The biggest problem we have today is that uninformed people form such a large percentage of the voting pool.
The best solution I've heard so far: on the age of 18, you will be given the following choice: a free scooter, or voting rights.
The best solution I've heard so far: on the age of 18, you will be given the following choice: a free scooter, or voting rights.
Especially for a "master of puppets"/figurehead election like POTUS, the problem isn't "too many uninformed people", it's "too many topics in a single vote". Even assuming 90% of your voters are knowledgeable about 90% of the issues, they can't express any of their knowledge in that single button or pencil stroke.
The same is true for trying to "divine" meaning to the votes cast, as well: since every voter only expressed a single button press, it's easy to dismiss votes that don't align with your own views as uninformed.
You want elections with depth? Don't make voting mandatory (either socially or legally), and use topical voting instead of figurehead voting.
This is entirely feasible now with the internet. One of the primary assumptions which led to to the design of a representative republic which we have on paper was that it was impossible for everyone to assemble in order to vote on laws:
>In a large society, inhabiting an extensive country, it is impossible that the whole should assemble to make laws. The first necessary step, then, is to depute power from the many to a few of the most wise and good.
-John Adams, Thoughts on Government
I would say, though, that it would not be feasible given the current state of internet architecture. Internet infrastructure would need to become much more universally distributed and control would need to be relinquished by the current "internet gatekeepers" (i.e. Time Warner, Comcast etc.) as Aaron Swartz called them.
There is also the irony that in the US and elsewhere, the paper system is actively exploited and used as a means to make the electric system more insecure i.e. weakening/backdooring encryption.
With any new system, there will be technical challenges and unknowns that will be sorted out(ish) after trial and error as was the case with the Articles of Confederation which failed but then lead to the current longest lasting constitutional government today.
1.Minarets can no longer be built in Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009 2. Immigration quotas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...
I'm not an european citizen, have a job offer to work in a big tech company in Zurich and will not be able to get a visa even though I've got my Bachelors and Masters degree in Europe. Since the referendum passed, they're now requiring 3 years full-time work experience regardless of which education degree you hold.
"Transport for London is spending £1 Billion on improving cycle infrastructure."
Sounds brilliant. However.
"Transport for London is spending 0.7% of their yearly budget for the next 10 years on a transport that accounts for 5% of the travel in the city."
Or
"Transport for London are spending £1Billion out of £110Billion budget on cycle infrastructure."
All three statements are true. However the first statement is a better soundbite.
In New York bike tracks have improved the speed of traffic http://www.fastcoexist.com/3035580/new-york-citys-protected-...
so basically, a bit over 100 UKP per head, per year.
Yearly transport budget £15,714M (15.7B) Population 8.5M Cycling 5% of travel. Total spend per head per year = £1,848 Of which, spend on cycling = £13 Modal spend should be = £92
Total spend per head over 10 years £130 not £920
Note the social ROI on cycling infra (health benefits and productivity increase) is between 3-35 times the cost of investment.
This is a pet hate of mine: it's very easy to use it to make a number sound 10 times larger, for good or ill.
Collectively, everyone acting rationally produces unintended results. It's a weird phenomenon logically described here as the tragedy of the commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons. Even if you try to do something counter-intuitive, whatever choice you make as an individual is still inconsequential in terms of voting.
For example let's say it's time to vote. I live in california and I'm a democrat, the voting is probably gonna go blue anyway regardless of whether or not I vote. So why not choose the scooter?
Let's say I end up choosing the scooter. Then, when the results come out, I realize not enough democrats voted because they all went for the scooter. Thus the state actually ended up being red.
So I decide to take a hypothetical time machine back into time to change my decision. Now I choose to vote Blue instead of get a free scooter. Well guess what? the outcome is still the same; the rest of california still makes the same decision regardless of whether or not I vote. The difference is, in one scenario I have a scooter, in the other scenario I don't have a scooter... every other factor in both outcomes remains the same. Whatever choice I make from an individual standpoint the Logical choice is ALWAYS the free scooter.
In the end to make a better world there needs to be a sort of collective idiocracy, which is kind of what's going on in this thread right now: (You all think you guys are so smart because you didn't go for the scooter).
How about this: free scooter for anyone who votes democrat! That makes more sense (if you're democrat).
Knowledge of how politics actually works seems to be one of these areas of intentional ignorance.
