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.
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?
"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.
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.
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
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
It's okay to make sure that majority doesn't trample minorities, but the problem with the present system is that it evolved into a tool for minorities to trample the majority, while defending themselves by claiming that, after all, there was a public vote, so they clearly have a mandate.
Yes, we should learn from historic experience of "mob rule" in Ancient Greek polises. But we should also learn from our own experience with representative democracy. Right now, I'm not sure if either system really has any convincing track record of being better. It's just that representative democracy came later, and folk who were pushing for it (like U.S. founding fathers) have made eloquent criticism of the preceding system, and designed theirs to deal with the flaws that they knew were there. The problem, of course, that the system they had built has flaws that they didn't knew would be there. We do know, however. Perhaps it's time for another refactoring.
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.
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.
Although it strikes as "ad hominemism", the phrase "consider the source" comes to mind. If a failure gives me advice, I'm likely to think "His advice led him to where he is, so it's likely not good advice." Given that the "Occupiers" are suffering from fleas, lice, STDs, and failure to meet normal standards of sanitation, a wise person looks to other places for advice.
When a person chooses to live in a subhuman manner, it is that person who "dehumanizes" himself, not his critic.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Well, in the past they've usually used either race or a informal poll of whom you intend to vote for.
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.
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."
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.
This is true. I walked by the OWS thing in manhattan last week. There were placards up that you'd expect - "Wall street stole my retirement" and other protests against wall street, then some about the 1%, and some against capitalism itself. Then there were a bunch of (chinese-looking) people holding signs urging everyone to boycott china, and it went weirder from there.
Also it's not really on Wall St any more.
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.