How Social Software Can Improve Democracy 182
Geek Satire writes "Politics breeds cynicism; politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected, then break their promises to everyone. Mass mailings and faxings overwhelm their staffs, and who knows if you can tell your representatives what you really think? Experienced techie and political consultant Silona Bonewald (creator of the Transparent Federal Budget) believes that simple software solutions can fix these problems and more. O'Reilly News recently discussed with her how social software can improve democracy and leadership."
I wish (Score:5, Interesting)
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Lynchmob justice?
Re:I wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the practical experience with direct democracy (for example from Switzerland) says the exact opposite.
People are _very_ conservative and don't like the change, even if it's for better.
It's funny that you are talking about media influence, but at the same time parroting the power elite's propaganda about why the direct democracy cannot work.
Re:I wish (Score:5, Interesting)
You underestimate how easy people can be influenced by the media.
This direct democracy would only work if everyone was very politically involved , which is just not the case.
Also , pure direct democracy , if everyone would really from their own opninion , would slow everything done , because there is always someone who disagrees with it , resulting in endless discussions and debates , and no real solutions.
As a goverment type , i think a good idea to try might be technocracy : decisions are made according to what the best solution the problem is , based on scientifical approach and simulation models , that can veryfied by everyone.
Sure , this isn't completely flawless either , i'm sure , but it may solve some of todays problems ( for instance , by solving the problem of global warming rather than endlessly debating it )
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I am not underestimating anything, I am referring to empirical experience with direct democracies. It's you who are making things up.
I recommend this book [democracy-...tional.org] as a source of information. It answers all your misconceptions.
About technocracy - it would not be good at all. In the real world, the main issue is power. If you would give power to small elite, it would quickly degenerate. In my country, communist party tried to run a country based on such a system (planned economy and society), and it spectacularly fai
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I have no misconceptions : It is easy to convince people that don't care about politics , by controlling the media. I don't need to read a book for that , i know out of experience.
But i will take a look at it , as it does interest me.
In Technocracy , there's no ruling elite , only ruling models, with the most viable being used.
Sure, it could be a problem, as how do you determine wich is good ? That would be the job of the people , who will verify the models , run them themselves to see if there is no fraud
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As a goverment type , i think a good idea to try might be technocracy : decisions are made according to what the best solution the problem is , based on scientifical approach and simulation models , that can veryfied by everyone.
Good luck getting the religious know-nothings to agree to that.
Rich.
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Ahh, but then who... err... simulates the simulators?
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We do, offcourse
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Also , pure direct democracy , if everyone would really from their own opninion , would slow everything done , because
... which we have already decided is so overwhelmingly a Good Thing that it is the reason we have three separate branches of government, as well as a bipartate legislature. A system of checks and balances is not a flaw, it's a feature, and one that is wise to retain regardless of the details of how the responsibilities of governance are divided up. We want enough time and enough inertia, meaning tendency to resist change, that we can realistically identify the results of the changes we make so as to repea
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And then how do you solve this problem , with your direct democracy :
There is an airport , and people living there. The planes have to lauch over a specific part of town. The people off that part don't like it , so they vote to get it flown over a different area. So then those people complain and vote for another area. Everyone wants to get it over a different place, and everyone wants to keep the airport.
In a technocracy , this is solved easily : a model is defined to determine wich approach generates the
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Actually, I believe this is a problem that can be easily solved in general, but I don't know if it has been tried yet. You can auction off the place. The town parts that do not want the airport will pay some amount of money to the part that will have the airport. The part that now has the airport can now spend the money for improving other things.
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In fact, in a direct democracy, doing "more to address global warming" would pass with a veto-proof majority: 68% [time.com].
The answer to this is of course, that in a direct democracy, we would have more influence (votes) in the areas of our specialization. I would have a much greater say in IT, especially software, than would say for instance a doctor. This would enable the focused expertise of the general populace to be utilized in making informed decisions.
This is obviously a very simplified example. There would need to be layers of voting and decision makers. These layers would ideally be based upon levels of experience in
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Actually, the practical experience with direct democracy (for example from Switzerland) says the exact opposite.
Yes and no. Switzerland, clearly yes, their practical direct democracy works well. However for the "mother of all direct democracies" you have to look at the ancient Greek city-states, Athens being the prime example. Direct democracy in Athens resulted in the legalized slaughter and enslavement of many Athenian enemies.
