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.

Comments

No, it would not work

[nepka]

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.

Re:No, it would not work

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

It's not that people are stupid, it's that people may not have a complete education in given subjects.

Even if we posit an ideal Libertarian utopia, I don't know what to do about interstate grazing rights, do you?

While this is true in the legislature, there's a reason why we specialize and have committee and sub committee rules.

Re:No, it would not work

[Bogtha]

It's not that people are stupid, it's that people may not have a complete education in given subjects.

No, often it really is just stupidity. People are happy to clamour for something without even thinking it through. They are happy to argue to the death for something based on knee-jerk reactions. That's not a lack of domain knowledge, that's just stupidity.

Even if we posit an ideal Libertarian utopia, I don't know what to do about interstate grazing rights, do you?

Not a clue, and I'm happy to be quiet on such a topic. Unfortunately, many people in the same situation would not, and I dread to think what would happen if we listened to all of them. The number of people who know something about an esoteric subject is usually outnumbered by the number of people willing to interfere in things they know nothing about.

Re:No, it would not work

[Cryacin]

The funny thing is people are generally good with hindsight. For example, when the banks are dishing out loans so that htey can buy their dream home now with no money down, they're pretty much all for the idea. It's a good thing.

When the banks turn around and foreclose on them because they, along with hundreds of thousands of others can't meet these loans, let alone in unfavourable conditions, they all turn around and say it was a bad decision.

An interesting approach would be to rate decision makers who voted against the idea in the first place to get a future higher rating. This approach might provide a good average between the broad stroked autocracy which has an agenda, and democratic process, holding that agenda in check. If voting is not a cyclical, and arbitrary thing, the cycles of appeasing voters will hopefully come to an end.

Re:It'll work great!

[ackthpt]

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?

Amusing, but more likely scenario:

Pollster: Hey you!

Guy: Me?

P: Yes, what you you think about cutting spending?

G: It's great, I'm all for it!

P: Where should we cut? Arts, Medicine, Defence, Research, Social Programs or Education?

G: Anything which doesn't directly affect me.

Switzerland experiments

[jcdr]

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.