets moderated up, then you know that slashdot's moderation system works as a "democracy".
i think it's worthwhile looking up the "Jefferson Mk 7" which you'll find in an arthur c clarke sci-fi novel. it's the one about remote interplanetary colonisation. it's called the "Mk 7" for obvious reasons, and its strongest point was cryptographically-secure random number generation to select the president... for an office duration of ONE (1) year. all persons ever expressing an interest in becoming president were automatically disqualified.
the point that the sci-fi writer was making, indirectly, is that modern democracy gets people the leaders that they DESERVE.
i much prefer the original greek system. you get everyone into an arena, and they ask each other questions about the population of the city (athens: 30,000). if they get the answer wrong, they're disqualified.
the last person left becomes the leader.
now that's democracy.
but best of all, i prefer the system where the leader has absolutely no power but to make "proclamations". very much like the debian so-called "leader", who is there merely to satisfy the "idiots" who go "what the fuck does this group of 1,000 developers think they're doing by _not_ having a leader??" so now they have one, all the remaining 999 developers can get some peace and get their heads down, get on with the job of packaging.
"democracy" - the means by which knee-jerk reactionary politics can result in decisions that are jolted back into complete reverse gear after 4 years. greaat.
so - if you define crowd-sourced direct democracy as being the "voice of the people", then yeah, it works. it tells you quite how scarey crowds can be. the "collective consciousness" of crowds shines through, loud and clear. maybe that's a good thing, when the mob shows itself to be an ass instead of being sensible.
me, i live in a remote area of scotland, away from crowds. maybe that tells you something, maybe it doesn't...
The Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 (Gramm-Leach-Bliley),
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010
If there is a single thing that would prevent another economic collapse in the future, it is the immediate repeal of those three acts.
Regardless of of what everyone thinks would work or not work, we must not forget one fact: the status quo is not good enough and by a lot of measures a failure.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Daniel Suarez (author of Daemon and Freedom) describes a very interesting "government". He imagined quite a complex system to handle and balance projects / votes / budget / ...
I recommend reading his books before saying that such a system wouldn't work. The ideas shared makes it sound quite believable.
Decode your health
The difficulty with the Occupy movement as I see it is that it lacks cohesion and direction. I don't think anyone including the protesters know what it is about. It is both national and international which seems to indicate it represents the general discontent of the protesters rather than opposition to specific policy. At least I have not seen specific meaning other than opposition to corporate greed (whatever that is perceived to be). The word "occupy" is suggestive of anti-war sentiment but the gist appears to be ecconimic discontent. I see the movement as just a bunch of people enjoying the mayhem of it all rather than a serious opposition movement.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Democracy in America and in Europe attempt to keep things from becoming a rule of the majority, with the minority being pushed around with ease. Not to mention what other posters have stated, which is that a large majority of voters often don't have the knowledge to make a truly informed decision. We like to get down on Wall Street, but would we be okay with having a majority vote in the country regarding whether to invest in the sovereign debt of Greece? Do the millions of people who would vote on that have any idea as to the real concepts behind that decision?
We could very likely find ourselves in a situation where the majority just vote for what benefits them, and that alone. So, taxes on the rich and the rich only, while every other tax finds itself going down, down, down. Corporate tax rates? Up, up, up! Send troops to Libya? Abortion illegal? Christianity the ruling religion? Catholics barred from practicing in public? $500 tax on all Chinese who want to visit the country?
There are plenty of things that, if really put to a vote of the majority, I'd be a little worried about the results. Not because I disagree with them, but because they might not be a good decision. Sometimes, it would just depend on what the media has chosen to highlight that week, and whether the general public has gotten put into a frenzy.
We vote people into office, theoretically, for a reason. Because they might better understand the situation and be able to take a fairly neutral "what is best for the country" standpoint. The problem is, in part, that we've gotten away from that. We vote for someone because they are a Democrat, or because they are a Republican. Or worse, because they will lower my taxes. Not because they'd do a good job, but because (selfishly in many cases) they will help me.
No, it wouldn't work, and I'll tell you why, based on the very source of the debate: the "occupy" movement. First off, what do they stand for? Go to one of these protests and start asking people why they're there and what they want, most of them will give you different answers. Of the answers that are similar, most of them will be so vague and generic as to be almost useless. The rest will cover so wide a range as to make it almost impossible to find some sort of middle ground or consensus. The issue of consensus-making is hard enough in a representative system (needs either party-line voting or coalition voting to happen). And this is in the rather limited population of elected representatives. The problem is greatly compounded when the number of voters goes from a couple hundred to a couple thousand; while direct democracy would involve millions. At the same time, elected representatives are supposed to be specialists; theoretically they should have the time to research and evaluate issues up for vote before they cast their votes. Currently they have huge staffs and are still overwhelmed when it comes to knowledge of what they are voting for. How do you expect a person who is working 40 hours a week, raising a family, etc going to find the time to do his due diligence and research and think about the issues, ethics, and ramifications around one potential vote, much less all the others he would have to do? It would lead to massively irresponsible voting, simply because people would be overwhelmed.
Another problem with this is that everyone can tell you what the problem is, and how they think it should be fixed, but none of them can give a practical way to obtain that fix. Ask them if they want free healthcare, or free college tuition, and they will say yes. Ask them if they would be willing to pay 30-40-50% or higher taxes for this, and they will probably say "no, I don't make enough money. The people who make over $250,000 should pay for most of that." Ask them, and they will say "the people who make over $1,000,000 a year should pay for it". And really, when you are getting into tax rates of 50-60-70%, it actually becomes cheaper for you to pay for those things yourself. What they suggest either doesn't fix the problem, or causes far more problems than it fixes. There is also the inherent need to "stick it" to someone, or to come out ahead over someone. People are perfectly happy to have stuff given to them, but they are far less willing to give things up for others. They all want to pass the buck to someone better off than them.
I know what I am about to say will get me modded down, but I'm going to (mis)quote Heinlein anyway: "when you vote the impossible, the disastrous possible happens instead." The few times that any majoritarian consensus is achieved, it will slightly benefit those it favors, and substantially damage those it doesn't.
tl;dr: It won't work because the numbers are simply too big, and ignoring that hurdle what policies could pass would themselves be either so impossible to fulfill or so unequal (due to the naivete/ignorance of governance or selfishness of the voters) that they would have consequences much worse than what we are facing today.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
One word: /b/. Unless you really WANT the next amendment to the Constitution to be "TITS OR GTFO"...
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
Voters who are baffled or bamboozled can't effectively run a country. The best they can do is hold beauty pageants and popularity contests.