Interestingly in Athens, every government position was directly elected e
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Well, as I already pointed out, direct democracy is not a cure-all solution. I don't think Athenean democracy (as any other society from that era) can be really held to today's society standards.
But this is not an issue. The issue is if the direct democracy (or semidirect, which is actually what I mean when I talk about it) is better than representative one.
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I don't know how well the system would scale given the lengths our system has gone to to try and prevent larger groups from gaining unquestionable power, I can see it making it very hard to make necessary but unpopular moves.
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Switzerland is a representative direct democracy, the only benefit they have (and it is a nice one, I think) is that they can choose to try to override federal decisions with a popular vote, they do not however vote on everything or even most things.
Yes, but there is also a feedback loop that arises from that. When politicians can be kept in check directly, then they don't try to cheat so much. Therefore even the legislation coming from government is usually agreed with by the majority.
I don't know how well the system would scale given the lengths our system has gone to to try and prevent larger groups from gaining unquestionable power, I can see it making it very hard to make necessary but unpopular moves.
I am not sure what country do you refer to, but I don't see why there should be any scaling problems. And if you are referring to USA, I don't think it quite succeeded in preventing "larger groups from gaining unquestionable power", despite having explicitly written such
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To be honest, I've never looked into such things, nor do I know about the Swiss method, but from the description it sounds like a rather good implementation-- representative by default, but direct democracy readily available as an option if the representatives counter a significant population. I think the key is to require a certain amount of participation, as well as majority, for the popular vote to be legitimate.
The greatest problem I could see with complete direct democracy would be that of every fringe
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Yes, there is a certain small limitation (about 1%?) of signatures on the petition they need in order to get referendum about the issue.
However, I don't think having a condition like "majority of voters has to vote in order vote would be legitimate" is a good thing. This is an obstacle in democracy. I as a voter should have a right to leave decision on others. Moreover, this opens the voting susceptible to manipulation with phrasing of the question. If the turnout is expected to be low, then the question ca
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Switzerland has probably the most Democratic system in the world, but it's not all mob-rule like you're advocating with a real-time, everybody-votes-on-everything system.
Switzerland has a legislature of representatives, and executive, that make most of the laws, which must follow the country's constitution. If people don't like a law that is passed by the legislature, they *can* call for a vote to have it repealed, but they need 50,000 signatures in 100 days, and then there is a rather lengthy process for
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I don't know what you argue with me about, I agree with you. And I already said the exact same things in other posts.
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I didn't want to mock them, however, there were certain cases in Switzerland that took quite long to be voted for by popular vote, and that we now consider granted. Two examples come to mind - voting rights for women and some rights for disabled people. So such cases certainly do exist in direct democracy, and it would be dishonest to claim the opposite.
Anyway, my point still stands and I agree with you - people in direct democracy tend to avoid risk, even to the point they will refuse legislation which is
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That's why I believe that the competition of states (or legal systems in general) is necessary to complement direct democracy.
It's a completely fanciful idea, of course, but I've always wondered what political system would actually win if every nation could have the political system of its choosing (which is to say, similar to now, whatever method can take power), with any laws it could enact, with the single universal restriction that no nation could refuse emigration. That would seem to be the true test o
Re:I wish (Score:4, Interesting)
We can, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, I see many ways you can use software means to improve democracy. Hell, I also see many ways to do this by using social-only means, using the currently established online communities... I can even develop a perfectâ software solution that fixes all known problems with democracy... And let's us do what you mention.
There is one simple problem, all of these might work in theory, but in practice the systems that would keep all of these running would be set up by people and will be run by people. And t
What I wish is... (Score:2)
I wish I was the guy paid to implement it.
Imagine, government of the people, in real time.
Imagine, government of the people, in real time...
There a phrase for what you describe... (Score:2)
... that was coined by one of the "founding fathers": tyranny of the [simple] majority.
There are very good reasons not to have a "pure" democracy. A pure democracy is an ideal concept that can't be wholly applied in practice - much like socialism and libertarianism - because it relies on a peculiar breed of Homo sp. - an educated, aware, and engaged population - that does not exist... or at least doesn't yet exist in sufficient numbers.
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I think I already answered this elsewhere, but (semi)direct democracy in Switzerland and some US states have been implemented, about a century ago, and there are still no significant problems you describe. So I am not sure I get your argument - are you somehow suggesting that people are less educated and engaged in politics than they have been 100 years ago? It's nice that "founding fathers" thought about this, but I think their point of view was rather limited, in light of these facts.
