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Comment by Inthenameofmine | Hacker News Reader

> We haven't figured this shit out yet. Kings anyone? How about the best wrestler gets to be in charge? ideas?

As a Swiss citizen, I think the swiss system is very close to perfect in this regard.

Sure, emotional and stupid arguments sometimes prevail, but most of the time the people make the perfect decision. Public discourse is most often also very rational, more so than most world parliaments.

Irrational arguments have been a staple of especially the British political system. I am amazed at the low level of discussion in the UK even by their representatives.

Direct democracy is something that has to be done regularly, otherwise you end up with situations like the UK or California.

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> Direct democracy is something that has to be done regularly [...]

I think there's a lot of truth to this. When referendums are seldom, I believe there's a real risk of them turning into spectacle. (And at worst, a weapon for use by nationalists and fascists, like what happened in Germany in the 30s.)

When they are regular, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires some work to call, they might just work. But that also kind of assumes an informed electorate, which is perhaps the main point here – the electorate hasn't been very well informed, either way.

> When they are rare, and limited, and like in Switzerland not something pulled on a whim but actually requires some work to call, they might just work.

In Switzerland you essentially vote on 2-5 issues every quarter. I think this very regularity has educated the people.

It also helps that by law, if you vote on a proposal that would increase spending, you aso vote on how much your taxes increase. In the case of the Gotard Tunnel it was 1.6% increase in income tax for several decades (if I'm not mistaken). Swiss even vote on buying fighter jets, etc. You would be surprised how well it works.

All that said, the swiss constitution actually states that it is the job of the government to make sure the people have a good standard of living. So many social policies which would be difficult to get through constitutionally in lets say the US are rather simple in the Switzerland.

My only big nitpick in the swiss system is the lack of minority protection an little to no checks and balances by the supreme court on referenda.

Sorry, that should say "when they are regular" – not rare. Have edited my post.

Do you find the regularity of referendums naturally makes people more inclined to be educated on the issues at hand? Anecdata obviously, but nevertheless interesting.

Most definitely, yes.

That, and the fact that there is no real parliamentary opposition vying for as many populist points. (see my other comments in this thread).

The UK is a much more divided society than Switzerland, in terms of the base level of income and education. The median income in Switzerland is double that of the UK. Education is harder to compare, but you can't really expect the same level of discourse

I remember listening to a Ted talk where the speaker basically said, Get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.

Get hold of a copy of Tony Judt's Ill fares the land. It has references to the correlation between inequality and many measures of 'problems' and tries to make the case for a causal link. Also explains philosophical background.

Thank you for the recommendation. I will check it out.

Certainly large amounts of some kind of equality is needed for a democracy to work.

Barely!

The point in discussion, everyone likes equality in a way they having it, without they having to do anything about it. Or in other words making the rich poor in some way. Wasn't this what communism was all about.

The real issue is equality in access to basic resources, which is by and large there already. Beyond this you need to let people win and lose on merit.

You don't go around paying the same money for a haircut and brain surgery. That sort of equality doesn't work. Or to be more precise that's inequality of a very worst kind.

>get income inequality in check by whatever means and most of your problems go away.

Is that a cause or an effect though? As in, if your society evolved in such that "most problems" don't exist or aren't serious, then maybe as a consequence there isn't a lot of income disparity. But that doesn't necessarily hold in reverse. Making incomes equal by some method doesn't necessarily make the problems go away.

https://philoofalexandria.wordpress.com/2010/09/25/reynolds-...

It's also very hard for a poorer or even middle class immigrant to move to a place like Switzerland because the cost of living is so high. This creates an environment of unanimity you wouldn't see in more diverse cultures like the U.S. or the U.K. I think that's largely why Switzerland and the Scandinavian states get accolades from U.S. politicians (not as much division.) But they don't seem to get that the cultures are no where near as diverse and thus the politics are not anywhere near as divisive.