It has already been argued that people tend to vote locally, not nationally, and typically against anything that increases their taxes because there are more selfish, greedy people than altruistic people. For example, if we had direct democracy are educational system would be poorer, we would not have a national infrastructure of transportation (like freeways) or internet, and so forth. One argument is that if people were sufficiently informed, they would make informed decisions--but as has already been pointed out--people are selfish and lack vision. Another argument is that when it comes to defense and security matters, direct democracy would leave us wide open to exploitation and conquest. If every citizen knew all of our defense strategies and secrets then so will our enemies, while we would not know theirs. We would not remain free for long. There are other countries in the world not as altruistic as we are who would exploit our good nature even more and likely come here, carve up our country, and rape our resources. A representative republic like we have is the best government that us mere finite humans can come up with. we elect representatives that can see a bigger picture than the rest of us and will hopefully work to forward an agenda that does the most good for the most people. idealistic and not without flaws in actual execution when dealing with corruptible humans. The republic is better than a monarchy or a dictatorship as the power is spread around and the corruption of one individual is generally balanced by the corruption of another with opposing interests. Generally workable with the most freedom for the represented public. Not perfect and probably never will be, but certainly better than the alternatives. Again, I must say that utopian ideals are fine as long as they take into account human nature and the fact that every system interacts with every other system and no single idea can be test in isolation. The best ideas judged worthy of trial should have the results analyzed and compared with the results of other trials so that the best ones are identified and retained.
anarchy!
Direct democracy IS mob rule, which, is why (in the USA) the founding fathers went to great lengths to AVOID it. In the declaration & constitution you find no mention of it. "to the REPUBLIC for which it stands". Representative republic is what works the best. Communism/socialism hasn't worked ANYWHERE. Soviets...lasted less than 80 years. Most other totalitarian countries fail, once freedom of any kind are introduced. Up until a few decades ago, the USA was the champion of a republic that worked, but, over the past 40 or so years, thanks to an ever increasing footprint of socialist & government intrusion, what was known as the champion of freedom has slowly been eaten and swallowed up by government. The next election will be the tipping point. It either reverses course, or, the USA will be a country in name only.
I prefer a republic with representative democracy. There are too many issues and too little time for people to form a well reasoned opinion based on all valid and available input. Politics will become (even more) a game of advertising trickery and catchy slogans. By narrowing it down to "who do I trust to represent my interests on these topics in a way I am comfortable with", a person can focus more clearly on smaller, yet still substantial set of criteria during a limited time frame (election season) when there is heightened interest and attention paid.
If voting becomes too easy - like a /. poll there will be throw away votes setting our policy. That is horrifying to me.
I will say In a word: no.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My teacher Adi Da points to what he calls "prior unity", and indicates that some global internet based approach to decision making could arise virtually overnight if we got our shit together.
From the book "Not-Two Is Peace":
COMMUNIQU (found in the gutter outside my apartment)
To Big Chief Marchbanks:
How Marchbanks:
Long Summer and longer Fall. No jail again. Last Spring got extra jail kicking cop. Make him do Sun dance in shiny pants. Yesterday I kick cop and get mace in the face. No throw me in jail either, just leave me to bleed. Swarmed Marchbanks. I ask the officer between blows, why no jail? He says jail too good for me. Calls me ignorant. You believe that? Want learn more and work but get no credit for YouTube. School too expensive. So is food. Why no app for teachers Marchbanks? They got Internet at the library. Give teachers tools and let students pay whatever. Out with the middle man. Maybe same app work for government too. Maybe then cops arrest me instead of fighting. Always a month late eh Marchbanks. You got money? Need money.
How again,
Osceola Thunderbelly
(Chief of the Crokinoles)
No, direct democracy cannot work, and the Occupy movement is a perfect example of why not. The occupiers aren't even able to govern themselves. Witness the unsanitary conditions and crime in any of the camps.
Part of many country problem is to give too much power to a very small group of people. I live in Switzerland, where proportional representation, direct democracy, constitutional initiative and referendum are in place since a long time. Those "politic tools" tends to give back some government controls to the citizens, effectively making harder for a small but powerful entity to impose his view alone. Citizens are more concerned and informed about the politic process and get very often the responsibility to vote on almost any changes of the constitution. That way, the citizen tend to think as a part of the nation, not as a supporter or opponent to an elected majority.
This is very observable in the media. Most country new is only about what the citizens will face after government decisions or about election of the next government (if not only the president). Here, the citizen actions are more visible. It's usual to vote to choose between constitution changes proposed by the government or by a group of citizens. This bring some pressure to the politics to present acceptable changes.
I'd like a way to "vote" and see how my voting record matces up with my current representatives. The next time an election comes around, it would be easier to see if I agree with how they've voted.
Assuming that the problem of a voting system gets solved, direct democracy might work. Of course, there are several levels of how directly the public can interfere with policy, but let's assume that anyone can start a referendum, everyone gets notified about it and has a chance to vote.
You don't. The reason direct democracy can work is because there will be too much thing to vote on, so most people will only care about the things they care about, wich means they are likely to be knowledgable on the matter. By that logic, the necessary level of participation could be arbitrarily low (it's easy to imagine decisions that only affect a handful of people).
Sadly there is a chance that the politicians and demagogues of today would assemble large activist crowds, similar of today's party fanbases, and command them how to vote on every possibility. But even this would still be a step forward, as it would be analogous to a parliamental system where the number of votes parties have are decided based on their current popularity instead of the one they had years ago based on false promises.
And call me naive, but I'm optimistic about this. I believe that the current state of the "dumb crowd" is a result of the political system actively discouraging people from politics. When people get treated like adults, they will behave like adults. When people are given responsibilities they will become responsible. And when people choose wrong, and then they suffer the consequences, but can't blame the politicians or the government or the system but themselves, but then they realize that it's not over and say "Let's just change it back!", THAT will be the start of democracy.
A much bigger issue with it would be all the people who haven't heard of democracy. Even in western countries, direct democracy should be implemented very conservatively, step by step. A new form of government is always a huge challenge, and it takes generations for a society to get used to it, develop a political culture to run it effectively, and be ready for the next step. You shouldn't rush these things globally, a lot of countries aren't even ready for democracy yet.
How about forcing all voters on a subject to read one or more papers on the subject and giving them a test after. If they don't pass the test then they can't participate. How we decide which papers and what to test is a question I haven't thought of an answer yet. I open that up to the next person....
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bDDp0CrTJCeB7Afo_Bh9r7ao94whwdlicLyrb5VRg_4/edit
I'm currently working with the site OccupyTownHall.Org to set up a voting system for Public Figures. The model is to empower the public to set up public profiles for their public officials. These public profiles can then be easily voted upon. Each public profile is either raised up to OccupyHallofHonor.Org to highlight those who have been warmly received by the public, or lowered to OccupyWallofShame.Org to show those who have earned public disapproval. Through this, our objective is to better empower people to have their voices and opinions matter to their politicians. This project is early on and we are in pressing need of those capable of assisting with the technical aspects. If anyone would like to participate in this effort, please email us at SpecialProjects@OccupySociety.Org. Thanks!
The simple answer to the problems of America is that the government must fulfill its duty to protect the liberty of its population, and it has clearly failed to do so in its reaction to the banking fiasco. The state of the economy is in direct conflict with the liberty of Americans. There is no authority with the power to allow that on the face of the earth. The government's responsibility to prevent such degradation is undeniable. The government does not provide liberty, it is duty-bound to protect the liberty that is inherent in its population.