Re:Switzerland? (Score:2)
Perhaps the population is actually educated and aware in Switzerland. I can't comment on it, because the only experience I have is with the distinctly ignorant and unaware population of the United States. I hope you're not gonna try to argue that point, because the jury's verdict was in on that one a long time ago. If you know of some secret island of intellect and sanity in this sea of stupidity, please do share and be specific, because I'd like to move there when the housing market rebounds and I don't
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If we would take current issues you have with federal government aside (which are IMHO caused by the fact that you don't have direct democracy on federal level), trust me, you live in one of the best managed countries in the world. Just come to a visit to any post-communist European country (like ours), talk to local people, and you will be glad you live where you live.
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Most days I perceive my corner of the world like Melvin Udall... the un-medicated Melvin. I have this fantasy that there is another pasture somewhere that is greener - and less populated by mindless farting bovines - than the one in which I've chained myself. I hope you're wrong, because I need that fantasy to come true some day.
The fact that this country is "managed" is not, in and of itself, a good thing: it happens to be managed for the primary benefit of a small minority . The rest of us get "trickl
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Few paragraphs above you are complaining that direct democracy would lead to "tyranny of majority". And now you complain that it is managed for "benefit of minority". So make up your mind. What do you prefer? Because there really is no other option - always, either majority or minority will win (though - there is also a 3rd possibility, that you would become a dictator, but you probably don't want that, because it means everybody is your enemy).
I would prefer rule of the majority over rule of the minority a
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Republican democracy is intended to put immutable safeguards - in part the legendary "checks and balances - in place to prevent abuses, abuses either by a mob-like majority or a manipulative minority. Sadly, many of those safeguards have been eroded or removed outright, and this republican system has been compromised. Part of the trick with a republican system is actually keeping those immutable safeguards immutable, from one cast of ambitious self-centered bureaucrats to another. What's needed to do tha
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I don't believe in your safeguards. The problem with them that careers of people in those safeguards depend on each other, so once they are all placed with cooperating people (against the common citizens), they will fail (which is what happened under Bush).
If you really want to know what Switzerland is doing, read the book about direct democracy I mentioned in other posts.
And you can do it with any citizenry. It has been shown that engaged/educated citizenry arises from a good democracy, not the other way a
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For what reasons exactly?
Actually, I don't like what happened with Wikipedia either, but probably for a different reason. The people who have power there don't want democracy, and they instead prefer this fuzzy notion of consensus which allows them to pass anything anytime. There are no real rules about decision-making, so the result is anarchy.
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Direct democracy _cannot_ go beyond the issues the society has. In particular, it cannot solve problem with religion. But neither can representative democracy. And gay marriages are (unfortunately) a religious issue in the US.
There exists similar examples like this from Switzerland. However, in general, people are happier there and trust each other more. There exist excesses both in representative and direct democratic systems, but there is less of them in the latter.
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I looked there, it was mentioned already, but honestly, I don't believe that consensus is going to work better than majority voting. I have several reasons for that:
1. I believe consensus scales a lot worse than majority voting.
2. If there is no consensus, then a status quo is preserved, which may be minority opinion - thus, in effect, enforcing minority rule over majority. This I consider worse than the dreaded "majority rule over minority".
3. There are no clear rules when the consensus has or has not been
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The third and fourth basic principles [metagovernment.org] are designed to address these concerns.
Without consensus, there is no law. Yes, that means that a minority can stop a majority from imposing tyranny of the majority onto the minority. That sounds like a good thing to me. But it only allows a minority to have a negative impact, not a law-making impact. In the status quo, we often see minorities getting laws passed in their favor (by gaming the system). Here nothing gets to be law unless it can attain a consensus.
Also not
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Well, while it maybe addresses some of my concerns, it is still very vague. If the rules are vague, then there always exist a possibility that some group will game the system. The fact I can't predict (and I am quite smart, I think) how much decision power each person will have in this system really repulses me.
On the other hand, maybe the system really is just majority voting, with some additional precautions taken so that greater majority can be reached in certain special cases.
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Yes, that means that a minority can stop a majority from imposing tyranny of the majority onto the minority.
I thought about it and here is a problem with this idea: You are basically giving minority more power just on the basis that it is a minority. The problem is, the average person from minority can also be more powerful than the average person from the majority. If we would assume that everybody has the same probability of being powerful in the society, then the optimal level of power we should give to a minority would be proportional to its own size. Which is majority voting.