That's not a criticism of diverse cultures, more of states living in relative unanimity being in a bubble.

Well, it's not like the swiss didn't have their fare share of ethnic issues in th past. Keep in mind that Switzerland is linguistically diverse.

The difference is that because of direct democracy and every male being armed to the teeth, the government steps in and tries to reduce inequality. That way democracy works again. I mean, Jura used to have straight up ethnic riots.

It's also not like your 'perfect' system wasn't financed by of the dirtiest money humanity has ever seen.

Switzerland should be compared with their closest money ~handling~ competitors : Cayman Islands and the Channel Islands.

>that's largely why Switzerland and the Scandinavian states get accolades from U.S. politicians (not as much division.)

I have to disagree with you. I have a lot of friends in Sweden that do nothing but complain about the immigration crisis they are facing. In fact one of my Swedish friends is here in the US now looking for a job because immigration has become such an issue in Sweden. She can name many immigrants she knows that are collecting more in welfare from the Swedish Government than what a Doctor makes... That's kinda fucked up if you ask me...

I don't disagree with you in terms of -now-, I mean historically. The Syrian refugee crisis has changed demographics in Europe in a way that I don't think we've yet seen the full ramifications of.

Oh we do, it's just you're called out as racist when you point it out.

See, that kind of comments don't contribute anything to the conversation.

All you're doing is portraying yourself as a victim and hijacking the issue back into the bullshit "are we too pc" debate again, which quite frankly most people are already sick of.

In Sweden: Swedish citizens really are the victims and their society has become too PC. It's not like here in the US.

If you hang a Swedish flag outside of your house you are automatically deemed a racist by your community. ANY semblance of pro-sweden is viewed as unfair by the immigrant community because they aren't swedish, because they aren't included. They've create a culture of everyone is a victim, citizens and immigrants.

It's really a fucked up situation. A situation I hope never comes to the US.

> She can name many immigrants she knows that are collecting more in welfare from the Swedish Government than what a Doctor makes...

Really? I have seen plenty of claims like that, and every time, they turn out to be false.

And how much exactly does a "doctor" make? Lönestatistik.se lists between 12k and 180k SEK/month. Quite a span.

So your friend can't get a job because... there are immigrants who are collecting more in welfare than doctors? Is that how welfare works now?

You've somehow managed to put the phrase "they're stealing both our jobs AND our welfare" unironically in the same sentence, kudos.

> The UK is a much more divided society than Switzerland, in terms of the base level of income and education. The median income in Switzerland is double that of the UK

There's also the population size difference. London alone is larger than Switzerland, and that's not even all of England, let alone the whole UK.

In the British Parliament, there are lines which separate the MPs on the two sides. These lines are a bit more than two swordlengths apart, to prevent them from stabbing each other.

Wouldn't it be enough to have them just a bit more than one sword length apart? I suppose that's part of the reason for the London housing crisis.

And the Speaker has a nice big heavy club just in case...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/82544.stm

This is regarded as a bit of a myth. Search for swords in this official PDF https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-offi....

MPs have never been able to carry weapons in to the chamber so if it was a rule it's a bit silly (which doesn't mean it's not true given how silly the rest of the UK democracy is).

They do still, to this day, have a loop on the cloakroom for hanging their swords on though so it's not totally out of character.

Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.

This is a curious claim, so I did a little checking.

It turns out that Switzerland is smaller than the Los Angeles metro area both in GDP and population.

Are you sure?

It seems it's comparable in size, but not smaller

Take a look http://mapfrappe.com/?show=40241 (it's a rough sketch of Switzerland but the size should be right)

Edit: yes, I think parent meant population, not actual size

You're right that Switzerland is physically bigger than the LA metro area. I didn't compare land masses.

Edit: Also, Wikipedia is possibly a better source for comparing sizes of landmasses.

>Switzerland is also much smaller than the UK or California in most respects.