So there's who is required to act, what they should do is open to debate. I'm of the opinion that the people and corporations responsible for and/or complicit in the economic collapse should be arrested and all their assets seized, all military recalled to US shores, all pending military contracts suspended, and all corporations restricted from influencing politics in any way, for starters. Church was separated from state in America, the same reasons for doing so apply to the faithless churches known as corporations.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Just because you use the latest buzz-phrases in an attempt to reframe it doesn't change the picture: it's still what Jefferson and others described as the tyranny of the majority and went to considerable lengths to restrain when they devised our form of government. A rose is still a rose by any other name and all that. There are certain things that should be inalienable rights, that not even a majority should be able to take away from minorities with a vote. Your "crowd-sourced democracy" would allow that to happen.
Read up on tyranny of the majority, and then you'll understand why your re-branded crowd-sourced democracy is the same thing and just as un-egalitarian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_democracy I like their intriguing idea for a more direct, crowd-sourced democracy: People vote on *values* but bet on the *effect* of policies. This prediction market is then used to determined the success probability of each given policy towards a specified goal. The policy with the highest probability of success towards the highest voted goals are implemented. That way, one first determines the objectives people want to reach, but the methods are subject to evaluation. It also takes care of the stupidity problem as people that have higher success rate of predicting the effect of policies will collect "political capital" and will be able to bet higher amounts after an initial warm-up period.
In theory it sounds great. In reality it will be overrun by the people who don't have anything else to fill their time. For example those who are unemployed and not seeking a job may have more time to debate the merits of increasing unemployment benefits and raising taxes to cover those benefits vs. individuals who are working full time. I'm not saying this specific example is right or wrong, but it's clear to see that equal representation is not trivial.
As many others have commented, more direct democracy is likely to make things worse, not better. The problem is, of course, Rational Ignorance, and the classic solution to that problem is representation. IMHO, the problem is that as the population has grown, the number of people per representative has increased dramatically over the last 200 years. Combined with some structural changes (i.e., fragmentation, competition) in the media, this means that politicians simply can't get elected without $. When money is more important than votes for being elected (because it effectively buys votes through a variety of means...) it's no surprise that politicians cater to those who fund their campaigns. None of this is particularly novel; Lessig has a great presentation on this going around, and a new book, too.
However, when you're talking about using "crowd-sourcing" solutions, IMHO the best way to do this is by using the 'net to enable what I'd call better "political proxies," and that's probably more representation. I'd be a lot more likely to go vote in a primary election if I knew... who to vote for to advance my political views, but collecting this information is a lot of work, especially if I want to avoid the influence of $-influenced information, seek out good sources of information, look at actual voting records, etc... and I want to do this for a reasonably large number of offices and candidates. OTOH, I'd be happy to trust someone I know who holds similar beliefs to do this and just vote their recommendation. And I'd be more willing to do that kind of research if I knew it mattered to more than just myself. This is the role that parties are supposed to fulfill, but the fact that there are only two of them (see: winner-take-all) makes this a rather blunt, ineffective instrument. Plus they don't help for primaries.
TL; DR, more direct democracy will make it worse, I'd rather have more effective, targeted representation instead, even if it just lets me know how to vote in primary and non-partisan elections.
I know the trendy term is "crowdsourcing", but it's really just market theory. "Direct Democracy via crowdsourcing" is the same thing as saying "let the free markets decide everything" to my ears.
E pluribus unum
+1 You beat me to it.
Never go to sea with two chronometers; take one or three.
California's referendum system provides a cautionary tale on direct rule: people vote for program's they like, vote down the corresponding revenue generators necessary to fund said programs, and soon the government is paying its employees with IOUs.
But running around putting THINK! stickers on everyone's forehead didn't go over too well.
No.
Stupid question.
Until everybody on the planet feels safe.
Give me a call when that's the case.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
How about people only being allowed to vote on things that they have qualifications/ proven experience for?
We'll never make it.......oh! we made it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWf3iJjqYCM&list=FL7kKrE4eTs17mQl7eyvJIOg
The mechanical issues with the problem you describe are resolved by a means of delegating your vote, and have been talked about ad nauseum in political science, but I can't seem to think of the correct term for it (kept falsely remembering single transferable vote), but that isn't the same thing.
The idea is that everyone has a single vote for all issues in legislature. But for the majority of subjects, you won't have the time, interest, or knowledge to directly participate so by default your vote is delegated to an elected representative. If you strongly disagree with them on some issue, but again don't have time to directly participate, you can instead delegate your votes on that entire issue to another representative. Finally, for issues in which you do have enough interest to participate directly, you can vote directly.
This way you still have representation all the time, and are thus not drown out by busybodies with nothing better to do, but you don't have to sit back and accept misrepresentation on your behalf.
Whether it would work or not is a whole other issue. For certain, pure democracy doesn't create freedom. Adequate checks and balances create freedom, and voting is just one of those checks and balances. You would still need a balanced government, but this form of representation may be more effective than existing forms.
Let me introduce you to our friend, the IQ gaussian. It's a very interesting concept. A very large, statistically speaking, pool of individuals take a test designed, as best we can, to quantify intelligence as a single number called IQ, or "Intelligence Quotient."
The scores of everyone, graphed, always, and I mean always, come out as a bell curve, or Gaussian curve; then the scores are adjusted so that the value 100 is in the middle (at the peak) of the curve. Because of the nature of the curve, that puts about of the population in the middle, and the rest equally distributed to either side. You can then say, very accurately, that "more than half the population is IQ 100 or lower", or, equally true, "more than half the population is IQ 100 or higher. This makes IQ 100 a very useful point to consider when talking about how smart the general population is -- or isn't.
So we know how much of the population lies where in what turns out to be quite accurate detail. And, so what does it mean in the context of our current discussion?
Here's my suggestion: go out, and find yourself someone with an IQ of 100. There are multiple ways to do so, though it might take you a while because people can be cagey about their IQ scores, even when they know them, and psycho-babblers are cagey for legal and professional reasons. But seek, and eventually, ye shall find.
Now, make it a point to cultivate this person, and have yourself some (gently) directed conversations. Discuss math, science, religion, the constitution, politics in general, the republican and democratic and libertarian platforms; child raising, criminal policy (retribution or rehab? personal liberty or state-driven authoritarianism?) See what they thought of the school system, their family, immigration, basically try your best to explore their head. You're not looking (if you're smart) for their actual positions; you're looking for the quality of those positions.
When you've done a reasonable amount of this, all that remains is to see how sophisticated, intuitive, and mentally agile you perceive this person to be, to see how much critical thinking plays a role in their approach to the world -- and now you have a "marker" for where half -- well, more than half, really -- of the population lands, by *definition*, in terms of how smart they are, and this in turn may give you your first legitimate feel for whether you'd like direct democracy as it would actually turn out.