A popular alternative comedian in the UK tried to argue (correctly) that voting was pointless under our gerrymandered, first-past-the-post, two party system and was broadly ridiculed by the establishment media.
He didn't really argue that well for it, but he's a comedian, the fact that they couldn't really present a valid counterpoint as professional political pundits was depressing.
The "prisoner's dilemma" is a quantitative/mathematically rigorous description of the same concept that came out later in 1992.
I would go with "Tragedy of the commons" over the game theory title since it came out earlier and is a much more readable article for the average layman! Also, "Tragedy of the commons" sounds more appropriate. Here's a link to the original article: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243.full
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
agreed.
but surely the natural solution is to increase the number of informed people (education, PSAs, 'nudging' people towards being more informed). not to disenfranchise the poor.
The poor often vote against their own interests [1]
So even for the poor, it is better to remove these voters from the voting pool.
[1] http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/opinion-why-the-poor-vote-against...
Another reason I've often heard suggested as helping poor people in the US vote fot politicians who won't help their financial situation is that of the "American Dream", the idea that anyone who works hard can rise up and become wealthy. People could think "sure, I'm only earning $20k now, but I don't want to raise taxes for the millionaires because it could effect me in the future".
I don't have any data (might have a google around when I have more time if I remember) but I'm pretty sure the US is fairly unique in how many of it's poorer population votes towards the right wing of the political spectrum, thanks largely, I suspect, to religious regions, and possibly the american dream idea. Here in Europe, working class people who vote towards the right are more likely to be doing it either about stuff like immigration into the country, or when far right parties make themselves sound like common sense honest people compared to typical misleading politicians. But generally speaking, you rather expect a strong corrolation between less wealthy going left and more wealthy going right.
When I speak to most people on politics they truly believe their candidate is better on almost ALL the issues, not just a core value they agree with. Whatever the underlying lever you believe turns a specific set of people to one political party or another, they have an annoying habit of also buying into the other BS the party will spout.
>> agreed.
>> but surely the natural solution is to increase the number of informed people (education, PSAs, 'nudging' people towards being more informed) not to disenfranchise the poor.
The conversation could enter a loop at this point.
Also, since the same groups that spread the ignorance in the article, are often very active in trying to disenfranchise the poor, either they are incompetent or they know quite well that there's things they want to push through that widespread democractic representation would prevent, even in it's current dysfunctional state.
And they could save all the money they spend convincing poor people to vote against their own interests, and use it to convince lower middle class people to vote against their own interests (at least until they can disenfranchise them too).
>Second, there is no evidence that “culture outweighs economics as a matter of public concern” among Frank’s working-class white voters. The apparent political significance of social issues has increased substantially over the past 20 years, but more among better-educated white voters than among those without college degrees. In both groups, economic issues continue to be most important.
Do the poor vote against their interests, or do upper-middle-class people in poor areas vote their own interests while suppressing the vote of the poor?
We need to promote reason, promote awareness of cognitive biases (as a result of our evolutionary past), and rid ourselves of this notion that "standing up for what you believe" (regardless of its validity) is somehow a virtue.
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Regard collaborative policy making as a form of data processing and you will recognize the triage processes used (by necessity).
Social cognition as applied to intractable complexity. Divide and conquer, just like economic specialization, is a problem solving optimization.
Aka, The Politics of Attention.
Direct democracy doesn't scale, copes poorly with subtleties. Representative democracy works pretty well, considering. But always benefits from more people participating.
Just to clarify, in case this comment will be read by idiots: discrimination is bad. Votings rights are good. Access to education for everyone is good. If you're thinking that I argue for return to "good old times of racism and sexism", you're a moron.
(You would think that people aren't as stupid as to misunderstand such comment. Unfortunately, you would be mistaken).
Once people rioted etc. to actually win the vote, more subtle approaches had to be found to continue doing whatever was in the interests of the well connected few. Having lots of uninformed voters distracted by fluff is one of those tactics.
Considering that 90% of voters have basically zero influence on the government, I think we wish that was our biggest problem.
51% of the voters may control 100% of the legislature (excluding staff) and executive (excluding appointees) but most of the government is not directly accountable to the voting populace.
As often as not, the winner doesn't have 50%+... and, in some circumstances, the "Winner" has fewer popular votes: Bush in 2000 had 47.8 to Gores 48.3 yet Bush got more Electoral Votes