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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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....

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.

> 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.

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.

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").

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.

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.

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