I find it explains a few other things as well, but as they say, that's an exercise for the student.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
unless limited by the concept of individual rights. The concept of individual rights was the crowning political achievement of the enlightenment and led to the creation of the Unites States of America and its semi-capitalist society. I see no evidence that the Owsers have any conception of or respect for the rights of individuals. Any democracy based upon their non-thinking would lead to tyranny.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theorem
The short of it: individual preferences cannot be aggregated in a meaningful way without paradoxes. Most reasonable people would find unacceptable that any of the listed criteria should be violated, yet there is no way around this. And so, democracy can't work even in theory, let alone in practice.
From what's left, I figure non-dictatorship is the criterium I'm most willing to let go, assuming we can (in the future) specially breed and raise a group from which to choose reliably benevolent dictators who will exercise the minimum influence needed to make the system work..
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
By definition, 50% of people are below average - what do you think?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Crowd source democracy might be intreresting for answers that come in come in the form of percentages; perhaps setting budget priorities, for example. But we'd need to do some tests runs before I'd swear that it's a good idea.
I think it creates the wrong incentives / measures for most decisions. Things would be decided based almost entirely on whether people feel good about them, which is often not a measure of how effective they are. Better to move toward a system where the law focuses on goals rather than rules, and we are judged based on competence and results rather than adherence to code or popular appeal.
Model the legislative process after the scientific method.
Some people conduct polls and ethnographic research to determine what needs there are to be met - this is analogous to raw observational data in need of explanation. This Occupy movement is essentially a bunch of people saying "hey! there are these needs which aren't being met!" This is the first stage of the process.
Then different people propose plans of action to meet those needs. These are analogous to scientific theories. Others review those proposed plans of action to see if they really do fulfill the needs they are proposed to fulfill. This is the legislative process proper, and is analogous to the peer review process.
But more importantly, those others review those proposed plans of action to see if they contradict any rights - this is analogous to attempts at falsification. If it can be shown that a given law contradicts someone's rights, then that law is thrown out, no matter how many other needs it managed to fulfill while doing so.
Although, more practically, we do not throw out scientific theories as soon as exceptions to them are found, unless we have other theories standing by which explain all that they explain without those exceptions. Instead, we make ad-hoc exceptions to the theories until we come up with better ones that don't require that. We know that the Standard Model of physics is incomplete, there are some cases it does not accurately predict; but we don't have a replacement yet, so we use the Standard Model still, but only within the domain that it is accurate, and we do not use it in the areas it is known to be inaccurately.
Likewise, when a generally productive (needs-fulfilling) law is found to violate someone's rights, exceptions should be made to that law as necessary, until a better law to fulfill those same needs without making any exceptions is conceived.
And in general, as in science, new laws are only passed when a consensus is reached that they solve outstanding problems without causing any new ones. If no such consensus can be reached, no new law is passed.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
No, it would not work
The main reason being that people in general are stupid
This is your main reason? With intelligence being controlled by numerous genes and being normally distributed? You have evidence that there is some special intelligence cutoff that we need to move to direct democracy? I doubt you have even bothered to think about it.
In any case, you're argument is absolutely insufficient. You also need to show that:
1) Politicians as a class are less stupid than the general population. Many would agree that politicians don't differ significantly in intelligence from the general population, especially at the local level. (Although Reagen with Alzheimer's or the 2nd Bush weren't the sharpest tools in the shed)
2) This extra benefit of less stupidity leads to better outcomes for society. Do you have any evidence that the intelligence doesn't go more towards giving politicians extra talent in lying, distorting statistics, creative accounting and other problems? I doubt the study has been done.
Finally you need to address the relative strengths of direct democracy. For instance it is much easier to buy off one politician than it is to buy off half the electorate. Do you really think the problem with the current political system is stupidity or corruption? I would bet that most people (in whatever country) would choose the latter.
Also, do you have any evidence that direct democracy leads to harsher treatment of minorities than other forms of government? I think you are just speculating.
Well said... I'd like to add... the practical application of pure democracy and it's pitfalls has been debated eloquently in writing since about 400 years before the birth of Christ. It has been known for a couple of thousand years by literate people that pure, universal democracy is no different than mob rule. (Read Democritus and then Plato). For a time Athens had somewhat of a pure democracy. It saw many good citizens killed (Socrates) and exiled for life by angry mobs.
Your edits will be instantly reverted by people who think they own the article. They know the rules 50x better than you. They know how to break them without getting punished. Their policy on Verifiability is broken and self-contradictory (see discussion page and even Jimbo thinks so), mandating inclusion of lies if from a more reliable source than any criticism.
You really think this is a problem? Every one should be an expert to have a say? I should know about every weapon system the US military produces in order to say I think the defense budget is too big?
I think you should worry less about stupid people and more about smart people. Smart people who can for instance construct intricate economic models on say sub-prime US mortgages, government issued bonds - figure out they are a horrible value - and then sell them to the US government or their own clients (whom they are supposed to be serving). A few of these smart people can cause a lot of damage.
You can change your vote every 3 months and you can vote for anyone who's registered as a candidate. This replaces elections.
If your candidate is in the top 500 in the country, they get to sit in Congress. Their voting power however is determined by their national support.
The effects are as follows:
Parties will shrink. You can't vote for the default candidate, you have to pick one. This creates room for new parties and independents.
Congress members become highly accountable. If they don't do what their support base wants, they'll become less powerful within hours and much less powerful within 3 months.
At the same time, the electorate are significantly empowered and thus motivated to take an interest.
The local link is reduced. You can obviously choose to pick a local representative but most probably won't and thus are unlikely to meet their representative.
I don't know if it would be better than eg New Zealand's 3 yearly PR system. But it would be a lot better than the anti-democratic broken systems of the US and UK.
I'm also looking for a name, as catchy and populist as the Robin Hood Tax.
Check into the concept of a demarchy, posited in the Revelation Space series of books. Kind of like what you'd end up with crowd sourced democracy, a democratic anarchy. I don't want to live in it.
Democrats and Republicans are like AIDS and Cancer, I want neither!
A lot of you seem to misunderstand what consensus is. It is not a game of "majority rules." Anyone can block a proposal. And this is what makes it so long and tedious. Compromising is pretty much inevitable. But in theory, no one loses.
No group can ever be more intelligent, more moral, or more wise than its single most intelligent, moral, or wise member. And the result will always be a compromise with the most stupid, immoral, or foolish people, who will out number that one exemplary person.
Sure, as long as you can make a fork.
It was called property ownership.
Main problem with crowd sourcing or any other form of sourcing is, we can't (don't want to) look far enough into the future to understand implications of what we are doing now.
So if they add a mandatory re-validation of constitution periodically (say 20 years, ala TJ) into the constitution itself, then it just might work.
Rather than direct votes and poll's guiding public policy. Public should participate in drafting law's and policies in crowd-source-like manner, but still leave elected representatives to make the final decision.