So, to sum up, I don't think givi
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(from previous post) Well, while it maybe addresses some of my concerns, it is still very vague
The software is in early alpha. We intend to have a demo out in the next couple of weeks. At this point, it is not surprising that it is vague. We expect it to solidify very gradually as we make inroads into other communities. We are in no rush to impose our view of how the world should work, but rather want real-world communities to adapt the software as seems workable to them. You (and everyone else) are quite welcome to join us [metagovernment.org].
I thought about it and here is a problem with this idea: You are basically giving minority more power just on the basis that it is a minority.
Sorry, that's how I stated it and that's one one way of looking at it, but mi
Anything which threatened the current system (Score:5, Insightful)
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I believe that it's a lot more subtle than that.
There are certain issues that can make people really angry, and could be in principle used to pass more democratic laws. However, what happens in such cases is that the current powers will much rather compromise on the specific problem than to allow more democracy (which could cause them more problems in the long run). So it's not impossible to fight for, but democracy itself needs more awareness among people not to be satisfied with such compromises.
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Monitoring is not an issue. Monitoring does happen (thanks to free speech). The problem is power. People don't have power to change things easily when something goes wrong.
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Nice to see someone thinking along these lines... (Score:5, Interesting)
..as I have been thinking about such system too.
I wanted to map laws that are passed in Czech parliament to simple statements (such as "increases taxes", "limits freedom of speech") and then anybody could create their own profile and test this profile against all the laws that have been passed, and this would be connected to parliament voting data to select which party he should vote for. And all the data would be publicly available (except for the personal profiles, of course), so anyone could reproduce the result.
Also, I have been thinking about social networking. It would be cool if we could get past the reputation systems that just have a reputation as a single number, and we could also measure reputation depending on how the reputation is connected among people; so it would be impossible for an isolated group of people (connected to single entity) gain high reputation by giving high reputation to each other.
I like what these people are doing, and I applaud them for trying to make the system more democratic.
Re:Nice to see someone thinking along these lines. (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Meta Government [metagovernment.org] is good answer. It's not too advanced yet, but worth mentioning.
Of course! Cross Hollywood with Silicon Valley! (Score:2)
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"Join 'Amend der constitution for me.' 100,000 members. Dis time it's personalized."
"Constitution" (Einrichtung) is feminine (die), and german speakers tend to fake "th" with "s" when speaking english rather than d, though equivalent german words tend to replace "th" with "d". e.g. to think becomes "denken".
HTH
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Software can't fix human nature (Score:3, Informative)
You simply have to understand that the more power you give politicians, the more corrupt they will become.
The real question... (Score:2)
Can software solve the human problem?
Sarah Connor might say yes.
Should a statesman lead or follow? (Score:4, Interesting)
The article has a definition of statesman I like:
It's also an important function of government to be a statesman and that's one of the things I think that's lacking in modern government these days is very rarely do you ever see a politician actually being a statesman anymore, being the middle ground that several different groups come to when they're diverging on topics to find a middle ground. One of the things I've been working on is tools to help enable that.
Often strong leadership is identified with a politician forcing through what they think is best, despite opposition. However in a democracy I see the role leadership as arguing strongly for you believe in, but then letting the people have the final say.
I'm actually in favour of having each (lower-house) representative run regular referenda within their electorates to determine their vote in the legislature. In each referendum the representative is given one proxy vote for each constituent who didn't cast a ballot, preventing control by a vocal minority.
To allow constituents to debate and be informed about issues, without the information overload talked about in the article, a system like my Make the Case [makethecase.net] site could be used to build and preserve a closely-argued community memory on important topics.
Ways to get involved in civic-technology projects (Score:5, Informative)
There is a growing but now well-established community of techies focusing on this at the federal level, especially for the U.S. Congress. There are open-source projects like my GovTrack.us http://www.govtrack.us/getinvolved.xpd [govtrack.us] and oGosh!: Open Government Open Source Hacking http://wiki.opengovdata.org/index.php/OGosh [opengovdata.org] and on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=45606565313 [facebook.com].
There's no end to what techies can do to work on improving civic life. I really encourage you to check out any of those links to get involved.
Political harrassment pander (Score:3, Insightful)
"politicians seem to pander to contradictory focus groups to get elected"
Can we PLEASE stop using the content-free scare word "pander". When 'they' do it, it's 'pandering'; but when 'we' do it, it's 'remaining true to our core values and not selling out'.
