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Comment by brenden2 | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with the premise, but I disagree that any form of representative government is a good idea.

Direct democracy is the only real democracy, and there's no good reason why we don't have 100% direct democracy in 2019 aside from the fact that a bunch of wannabe celebs would lose their jobs (aka politicians).

Politics is mostly about self service, and boosting your own ego and influence. Politicians have historically not voted on legislation in ways that are aligned with their constituents. Instead, they vote on legislation which helps keep them in their positions of power (i.e., to appease lobbyists and campaign contributors).

There's a good podcast about this very issue: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/481105292/more-perfect

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Having worked at reddit, I can tell you first hand that direct democracy would never work.

Imagine all of the low information voters you know being asked to vote on complex technical issues that even most representatives can't grasp, most of whom have completed many years of post-graduate college.

Direct democracy is great in theory but the representative part play an important role in balancing the flighty whims of the masses with reality.

I agree with this. We'd be on a slippery slope to idiocracy.

(Maybe we're already there!)

Have you met our politicians?

I have. Most of them are much more intelligent than the average citizen.

Being intelligent isn't enough, especially if they have their self-interest in mind rather than the will of their constituents.

Are you sure? I mean have you been watching the impeachment proceedings? Intelligence doesn't seem a virtue of congress at the moment or Trump would have senators from BOTH parties with pitch forks outside his door.

Sure, but they are similarly self-interested, if not more so.

Yet they manage to invent and vote for absolutely atrocious laws. I bet their intelligence is highly concentrated on improving their own agenda whatever that be rather than well being of general populace.

There is a better solution between direct democracy and (fixed) representative democracy. It is called LIQUID DEMOCRACY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy#:~:targetText....

That's a symptom of the system, not voters. Reddit doesn't exactly lend itself to informing people properly before asking their opinion on an issue, and it doesn't provide any way to vet or verify facts and information aside from crowdsourcing opinions via the up & down arrows (the "hive mind").

Direct democracy works well in Switzerland. It's shocking to claim that people are simply to dumb to know what's best for them. Given the opportunity many will educate themselves on the matter.

May as well be advocating for a benevolent dictatorship.

small highly intelligent populace works well for direct democracy, a largely stupid one does not.

Switzerland doesn’t have direct democracy. They have representatives combined with a referendum system.

Just like California. And that system has arguably caused many problems in California. The budget is a mess because of the referendum system. And California has a population four times that of Switzerland.

Even without having to resort to elitism, the theoretical advantage of representative democracy is that it slows down the pace of change. It attempts to keep legislation from being a reactionary yo-yo.

But, of course, it also allows the government to lose touch with the will of the people.

Do you want to be tried by a jury of people with no critical thinking skills? Do you want these same people making political decisions about which they don't understand anything?

Depends if I'm guilty or not.

If you're innocent and the prosecution has still decided to go to court you ought to be really scared.

In essence you are saying “low information” votes are harmful and should be discounted. Would you agree the vast majority of potential voters targeted with “get out the vote” campaigns are “low information”?

But they are voting for a representative,not.policy directly, and that is an important difference.

This bill would simply call for more representation. Not giving everyone a vote. Just increasing by a factor of 10 the number of reps in D.C. and spreading them out via remote work-at-home gigs instead of relocating them all to D.C.

> Imagine all of the low information voters you know being asked to vote on complex technical issues

Now imagine that you were expecting the sorts of people who become Reddit moderators to do that on behalf of all the low information voters. Well, actually, you don't have to imagine it because that's basically what we have with congress.

So you're saying only white male college graduates should get a vote? I mean you might as well say that. How about we give college away free so our 'masses' become high information voters instead?

The House of Representatives is only 75% white, which is less than the nation as a whole. So if anything, direct democracy would have more white voters.

And I agree college should be government funded. But that still doesn’t solve the problem of lack of interest.

My point was you're trying to limit who has a seat at the table of democracy. All should be allowed that right. Whether they're 'smart enough' or not. Shouldn't be for you or me to say. It's the same as allowing women the right, or blacks, or any other minority. When you consider a 'low-information' voter someone who shouldn't be 'allowed' to vote you denigrate them to a second-rate citizen, which causes resentment, which causes mistrust, which causes them to become the sort of people who disregard any truth in the media and put on foil hats.

If we instead focused on bringing MORE people to the table, increase diversity, you'll find diverse views want more/better education. Better education brings progress. I mean it's the educated who are touting climate change and it's effects not the uneducated. The uneducated believe everything on Fox news, while the rest of the world watches in disbelief.

But if those Fox news watchers wanted to run for one of 6k seats more power to them because they might learn something as a representative, maybe they'd even change their view points as they get mire in politics. Maybe they don't change. Warren, Scarborough, many on the left once were on the right and moved their entire view points. So it's possible to change political outlooks.

I don't think direct democracy would work but MORE representative would. direct would just be hard to control. Liquid democracy would be the ideal, but also a hard system to implement.

Voter apathy and lack of knowledge on the issues is one of the biggest hurdles to direct democracy, in my opinion. Voter apathy could be combated through easier voting methods and by simply required voting. The lack of knowledge is a far more complex issue.

There are many issues that our representatives vote on that are impacted by knowledge that the general public does not and likely should not have. Top secret information does have purpose, even if, in many cases, it has be twisted for a small group to maintain power.

May be worth reading the Federalist papers. I’m doing so now and the Founders go into why they didn’t think direct democracy would work at any scale. Didn’t even really work at the city-state level in Greece.

Who picks what we vote on in this scenario?

So individuals should be expected to understand and vote on every issue that comes up?

Yes. That's the actual definition of democracy, and what the term and the institution was created for (in ancient Athens).