The problem with the way things are now is that lobyists are drafting laws and advising politicians into making decisions that are not making sense. With everyone limited to influencing politics in a transparent manner hopefully some of those bad laws would not have been passed.
A direct democracy is effectively a totalitarian system, in that with no restraints, 51% can vote for anything and everything. This can range to the usual "free lunch" on the 49%'s dime, to simply genociding or enslaving the 49% minority. Thus it would have a tendency towards having endemic "terrorism" as there are no routes in the system for protection of minority rights.
We could keep the constitutional republic format, and replace the House of Representatives with with the direct democracy model, leaving an elected Senate to provide a sanity check on legislation.
Or, leave the whole system intact, but introduce a democratic 'citizens veto.' Add either a line item or straight-up full bill approval process. Bills become law only after Congress passes the bill, we the people vote it up or down, and the President signs.
Call it a Collaborative Constitutional Republic.
Think Wikipedia, not forums. Wikipedia is a very good example of crowd-sourced knowledge gathering that actually works despite that uneducated and 'stupid' people have access. The same concept could be applied to compiling law proposals.
just be the solution. Where people could appoint other people to represent them, etc.... Still the details of such a system would need to be worked out.
BLOCK!
Anyways, I think stuff like this could be a very powerful feature, for the people (if implemented properly, which is an ambiguous statement, I suppose). Simply put, crowd-sourcing could allow 'We the People' to have a visible input, in government. It just seems, to me, crowd-sourcing where government is concerned, would be safest, as a gauge of opinion--not a trigger towards action.
:Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
L'enfer est plein de bonnes volontes et desirs (hell is full of good wishes and desires)
It's sad to see the level of discussion at /. sink to such a low level when the subject moves away from programming, intellectual property, or star trek. I just read dozens of posts all raising the specter of mob rule and tyranny of the majority. Please RTFA! and read up on the subject of consensus based decision making. Tyranny of the majority is not a problem with consensus models. Ability to come to a timely decision, obstructionism by minorities, and decision making on very large scales can all be problems. Worrying about tyranny of the majority in consensus systems is like worrying about what brand of motor oil to use in your brand new Tesla Roadster.
It's funny to see these comments because even a brief examination of the 20th century shows that federal and parliamentary republics both have big problems with tyranny of the majority. It's almost like listening to someone with borderline personality disorder accusing everyone else of being manipulative and argumentative.
-- QED
- non-tamperable by voter
- non-tamperable by organizers
- anonymous
Choose two.
If you want three, help us solve problems in homomorphic cryptography. Large crowds wanting to vote is nothing new, but making it possible in a secure way is an unsolved mathematical problem. So if you understand a bit about cryptography and programming, don't go to the OWS protest, help design online voting systems. Thanks.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Jefferson lived 250 years ago. You couldn't possibly think he foresaw social networks, mobile internet, and even the general level of education we have now compared to in the 1770s - could you?
The ideas of the founding fathers were great for the time, even great up to the not so distant past, but they really, really need to be expanded, modernized, and even improved to keep up with the pace our societies develop in this millennium.
Democracy is a flawed concept, because it considers every voter to have an equal say in the decision.
Representative democracy is even more flawed, because added to Democracy is the personal greed (or should we call it Humanity) of the representative.
What could work is domain-based vote power.
What that means is that engineers should have more saying in technical problems and doctors should have more saying (than engineers) in medical problems and so on.
The vote power can be determined by a trust social network, in which users 'trust' each other on different domains, thus increasing one's domain vote power.
When a vote is performed, the domains of the issue at hand are determined by crowd sourcing (eg. everyone tags the problem) and then the voting algorithm computes the score on each of the problem domains, resulting in a clear breakdown of problem domains and their scores.
If done right, this could be a powerful decision making tool.
This is actually something I've contemplated for a long time, and I could nearly write a book.
But I'll just say that even if a working system for direct democracy was devised, at least working in the beginning, there would be two major ongoing forces that would have too easy a time corrupting it: 1) Corporate mass media, with its built-in PR/propaganda machine, having the capability of "informing" the masses to consistently move toward their goals. 2) Natural enemies of democracy (usually the far right), even within democratic countries, who would ceaselessly try to infiltrate and cause problems in the system, no matter what security or other measures are devised.
It's funny, but the more I have contemplated the power and possibilities of a DD system, the more I have appreciated representative democracy that adheres (or at least is supposed to adhere) to constitutional protections.
After over a decade of consideration, I've come to the conclusion that the overall best approaches for dealing with all these unresolved political problems is two things, basically: 1) Find ways to encourage a lot more "dialogue across differences" -- transform away from ideological/partisan camps at war to constructive discourse aimed at resolving issues by their own merits; 2) Improve education, not only for children and young adults, but for everyone -- Make knowledge about complex subjects easier to obtain and understand (Wikipedia is only a start).
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
In an article from November 1, 2011 about the biography of the former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon we can read: "The harshest words, though, are reserved for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, viewed as cowardly and untruthful. Gilad charges that Netanyahu, after being elected prime minister in 1996, reneged on a promise to appoint Sharon finance minister. A year later, he writes, on being summoned to a meeting by Netanyahu, Sharon told him, “a liar you were and a liar you have remained." (http://www.thejewishweek.com/editorial_opinion/gary_rosenblatt/what_would_sharon_do
)
That Netenyahu is a liar has now, November 8, 2011, been confirmed by the French President Sarkozy: "I cannot bear Netanyahu, he's a liar", Sarkozy said to the US President Barack Obama. Obama replied, "You're fed up, but I have to deal with it all day." (http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=244760)
Q: Is the Internet a good place for a peace process?
A: No, or?
Q: Is the Internet a good place for a politics?
A: Yes, or?
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has used the Request For Comment (RFC) system to create standards for everything from light bulbs to wifi to nuclear reactors. Why it works: only those that know and care about the issue will contribute. How to turn it into a government system: 1) All submissions are to be anonymous. A multinational corporation has no more say than an single individual. 2) All submissions must show why it is an improvement over previous submissions. (No "nuh-uh, uh huh, nuh-uh, uh huh flame wars) 3) A group of moderators will enforce the rules. 4) A small emergency government will make decisions that can not wait for the RFC process to play out. These decisions are temporary only, unless the RFC process agrees that it is the best idea. This is my proposal. If you don't like it, come up with something better.
Well I dunno about down there in the US, but up here in Canada, an employer is required by law to let you go and cast your ballot during working hours if necessary. As well the polls stay open till 7pm to ensure that most people can get off work and go cast their votes. The problem is getting people to the voting booths in the first place, not so much when they do so. Its not good democracy if a huge percentage don't exercise their right to vote at all. Of course the people who tend not to vote the most are the same poor and unemployed people who most right wing /.ers are complaining about here.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
If crowd-sourced democracy was treated like today's citizen initiatives, any "legislation" passed this way would still have to be constitutionally vetted. I'm not sure why there is an assumption that this wouldn't occur.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
First of all , check the alternatives. Professional politicians backed by big business taking decisions for us . .. At least in the USA this has to stop. They ask us to vote for people that both sides of the house
Yeah right
do nothing more than follow the orders of their masters of the industry,.Politicians in the US dont give a shit
about the people who vote them in.All they care about is giving big business all it wants.It's a travesty and a hijacking
of democracy to serve the interrests of only the richest . THAT is what's wrong THAT is what people are tired of.