The real word is "represent". That's what a representative does, you know?
Shock, horror: there are groups of people *who hold different political views to you!* Oh noes! And they have *political representatives*! Noooo! Pandering! Obviously their representative is completely devoid of a moral compass and is only cynically using those people with their silly beliefs. They can't actually *hold* those beliefs, surely.
Actually, no. That's not how it works. People have concerns; they elect representatives who share those concerns, and speak to them. When that happens, that's democracy *working*.
If you don't like a certain group of people's polical views, by all means attack those *views*, but don't attack their elected representatives for correctly and honestly representing the differing views of their constituency.
Amazingly Enough... (Score:2)
AltaVista's Babelfish never did set off World War III as many feared it might, due to it's horrifically bad translations.
Re:How Social Software Can Improve Democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, people don't seem to realize there are hardly any real democracies in the world, only republics.
Either you must be using some strange definition for the word republic that I'm not familiar with, or you're excluding countries which certainly are not republics, like the UK, Australia and other countries in the monarchy, and many other countries around the world which are not republics.
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Also, people don't seem to realize there are hardly any real democracies in the world, only republics.
Either you must be using some strange definition for the word republic that I'm not familiar with, or you're excluding countries which certainly are not republics, like the UK, Australia and other countries in the monarchy, and many other countries around the world which are not republics.
Uhh... No. The Magna Carta swept away the monarch's power and made the UK a Republic - that is, requiring the monarch to recognize the rights and powers of Barons and leading to a Parliamentary government. Today, members of the Parliament are voted into office by the citizens, clearly making the UK a Republic. The title of the head of state doesn't matter. Whether there is a King or a Prime Minister or a President, if there is a body of representatives that make laws, and an instrument to hold the head
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Umm, did you really just say that? First, the UK didn't exist in 1215. Second, there is absolutely no way in which you can argue that England has been a republic since 1215.
But you claimed the UK was not a Republic, which I refute. The Magna Carta was the end of any true Monarchy for England, and lead to the current republic-style government of the UK.
The point is, the GP was correct: most countries are actually organized as republics. Your claim about the UK, Australia, et.al. being monarchies is fallacious, because they are MINOs (Monarchies In Name Only).
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Re:Improve the Republic .. not the democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand your objection about direct democracy. If you don't think voters are rational or worse as leaders, why have democracy at all? I think people who don't want direct democracy actually don't want democracy at all, they just either don't say it in open or don't realize there is a logical inconsistency in their statements.
By the way - I am from Europe and believe that the reason why USA was so much advanced is really the fact they had very advanced democracy (in some cases direct) on national and local level. If you had direct democracy on federal level, maybe you wouldn't have any problems you have now with war and debt.
About your constitution - your founders may have been wrong. They were just people, anyway (they also didn't consider women and other races equal to white males). And at the time, there were no practical results with direct democracy. But they are now, and show very good results (increased happiness, better budget management, higher voter turnout, etc.).
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If you don't think voters are rational or worse as leaders, why have democracy at all?
Voters may be intelligent and rational, but they are not informed. They don't have time to be informed on every issue. Most of us don't have time to be educate ourselves about every single thing that a modern government needs to understand, so we pick representatives who don't have to do anything other than learn about them and then make decisions.
Think how many people believed Iraq was behind the World Trade Center attacks. Would you want the average man on the street making decisions about foreign pol
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Re:Improve the Republic .. not the democracy (Score:4, Informative)
It's actually amazing how many Americans don't understand the roots of their foreign policy. If you would have direct democracy, Osama bin Laden would never plan 9/11 - he wouldn't know who the Americans are.
Also, people believed connection between 9/11 and Iraq because George Bush lied and emphasized it. And you are going to blame common people, rather than him, for that.
So instead of doing something with the leaders that give people incorrect information, you argue that people who were deceived by incorrect information are the danger. This "sleight of mind" is getting really old and boring.
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As long as people are believe what they are told, without applying critical thinking and seeking multiple sources then they should not be directly involved with running the country.
Who should run the country then? Surely not the people who are feeding other people with incorrect information?
And of course, the basic question remains - why would you allow such stupid people to vote at all - when they cannot decide the issue, how can they decide who decides correctly?
Also, this poses another interesting problem. There are people who are critical thinking in one area and not in another. What would you do with them, can they decide or not?