This comes up all the time, especially in "Why can't the US do X?" discussions but isn't it just the equivalent of shouting down with "That will never scale!"

Of course it might not be exactly the same. Maybe the bigger country will need more servers spun up or a tweaked algorithm (to continue the analogy), but just saying a country is smaller doesn't mean things are a No before even being tried. I'm assuming there were railroads across other smaller countries before the US had the transcontinental railroad too.

Maybe the bigger nation just shouldn't be so big?

Hence, the "states" part of "United States".

It was my understanding that the effectiveness of direct democracies has been inversely related to size of population throughout history...

So, specifically in the context of discussing direct democracy, size does matter.

That is a good point, but, how many of those democracies took place in the era of fast communication by locomotive, telegraph, email, SMS, the long distance phone call, Skype, and others? Surely there is a difference between the Roman Empire being stretched and sending messages by foot and FDR addressing the US by radio.

This is a fair point, but the largest issue (IMO) wasn't directly related to communication time...rather it has been the risk of Tyranny of the Majority.

Even in the relatively recent founding history of the United States, the Federalist Papers discuss and try to address a variety of issues which can lead to this outcome.

And ultimately, I think this is what we see with the Brexit outcome and the current Trump campaign in the US. These aren't "new" concepts...throughout history we can see similar outcomes for similar events with similar reasons.

You raise an excellent point though, which is with the ease of communication in the modern era, why don't we have a more informed public? This is something I have thought about trying to tackle with a side dev project...but the issue is complex and difficult to address directly.

Side note, I believe the Roman Empire was a Republic, not a Direct Democracy :)

Nit pick: the Roman Empire was founded after the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar overthrew the senate.

> Nit pick: the Roman Empire was founded after the Roman Republic, when Julius Caesar overthrew the senate.

Nit pick: the Roman Empire, in one sense, was founded while Rome was still ruled by the Republic; in this sense, the Empire is the metropole-periphery arrangement with Rome proper ruling as the metropole and the various provinces as peripheries.

In the other sense (the sense of the Empire as a form of government within the Rome rather than the relation between Rome and the provinces), the Roman Empire was founded when Caesar Augustus was granted a variety of lifetime powers by the Senate.

In either sense, it was not founded by (or during the life of) Julius Caesar.

Switzerland also has a much higher literacy rate. That makes it a lot easier to get an intelligent decision from the public.

LA for example is only about 66 percent: http://www.laalmanac.com/education/ed33a.htm

As a Californian, I am genuinely curious what you think is the problem with California at the moment?

In Switzerland referenda are a very institutionalized and regular decision making tool. It is mostly used to get rid of political gridlock and making sure special interests don't filter out the will of the people (director proposal). That, combined with the fact that in Switzerland there is no real parliamentary "opposition" (everybody voted in forms the government) turns the whole game into a problem solving process rather than political one-up-man ship. You essentially don't need an opposition anymore to keep politicians in check, that's what the people are for.

Ballot props are far more regular in CA than headlines suggest. The requirement for signatures keeps dropping as voter turnout drops, and it doesn't take that many resources to get something on the ballot. An appealing title and description make it fairly easy to get a lot of maybe not so great spending passed, despite reasonably good efforts to keep voters informed. I don't know that the overall function is that different from what you describe, given that there isn't really a strong opposition party in the state, but it is hard to get the majority of people to really think critically about 5 different obscure spending packages.

I think he was referring to the madness that occurred from the governor recall and revote a few years back, which would be like a major referendum

Well for one, I hear it's on fire a lot.

I think the Swiss system is pretty good, but I don't know about the Swiss people. Are they smarter than other citizens? Are they less vulnerable to populist propaganda?

I also think this is something that works best on "smaller" scales - that is, not on the scale of France, or the UK, or Germany, but on the scale of Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, ...

Swiss culture is very small-c conservative, with heavy value on making rational, pragmatic decisions. It is no surprise that they have a system which reflects that, and performs well for that population.