The industries and corps and all are the ones that will make the systym fail. Do you still play cards when you see the deck
being fixed ? Why should we keep submitting like sheep to politicians and their weapons against the people ?
The USA needs a popular uprising to a scale never seen in history.It's time to take the garbage out.Ill take my chances
with popular opinion.
is another name for anarchy or a couple of my favorites; mob rule especially if its of the varieties used in the "Wild West" or Southern United States in the 1800s.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
Maybe it's because much of our Constitution is specific to republican democracy and couldn't even be directly applied to this re-badged tyranny of the majority? Maybe it's because it's taken as a given that a Constitutional Convention would have to be called and what came out of it might look pretty different from the constitution we have now... especially if there's no Jeffersonian types present to preserve egalitarian ideals?
Every economics expert under the sun, from all political spectrums, argued that the new tax was better for the economy.
Right because the news media equally represented the opinions of every economics expert under the sun, and they all agreed...
Firstly, there is no policy upon which all economists agree. If the news gave you the impression that there was, then you are guillible. Especially in the case of consumption tax, there are many experts who view it as an unfair tax as it is a (relatively) flat tax meaning that the wealthier pay comparatively less of their income than lower income citizens, and corporations pay almost nothing. Consumption taxes can be fair, if they apply only to luxury goods and are excluded from necessities like food etc. But regulating things that can be both (e.g. clothing) is a nightmare. In general income tax is much better for the majority than consumption tax.
Your example, intended to show people's stupidity, shows in this case that their intelligence was underestimated. You show only your own (understandable) shortcomings when you are barraged by 'expert' opinions in the media and believe what they say without doing your own independent inquiry.
This goes for the general opinion here in this thread that "it wouldn't work because people are stupid". People invented the jet engine and the microchip. People discovered the theories of relativity and the many fields of mathematics that help us understand the world. I am sure the slashdot community understands how long those lists could be if I were to complete them. There is of course a lot of stupidity around, much of it due to lack of education. But in general people are quite intelligent. Sure any direct democracy solution would have to have checks and balances in place to account for the imperfect nature of human thought, but that does not make them impossible. Any argument against crowd sourced democracy also goes for the current form of democracy: politicians are people, people currently vote and have a voice in government, etc. The naive assumption that we are just going to mock up a simple solution over beers in the local pub and then assume that it will work fine is false, and such a plan would not work for any other form of government either. What the direct democracy discussion is (should be) about is not why it won't/will work, but how we could make it work and what kind of system would need to be designed to make it effective. The idea of representation for example does not need to be left out, as mentioned above the system could be constructed using a tree system where people can find someone who's views represent their own and allow that person to be their representative. The knowledge of experts does not need to be neglected. Expert studies and reports could be supplied through the same channels that facilitate voting.
If humans are too stupid to make collective decisions, what government type would work? Can someone explain a system of government to me that can be used to govern a totally stupid population effectively? Bear in mind we don't have AI or ET to do the governing for us. If you really believe the human race is too stupid to function, the only logical recourse is the VHEMT. But those of us who hold hope for the survival of the human race would like the opportunity to discuss options without input from those who aren't interested in trying.
Next Friday a summit will take place in Brussels, gathering 1000 persons who will discuss the current Belgian political situation and propose solutions. In different groups, they will discuss actual topics (social security, immigration, welfare) together with experts and will try to propose solutions. This initiative was started by some people who are not involved in politics and who were unhappy with the complete political standstill in the country. The creation of a real federal government is now finally making (slow) progress (after more than 500 days), but the organizers still believe it is worthwhile to discuss political issues with "normal" inhabitants.
http://www.g1000.org
'because people are stupid' was the view I took recently... but now I'm not so sure.
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds#Criticism
"In the online article Digital Maoism, Lanier argues that the collective is more likely to be smart only when 1. it isn't defining its own questions, 2. when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric value,) and 3. when the information system which informs the collective is filtered by a quality control mechanism that relies on individuals to a high degree. Only under those circumstances, a collective can be smarter than a person. If any of these conditions are broken, the collective becomes unreliable or worse."
I'd like to add, is it easier to corrupt crowd sourced decisions or individuals?
(i.e. crack the counting system vs outing the Greek PM and not carrying out a referendum as requested)
In the UK we have a lot of unelected quango organisations. There are so many 1000's of them in a way this is a smaller scale crowd outsourcing of decisions.
A blog I run for the wealth
See here
"And then they voted"
Maybe we could vote on it. Those who think they have the qualifications can put it out to the people, and let the people decide if they do. Then those representatives vote on the legislation.
Read up on tyranny of the majority, and then you'll understand why your re-branded crowd-sourced democracy is the same thing and just as un-egalitarian.
It's funny, when I hear people cheering as the police thump the crap out of or mace protesters "tyranny of the majority" is the first thing that comes to my mind. I guess the system we live in does not protect us from it quite as well as you might think. The bit that was supposed to protect us from "tyranny of the majority" was the constitution but that is not doing as well as it could be in my opinion.
I dont read
Our current problems arise from the failure of checks and balances. The first American Constitution, the one we are suffering under now, provides checks & balances between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches as though they are the only repositories of power in society. Corporations & the wealthy, though, have been exceptionally successful in undermining the entire system such that it always works in their interests alone, no matter who occupies the positions within it.
We need a second American Constitution that breaks that cycle. Corporations must be deprived of "artificial personhood." They cannot have the same rights as a natural person. Furthermore, entrenched wealth and power must be uprooted. Want to be Steve Jobs, becoming a billionaire by creating a lot of value for the world? Great, more power to you! But a worthless Wall Street banker or trustfund baby, sitting around gaming the system and skimming off the real economy? Nope, go straight to jail, do not pass Go.
We need a system that rewards hard work, creativity, and innovation and does everything it can to support and encourage citizens in those endeavors.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
"All governments are de-facto oligarchies" -- Donald E. Brown, Human Universals. An anthropological analysis of common traits among all known human civilizations.
An oligarchy is essentially a republic, except that you didn't get to choose the representatives. But honestly, do you really ever get to?
Political science experts often tout the benevolent dictator as the optimal form of government. Oligarchies can also be benign.
How about a constitutional oligarchy, in which the process and requirements for the leaders is established, and the procedural system for decision making as well. Public mood and will can still be factored in, but the decisions belong to the leaders.
How would this be significantly different from what we have today? It's more honest, I suppose. But could it make a difference?