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In the US at least, and in theory, the ability of one branch to totally fuck up is limited by the other two branches. In a direct democracy, however, you have one branch (the people) with seemingly absolute power.
It's all
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People are no "branch". People are just people. It's their responsibility. If they fuck up, they'll fuck up. And they will also bear the consequences of such fuck up.
The qualified decision problem can be easily solved. People ask experts about their opinion, but the ultimate decision is in people's hands.
The other things you are talking about have been empirically proved as false.
But, I don't believe you can be convinced otherwise, if you are talking about your fellow citizens as of "the mob".
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I think you're being naive here. You seem to be under the delusion that (a) everyone researches all of the issues, or has the capability of identifying a non-biased, non-partisan expert that they can use to guide their opinion; (b) that everyone is capable of acting rationally instead of emotionally; and (c) people won't be selfish when it comes to public policy. What do you think a direct democracy would have done
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Well, I have already answered the above objections in other my remarks around here. My main point essentially is that direct democracy has been already tested for a long long time and it has been proven to work better than representative democracy, contrary to your hypotheses. If you want more details (and references), read this book [democracy-...tional.org]. Also, if you want some proof that it works better, I recommend this study [iandrinstitute.org].
Sorry for being so harsh, I have some 30+ replies under this article and it's becoming boring to repe
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Consider that in the US, we had an elite craft some restrictions and guarantees in the US constitution. Time and time again, the majority has attempted to pass laws, frequently on an emotional basis, that conflict with those guarantees. Our system of government can prevent these things from doing any damage, but only because we have another elite (a judiciary) keeping things consistent.
And you seriously believe that this system works, in the light of recent Bush's scandals (which are too many to list, and I don't really care about your president, but for example, secret emails, government spying program, lies about WMDs in Iraq, etc.)? Who is then being naive?
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I think the heart of our disagreement here is that you seem to believe a government should do nothing but reflect the will of its people, which is what a direct democracy is good at. I think a government should make reasoned, rationally defensible, public policy. In an ideal world, these are the same, and both goals are possible, but the US is far from an idealized country. We have a huge polarization of views, and our most heated disagreements are about issues that center around faith and religion, not
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The polarization of political views is due to your party system, which emphasizes differences between people and neglects the similarities. It is also generally useful for people in power to divide population as much as possible. You (as citizens) have to realize and fight that division.
It's true that DD doesn't solve all problems, but it solves all problems at least a bit better than representative democracy. The same arguments you have could be raised at representative democracy, and for any irrational de
I'd rather be without democracy... (Score:2)
Personally I'm not having a hard time seeing that indirect democracy is not perfect either. But on the other hand it's probably the only thing that really works.
As it make people think their vote matters and that they rule... When in reality it's probably almost completely random who gets elected... and the ones that does get elected feels a
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Well, when direct democracy supporters (like myself) talk about "direct democracy", they mostly mean "semidirect democracy" ala Switzerland. Still think it cannot be implemented?
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There exist examples like that - some of the states with direct democracy in the US, I believe - had the taxes increased with referendums.
Moreover, it has been shown statistically both in US and Switzerland that direct democracy enforces a better balanced budget, and budget savings of 10-15% have been reported.
The references can be found in a free book I already mentioned somewhere else in this discussion.
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"I am from Europe and believe that the reason why USA was so much advanced is really the fact they had very advanced democracy (in some cases direct) on national and local level."
I am also from Europa and I believe that the reason why the USA was so much advanced is really the fact that they are a country with over 300 million people, vast amounts of land, leader of one camp in the Cold War and the fact that they are able to amass massive amounts of debt because oil is mostly traded in us$. But that's just
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Just to clarify, I meant advanced with respect to our country (Czech Republic), not Europe in general. In many respects I consider some west and north European countries more advanced today. However, it's also true that lot of states in US have implemented direct democracy on local or state levels a lot sooner than many European countries. Unfortunately, the progressive movement wasn't able to implement these measures on federal level (it was hindered by involvement of US in the first World War); if they wo
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>And at the time, there were no practical results with direct democracy.
There were historical examples, from Classical civilization. The founders of the US were familiar with that era, and the Federalist Papers are full of examples of how some specific idea played out in some Greek city-state.
Now that we have universal literacy and an awesome information network, direct democracy has more of a chance of working. But there are still issues, two of which are:
1. Who sets the agenda? Who decides what questio
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Oh, ok, that's right, there was classical Greek example. I am not sure if they really knew that such a system was worse than some other system of the era, or they just believe Plato.
