Direct democracy only works if most of the voters have:
1) sufficient general education;
2) sufficient domain education;
3) time to read the law;
4) time to reflect on the law;
5) peers to discuss at length and with depth the law;
etc.
It's more efficient to have delegation systems. The problem is that both politicians and the press are corrupted delegation systems.
Well, you can have delegates that are not actual politicians. Agora Voting [0] (a secure direct democracy platform) allows this kind of political systems... Seriously, there's soft out there that can solve this problem. Thing is nobody gives a shit about these issues and people is brainwashed in such massive scale that horrendous laws are passed w/o proper public scrutiny...
I'm optimistic on this, but we need to have these new systems tested on a small scale - villages, small regions and countries - first. A big country won't push for it... and I think that most of the problems of it might be less relevant on small groups. Think diversity of origin, opinions, detachment from the end result, who pays for it... these are problems for a big country that don't exist in, say, a condominium!
Do you happen to have a link to an overview on how Agora Voting actually works? Their homepage is way too vague for me to actually get any useful information out of it, and I'm not sure where exactly to look in the GitHub org/repos.
I agree. Important decisions shouldn't be left to easily manipulated masses. It shouldn't be left to politicians either. Most of these issues are so complicated that it should be handled by actual experts in that field. I'm always baffled to see politicians take offices/positions throughout their career that couldn't be more different - from agriculture to technology to foreign affairs. Are you telling me they can do it all? And even if so, wouldn't we be better off with actual experts?
I wish I could delegate my vote to a committee of my choosing, composed of people I respect, trust, and admire for their intelligence, integrity, and values. I would expect such a group to debate issues openly, and invite commentary from the voters. Something like a jury, but for a parliament.
There is no reason to go from one extreme to the other. People, who wants, can have direct democracy and the rest can choose anyone to represent them. Do you see any weak points in such organization?
You can be as snarky as you want, but the fact is, I don't want the average dumbass on the street to have that much power over my life, and neither, I suspect, do you.
There has to be something resembling meritocracy in any functioning organization, and that includes a government.
I'm aware of the ethical implications, and I haven't made my mind on the matter (probably never will). I just said that it's not a silver bullet, and presented cases where it could go wrong.
That looks like the author is not saying "they'd rule themselves wrong", they're saying "they'd rule me against my wishes by voting conservative reactionary and ineffective laws into my life"
The feeling is probably mutual, for what that's worth -- as evidenced by the first amendment and a wave of religious-freedom restoration acts.
Postscript.
You'd think a little geographic diversity and a federal system would let people let each other live in peace but instead we have national culture wars.
> We can't give the lesser peoples self-rule, they'd rule themselves wrong!!
I'd normally take your side on this, but then there's the fact that the Southern United States still exists and is a major reason why U.S. law borders on jingoistic theocracy.
Please take a look at what happened in Athens a few thousand years ago. You'll see that even then people were susceptible to fear mongering and manipulation, so in effect the real power was in the hands of a few. People has always been stupid, there's no way around that, sorry.
No, you have to understand how human nature works. Unfortunately, it is much easier to get people worked up about populist issues than about something that matters. I think the record speaks for itself.
You might as well put those who control the media in charge and just skip the middleman then. News runs story "Tor is how pedophiles get access to your children, here is a line of a dozen different 'experts' explaining how." Tor is then made illegal.
I dare say that with enough media backing, I could get dihydrogen monoxide banned. It does kill a lot of children. It has been shown to be very important to terrorist. Companies like to put it in food unregulated because it lets them add mass for cheap.
Direct democracy is what gave us lovely things like California's three-strikes law that puts people in prison for life for their third non-violent felony (voted in by public referendum 72-28).