My grandfathers fought in the Second World War to make it a land fit for heroes. We got the NHS, fairly widespread natinalisations and high progressive taxes to weed out the landed classes. Obviously the power of democracy is a dangerous and unpleasant thing if you are one of the rich elite, but they managed to stop progress eventually and since the 1980s have been returning wealth and power to their clique of fascist fucktards.
I assume most of the "republicans" and "libertarians" on slashdot would secretly have preferred if Germany had won the war.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In 365 days, another election day will be upon us. The election of 2012 however, will be pivotal as legislator positions at the state and federal level will be available. The people who will aspire to this calling will try very hard to sell the American people on there views on what America can do when they are elected. Those elected to power will have the option, for better or for worse, to influence America for years to come. But, suppose for a moment, there were another way? What if a way could be found to shape that elected official after the election, and not just before it? To that end, imagine what could happen if a politician were to voluntarily follow the will of the people? It only takes one to begin. The technical side of this idea involves a group of volunteers developing, deploying, administering, and maintaining a hardened website where registered voters can interact with the politicians who serve them. No one from outside the elected politicians community, no “corporate citizens”, institutions, or political parties. Just the elected person and the registered voters who put that person there. Proposed rules, laws, day to day activities and potential courses of action can be discussed and debated between the politicians and the registered voters they serve. Only the site administrators would know the identities of the registered voters participating. As the administrators role would be that of a guardian of sorts, those administrator would have the responsibility to operate in a totally open fashion. The voters would be anonymous to each other, and to the politicians who serve them. Valid concerns exist however, for an effect called the “Mob” mentality. By breaking down the problem, it can be addressed. From the elected politician’s viewpoint, that person would be able to interact only with the people who put that person in office. From the virtual speakers pulpit, the elected official can convey to the voters there personal views, reasons, and other information. From the voter’s viewpoint, that voter would be able to interact with any elected person from the local to the national level, anonymously both from other voters and the elected politicians who serve. Though it is not perfect, it can be a beginning. Perhaps the naysayers out there can help keep things honest? At a designated time, debate would end and a vote cast on that course of action. The votes would be tabulated, and the results would then be forwarded to the elected politician for action. Though for starters the elected official would be acting on the honor system, that elected official should then honor the decision of there registered voters, and undertake said course of action. Long story short, I believe this represents a huge opportunity to show what free and open source software can do for the common good. Beginning first with a hardened website, in time it could grow leveraging TPM chipsets and other cryptographic technologies to ensure the integrity of the process. I believe this crowd-sourced direct democracy can work, Granted, there are issues and problems with both implementing and maintaining this concept. But I believe, in the long run, it will fare much better than the corrupt system we have in place now. Challenge your candidates on this idea. It has to start somewhere and sometime. How about now?
Democracy is most effective in small groups. This is a strongly mitigating factor. The smaller the group, the more powerful each of its constituents. As it stands, Occupy Wall Street is too large for direct democracy, but everyone wants to keep the group together that is why representative measures have been enacted.
That's not really tyranny of the majority you described, it's tyranny of the few. They're BOTH a threat to egalitarian democracy. The trick is to dance the tightrope between both bonfires without getting burned. When police arrest and DAs prosecute people who record police actions in public as criminals on the basis of inapplicable wiretapping laws, that's not the work of a majority, that's the work of a minority tribe selfishly protecting its elevated class status.
"The Occupy movement is getting everyone talking about how to fix the world's economic (and social, environmental, ...) problems".
In US, the Occupy movement might have been something what wakes people to understand capitalism is not good and socialism ain't same thing as communism (later one that just failed because abusive leadership)
But in Europe and rest of the world, the Greece, Italy, Spanish and even Germany situation is what wakes people up to understand that capitalism and the idea to follow USA example of it ain't good thing and countries should gain more socialism ideas to basic structure. The whole idea of one current shared among so many different countries where there are so many different cultures, simply does not work. It is not just about numbers, it is about values and habits how people live and work. It is about amount of farms and lengths of the seasons and what people can actually grow. What people need in daily life and so on.
Why should everyone suffer because few people wants to save time without need to change currency when going for holiday to other country for few weeks or so that some finance guys like to sell/buy stocks without calculating the changes?
One currency ain't same thing as what SI system is.
Design a system to gather as many statistics as possible about people's needs, wants, etc. Use those stats in an intelligent way to make decisions. I think that most of what governments do could be automated in such a way. Of course, this would be a massive project and quite difficult, but a few million really smart people (analysts, engineers, etc.) could probably figure it out. We seriously need to redefine what government is and what it's function is. Personally, I think that the concept of "government" is becoming obsolete.
Is the 'Occupy' branding appropriate?
There's many problems with direct democracy that have been pointed out already, but I wanted to address this: If you want this to succeed and have any legs, do not associate it with the 'occupy' movement. It may not be obvious to those directly involved in the movement, but it is quickly getting some very negative associations among the majority of the country. It will prove to be anathema to those politicians who supported it.
Go read up on the Athenian Democracy. While it got some things right, it's very easy to see where they got it very wrong.
One of the easiest examples to point out is how the Athenians decided through their democracy that only male citizens could participate. Over time this led them to exclude any path of non-citizens to become citizens. Or to even allow a child born to a citizen and a non-citizen to become a citizen themselves.
There's also the story of how a simple accounting error led the mob to try, convict, and execute 9 of the 10 treasurers of Athens before they realized it was all a mistake.
Thank you but no. I prefer to have the checks and balances that we presently have. I would like to see some reforms, but direct democracy leads to mob rule and mob justice. Which is never very just.
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
/me sips his coffee and ponders a new sig...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Direct Democracy would work, I would assume people who are interested and willing to vote on particular issues, would be well aware and educated of the issue at hand.
Occupy is pursuing an ideal - horizontal democracy. Yes, I would agree that this leads to tyranny of the majority UNLESS that horizontal democratic process is embedded in a within a larger process of checks and balances, just as the judical, executive, and legislative branches of government are currently set up.
I setup a petition at "We the People" for a similar system. Sign it if you agree! http://wh.gov/bKl
Well I dunno about down there in the US, but up here in Canada, an employer is required by law to let you go and cast your ballot during working hours if necessary. As well the polls stay open till 7pm to ensure that most people can get off work and go cast their votes.
True here too, but if you live a 45 min drive from your job - and you vote where you live, not where you work - then you're looking at at least 2, maybe 3 hours missed during the day given the lines. Kind of makes it impractical.
Of course the people who tend not to vote the most are the same poor and unemployed people who most right wing /.ers are complaining about here.
I don't think that's remotely true. Activist groups seem to do a good job of herding them to the polls. The problem is families who have to get the kids to school, get to work, get home, feed the kids, and put the kids to bed from the time the polls open until they close. Unless you can pay a babysitter to watch your kids while you go vote, at best mom *or* dad gets to vote. I've been in that situation (I voted, wife stayed home), and it shouldn't be that way.