About your questions:
1. In Switzerland, if you gather certain amount of signatures under a petition, then you get the binding referendum about the issue. There is also a way to vote retroactively on certain issues, so the government can decide quickly. I don't know the details, but I know it works. If you are American, you shoul
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Of course the abundant resources and rich farmland clearly had nothing to do with it...
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It surely helped, but the key there is something called "social capital", described in the book I mention in other replies. It is basically general trust of people with each other. The countries that have larger social capital tend to be more advanced, because cooperation is the cornerstone of human society.
Of course, this trust must be supported by an efficient legal system, which quickly deals with cheaters of any kind. Unfortunately, in the last 30 years or so, this legal system deteriorated in the US, s
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Czech Republic. Our country is much less democratic than the US (or most of Western European countries), and it shows a lot. Even though the situation got a lot worse in recent years in the west too.
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And where would you put Switzerland on that scale?
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Well, in a real world, if such situation occurs, a person with common sense would immediately solve it by serving all the 3 meals. So this only proves that economists are missing it.
Anyway, even if you would came up with more practical example (one where compromise is not possible), how can you say what is "real progress" in society? This is a very elitist statement in itself. Is better society with no "cycles" where all the people are unhappy? Or society where everybody always does the most optimal thing,
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OK, even if I would consider this infinity low probability event that this would go on forever, this really isn't an argument against direct democracy, it's argument against anything that isn't a dictatorship. The exactly same thing can occur if you have 3 people in the government.
Since the disadvantages of dictatorship with respect to democracy are well known, I wouldn't consider it being a big deal.
The influence of Arrow's theorem in practice is really overstated. I don't see that anyone could point out a
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And if they won't approve the leader, then what? Practically, the result is the same. Either you get deadlocked, or you have to pick one possibility. You may also use a coin, which is about the most fair method there is. But still, it's all very theoretical situation. It's like saying that mathematics is complete failure and nothing can ever be proven, because of Godel incompletness theorems.
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This is solved by direct democracy. In direct democracy, you vote about the laws directly, so you directly control that the laws you want are passed.
Note this is simpler (thus superior) solution to having court decide if the politician kept his promise. In such a system, whoever would control the court would control the politicians. Then you would have to vote about people in the court, and you couldn't rely on them either. So in comparison with direct democracy, you would have an additional set of people a
Re:Improve, not fix (Score:5, Insightful)
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In practice, this is not a problem for several reasons:
1. If you are not interested in the issue, you just don't vote - it's as simple as that.
2. If you are interested, you are going to get the information. And there are simple solutions to this problem too - for example, in Switzerland, every voter receives a summary which contains details and debate points about the legislation they are voting about.
3. If someone is completely ignorant, then he votes randomly, and effect of such people in voting will canc
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In fact, that's not clear at all. For example, our country has been building a new nuclear power plant. There was a question whether we should build it or not. Most people (about 70% IIRC) supported building it. The negative voices were mostly (financially) supported by Austrians, because they have hydrodynamic energy from Alpine glaciers and don't need nuclear power.
Anyway, now it's actually questionable if it was good or bad. CEZ (the energy firm that built it, which has almost monopoly on energy creation
Fix, not vote (Score:2)
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Such a license would not be Open Source and would not be Free Software. It would be a proprietary, non-commercial, license. There are already numerous licenses along these lines. The Open Source community would not benefit from a new license that was not Open Source, it would not be affected by it in any way.
There are open source projects which aim to support charities, such as Vim, which takes money to help Ugandan children but is released under the GPL. What you are describing isn't really charity
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No, you are quite wrong. No Free Software or Open Source license is per-user. They are distribution licenses, not end-user licenses. It is one of the fundamental principles of F/LOSS that you do not need a license to use the code, only to distribute it.
Besides is there really that much difference to e.g. Sun/MySQL's GPL lisenced free software? MySQL has been selling commercial licenses for "corporate users" for years. Charity open source license just has that as a build-in feature.
MySQL is not selling end user licenses to corporate users. They are selling commercial licenses to people who want to distribute their software and make derivative works but who do not wish to abide by the GPL. No one requires a license to use MySQL f
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douchebag: i don't believe in private property.
me: ok, give me your shoes.
douchebag: no, they're mine!
(i actually had this conversation irl)