Very conservative and paternalistic. Swiss women only got the right to vote in 1971. Is that indicative of a rational population?

Rational, democratic process can be conservative and slow to adapt.

I am amazed at the low level of discussion in the UK even by their representatives.

Here in the US, I find myself wishing political discourse would rise to the level of the UK.

Watching the BBC last night was like drinking better beer. I couldn't believe how much better it was, not just the broadcasters but nearly all the guests. The only bum note was the poor fellow who had to do a vaudeville act with hand-waving and silly magic graphs, and that was the one obviously CNN-derived bit.

We've had silly magic graphs for years!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/swingometer/

Here's a clip from 1979 http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/swingometer/11202.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8646445...

Oh dear, I'm sorry for misimputing the magic graphs. I did feel sorry for Jeremy; he looked like a giant stooping over the blue and yellow gardens of the little people. The rest of the broadcast struck me as brilliant relative to what we have to endure over here.

I'm from the UK, I'd definitely agree that the Swiss model of democracy is better than what we have here.

The only model I'd suggest that may be even better than direct democracy is liquid democracy (which is a close relative of direct democracy), but seeing as no countries have adopted it I'd say the Swiss model is the best example of how an effective democracy functions.

For those interested in learning what liquid democracy is, this is a brief introduction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8

I don't think I have a better alternative to direct democracy, but it's not perfect either. I'd like to point out that the Swiss system is very far from perfect for the same reasons other systems are. Did everyone forget about the horrible minaret vote?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_minaret_referendum,_2009

And that was a constitutional amendment referendum!

I've read Rousseau (who was Swiss) and was fascinated by his assessment that representative democracies lead to parties which lead to factions which leads to self-destruction; that the only viable form of Democracy was direct plebiscite, as often as possible. CH still operates this way.

A minor clarification: Rousseau was not Swiss. He was born in Geneva, but Geneva didn't join the Swiss Confederation until 1815 (many years after his death).

The first time women had the right to vote in Switzerland was 1971.

Quite far from perfect in my view.

Right, but all those are inherent to the people of Switzerland. The same system in, say, Italy wouldn't get those results.

A system that led to women not being allowed to vote until 1991 cannot be considered acceptable, much less perfect.

How about dynamic voting? Let voters change their vote in real time up to the final second or to a percentage cut off.

Mathematically, 1-(1/e) percent is the ideal cut off (~63%).

> Mathematically, 1-(1/e) percent is the ideal cut off (~65%)

What? can you explain?

(~63%)*

And yes, what? Do explain!

what part of California are you referring to?

Probably Marin.

They're referring to California's statewide referendum system so the answer would be "all of California".

well he's making it sound like a bad thing, so I wanted to know what exactly he meant.

Prop 8, for example.

Or Prop 13.

(for context to the unaware, these are generally regarded as terrible policies)

"generally"

Prop 8, officially titled Proposition 8 - Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry, was a statewide ballot proposition in California. On November 4, 2008, voters approved the measure and made same-sex marriage illegal in California.

On June 6th, 1978, nearly two-thirds of California's voters passed Proposition 13, reducing property tax rates on homes, businesses and farms by about 57%. The Environment Prior to Proposition 13. Prior to Proposition 13, the property tax rate throughout California averaged a little less than 3% of market value.

The most salient and controversial facet to Prop 13 wasn't the immediate rate change, but the cap on increases when a property was continuously owned.

To me worst part wasn't the cap itself - I think it's fair for residential properties, but that it was also applied to commercial properties.

The interesting thing about Prop 8 is, a few years later, the outcome of the vote has been totally reversed, same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and it now has solid majority support. The will of the people can change in a short time. You could imagine a similar outcome for the Brexit vote, if it weren't such a permanent change.

Probably the part where we can amend our state constitution with 50% + 1 on ballot initiatives.

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