The problem with direct or whatever democracy is that votes are not weighted by the voter's merit. Therefore vote of a lazy bum living on social support has the same value as vote of an entrepreneur. Therefore voice of an accomplished scientist has the same strength as that of a total layman (hello Wikipedia!). If you add to that bounded rationality of each participant and delayed feedback of society as a system, ignorant, inert masses will always rip the accumulated value apart until no value is left. We need a system which recognizes experienced, proven experts in a domain as credible decision makers. We need to promote critical honesty to acknowledge that some people are better to make an educated decision than others. We don't need discussion circles. We need true leaders.
- 3 points, further reading, and a thought on the Internet as a tool for DD -
1. Direct democracy has only been objected to on two grounds worth discussing - the impracticality argument and 'the crowd is stupid' argument. The former is no longer valid and the latter it is only proven true in specific circumstances.
2. People are not necessarily dumb. Yes, people in North America are dumb en masse. However, there is no systemic pressure to educate because it's not easier to get elected (manipulate the masses) if voters are well-informed and educated. There may not be any mass conspiracy to keep people stupid but there's no incentive to educate them.
3. Crowd-sourcing is the BEST solution for certain types of political-arena questions. Any decisions requiring predictions surrounding complex systems, for example, are best tackled through crowd-sourcing. E.g., Prediction Markets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market)
Some reading/viewing:
O’Mahony, S. & F. Ferraro. (2007). The Emergence of Governance in an Open Source Community. Academy of Management Journal. Vol. 50, No. 5
(link to article about the above article: http://www.techforce.com.br/news/linux_blog/scientific_study_about_debian_governance_and_organization)
Tetlock, P. (2005). Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
(link to above: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7959.html)
Surowiecki, J. (2007). Power: 2012. Presented at the NewYorker Conference 2007: 2012: Stories from the Near Future , New York. Retrieved December 8, 2008,
(link to above from: http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/surowiecki)
Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
(link to above: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds)
Esser, J.K. & N.R. Ahlfinger. (2001). Testing the groupthink model: Effects of promotional leadership and conformity predisposition. Social Behaviour and Personality: An International Journal. Vol. 29: No. 1.
(link to slideshow discussing above: http://pzacad.pitzer.edu/~hfairchi/courses/Spring2011/p103/ErinKomplin.pdf)
Fleeger, W. E., & M. L. Becker. (2008). Creating and sustaining community capacity for ecosystem-based management: Is local government they key Journal of Environmental Management. Vol. 88: pp. 1396-1405.
Final thought
In group decision making and consensus building, indirect processes are often used to alleviate some of the exogenous influence that social dynamics can have on the decisions reached. Information communication technologies (ICTs) have potential to mitigate effects of power stratification within communities by acting as a mediator of inter-personal relations, buffering the effect of power influence between community members. However, they are often viewed as second-rate communication options, with face-to-face being the ‘gold standard’. While ICTs certainly have weaknesses, they are currently under-utilized as participatory mechanisms and their potential in mitigating power effects in collective action and decision making has, to date, gone unacknowledged and under-explored.
There is evidence that ICT's can alleviate
-- Power Stratification
-- ‘Groupthink’
No, not by itself. However, it will probably end up being part of the solution. We have thousands of years of failed governments and corrupt societies to study to help us determine what works, what doesn't work, and why. Capitalism has survived in some form throughout recorded history, demonstrating without question that it satisfies our desire to keep score in our endless biological need to compete. It will also probably be part of the solution as a way to organize commerce. All forms of government, social organization, have failed time and again. Obviously we are doing something wrong. We can all list some of the mistakes we make:
Corruption
Allowing narcissists and sociopaths to gain power
Apathy as our justice systems are hijacked
Failure to control unbridled greed, even among ourselves
and on and on.
I believe, and so do many others, that we now have the knowledge, power, and method to solve most of those traditional and historical problems. That is one of the reasons the OccupyWallStreet movement is not providing a list of demands. We don’t want to demand a new law containing 500,000 words that mean nothing. We need to take our time, get as many people as possible, especially students of history government, and social systems, to contribute, and build a new system based on satisfying our human needs while controlling our baser instincts.
If only someone could come up with some kind of wiki. Oh wait, they did:
http://www.youlaws.org/
This debate is probably ancient history by now, but anybody reading this and still genuinely interested in e-democracy and policy collaboration, read on.
About a year ago, I started designing a website for collaborative policy creation located at www.YouLaws.org . It's a working prototype of a place where people can draft policy together, other people can vote on that policy, and the votes are broken down by geographic location so that people and politicians know where support for ideas and bills are. It is a completely new kind of e-democracy system.
We need people to submit policy ideas (easy and on the front page), people to donate, and people to help. Everybody working with me on this project is strapped for money and time right now, so we need all the help we can get to grow this idea.
Again, check the website out at www.YouLaws.org . You can also find us on facebook by searching "YouLaws"
Please help us grow. If nothing else, just check us out and spread the word.
I propose that the idea of "political leaders" is obsolete. Every issue can now be voted on in a true democratic way. This bypasses PAC, corruption, the pay issue and subsequent lifetime benefits issue, the enormous cost of protection, etc. etc. etc. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Scott Adams proposed that we add a 4th branch, I propose that we subtract 3 and add 1.
I think much of the problem with our current system (and has been seen in the "Occupy" movement as it has grown) is that it doesn't take into account the hard wired limit in our brains when we try to interact with more than about 150 people (as discussed by Malcolm Gladwell in "Tipping Point" for example). Our "representatives" are not accountable or responsive.
My own experience with juries (I have served on four now) is that it is a system that really does work the vast majority of the time. I have found that people who serve on one are not exactly happy to do it, but they understand why they need to, they understand the stakes and consequences, and are generally very conscientious. I would much rather stake my freedom or even my life on the jury system rather than one based on a judge alone. If you have served as well, you may well agree with this point. If so, why does that democracy work and our broader one not? I think a big reason is the rule of 150.
Why not organize at the lowest level in groups (neighborhoods) of no more than 150, then that group selects one representative to serve at the next level of government also limited to 150 representatives, and so on to a third level (which would represent in total no more than 3,375,000 people - roughly equivalent to a state). At each level, the rule of 150 is preserved so that people could actually get to know one another and at least have a chance to work together. Accountability is baked in. Provide a "bill of rights" to ensure the inviolable ones are preserved. Establish the scope of authority so that the first level takes care of neighborhood issues, the second level schools, local roads, zoning, etc. The higher level groups would be unauthorized to establish rules that are within the scope of the lower level (something important that was completely lost in our system somehow).
It would at least be better than the system we have now.
http://www.generalassembly.us
The Infamous Genus Dr. Mr. Chu utters:
" Chu said that politics did not enter into any decisions he or his staff made regarding Solyndra and that there was no way to foresee the company’s demise."
Well well well.
One asks if the Infamous Master Genus Chu's left brain communticates to the Infamous Master Genus Chu's right brain? Wonder of wonders. Tia Chi at the O-K Coral.
That Senate commettee meeting could be a one real mean hoot-nanny.
Heaven to Betsy! Where is Doc Holiday?
+