Citizens should be expected to keep up with affairs, understand issues, and vote on every issue that comes up.

They don't have to be experts on issues: actual experts can present the different sides of an issues. Judges are not experts on the things they decide over either (neither are jurors), and a CEO is rarely an expert on the technicalities of the stuff their company produces.

Besides, it's irrelevant whether they "correctly" understand an issue or not. Since the result of a vote affects them too, they should get a say, like everybody else.

Democracy is not some process to select the "right" decision. It's a process so that everyone participates with their choice in the decision.

That's your definition of democracy. It's not how it is generally used today, because it doesn't work in anything of any size.

As for the meaning of the word, it simply means that the people are ultimately the ones that are answered to. Just because you can imagine some ideal that you consider "more democratic" doesn't mean the rest of us have to use the word that way.

>That's your definition of democracy. It's not how it is generally used today, because it doesn't work in anything of any size.

Interesting. Did people actually tested this and showed that it doesn't work? Was anybody asked what system to use? Did anybody vote for it not to be applied (even through representative democracy)?

Where's the proof that it "doesn't work in anything of any size"?

And why can't this "anything of any size" be broken down on smaller pieces where it works?

Who said once in four years is ideal? Who asked for N congressmen and not more, and who tried it experimentally to find the right number?

>As for the meaning of the word, it simply means that the people are ultimately the ones that are answered to.

It was coined to refer to a specific system. Not any system where "people are ultimately the ones that are answered to".

In fact, in modern "democracy" people are not "ultimately the ones that are answered to". They're just the ones who get to select candidates put forward to them, once every four years. Nobody answers to the people. At best, you can do what you like, break promises, etc, and you just wont be re-elected.

In the original version you could be immediately thrown out of power, exiled, or even executed if the people didn't like any particular action you took at any moment.

>Just because you can imagine some ideal that you consider "more democratic"

It's not some "ideal", it's an actual instance of the thing as it was put in practice.

In fact it's earlier, more original, and more pragmatic than the current system.

Yeah ok. Write down your rules, maybe make a computer simulation or something. Then see if you can get anyone on board your plan.

I'd think a good starting point would be a local club or something. Don't elect officers, just vote on every issue. If you're lucky, you'll find that every issue you'd want to vote on easily distills down to a binary choice, and it will be obvious what the two choices will be, and what issues there will be to vote on. If not, maybe you can come up with some way to vote on what will be on the ballot. Maybe you'll find yourself rapidly descending down a rabbit hole, or maybe it will work out swimmingly. I'm sure we'd like to see.

Good luck!

>Yeah ok. Write down your rules, maybe make a computer simulation or something. Then see if you can get anyone on board your plan.

As if the current plan asked people to get "on board"?

You just go with the system that was there when you were born and what you were told to accept, and even learned to justify it as if God given.

"As if the current plan asked people to get "on board"?"

Well, the US system didn't happen without some degree of public support, but that's neither here nor there. A significant number of people had to be convinced that it was a good idea (i.e. better than what had existed before), and they were willing to hash through the details. Generally if the end result is to be a radical change in government, a whole lot of people are going to have to die. Historically, anyway.

"You just go with the system that was there when you were born and what you were told to accept,"

Well I've got a public history that goes back nearly 20 years that says otherwise. (see a few samples below). I am happy to say our current system is very broken. But any system I propose, I go to effort to show it is fairly well thought through. Notably, my proposals don't try to redo everything, but concentrate on something that actually could be changed realistically. Without a war, would be my preference. (and even if you are the type who says "I'm ok with war", well, you still kinda have to convince more than a few people to join your side)

So...I am very curious how you address some of the questions about how democracy (or, what I would call "direct democracy" as opposed to "representative democracy") would actually work. How do you decide what is on the ballot? (do you vote on that too? How?) Do you turn everything into a binary choice, and use a simple majority vote? Do you have more than two choices, and just pick the one with the most votes, plurality style? Or, better yet, rank them or do Approval voting?

And possibly most importantly, to what granularity are you going to go? When a decision is needed, such as whether to put up a traffic light (or just stick with stop signs) at a particular intersection, does everyone need to vote on it? How about a sick tree on the sidewalk, that needs to be removed or treated? Do you hire employees (i.e. representatives) to make decisions? Or does everybody need to vote on it? And again, what if there are more than two options?

My view is that all proposals for direct democracy I have seen are poorly thought through. (and tend to be proposed by dichotomous thinkers) I challenge you to write a detailed proposal up and defend it. (if you prefer, base it on a "starting from scratch" premise, here's one you can use: http://www.karmatics.com/petridish/ )

I suspect there is a reason it's never been tried at scale, because anyone who suggests it tends to run for cover when they are asked "what exactly do you want us to try?"

https://www.quora.com/Whats-so-bad-about-plurality-voting/an...

https://www.quora.com/Centrism-3rd-Party-Prospects-in-U-S-Po...

http://www.karmatics.com/voting/why-we-have-parties.html

http://www.karmatics.com/voting/voting-for-a-number.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiS2A0QLeJU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFbuBMdFSnA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbGwR8fbVYM

https://pianop.ly/voting/?poll=restaurants&user=dave

It's great idea in practice but will never come to fruition..some people don't want to participate...or maybe they're overworked and don't have time to vote on everything but still want a voice...

Liquid democracy works better...where I trust Bernie Sanders so I delegate my vote to him. Say he has 50 million votes, and Nancy Pelosi has 25 million... Sander's votes in congress on issues would be 2x more effective/powerful than Pelosi's.

If a politician votes against someone's interest they can revoke that person's voting power. It doesn't even have to be politicians..I could give my vote to a neighbor or friend or Bill Gates or Elon Musk.

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