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There is a whole existing structure to influence government decisions and policies.

First, there is are the Democratic and Republican party organizations which range from precinct workers up to the national committees. Typically, the only way to get elected to political office is to join and work your way up in the organization of whichever party is dominant in your area. Occasionally talented people join the non dominant party and win office, but it is rare.

Second are the numerous groups dedicated to advancing this or that policy. They have members, collect money, organize, and influence elected officials at the local, state and federal level.

Third are the various NGOs that work to influence policies in Washington. These include lobbying groups, think tanks, etc.

Fourth, money talks. If you aren't contributing to the political organizations and causes you believe in, you have very little influence in a democracy.

Agreed. Working democracy is not individual opinion poll.

In representative democracy voting in general elections is just small part of political activity. Surprisingly small amount of participation can have huge influence. Within political parties there are many influential positions where things are prepared and organized. When you get your say in the local chapter or some nationwide internal interest group, it really matters.

I joined a party in my country. While I participate very little I do it steadily. I have probably 5000x to 10000x more influence in politics than average voter who only votes. Maybe 3-5 times a year I vote online or go to meeting where representative are selected or agendas are set and vote for someone or propose someone to some position. I don't do any work myself. I just find out the people I want to do the work for me. I donate little bit or send a encouraging email to someone who I want to become more active.

Surprisingly small amount of grassroots political activity could completely change politics. It's just that people like to spend hours in the internet complaining about politics instead of taking part of it.

Democracy as it is designed in America doesn’t express the will of the majority, partially it was designed that way by the Constitution and partially because of corruption of the process via voter suppression and gerrymandering.

Because the states with the smallest population have two Senators just like the most populous states and the electoral college. People in the Midwest have far more voting power federally than someone in California.

It’s been shown time and time again in American politics that people will vote against their interest as long as the politicians can scare them with whatever the boogie man of the day is.

As much as it pains me to suggest this, the only answer is more states rights and taking power and funding out of the hands of the federal government and let the free market decide by having states compete with each other about what type of state they want. Yes, I’m acutely aware of what “states rights” means in the south. My (Black) parents grew up in the segregated south. If the federal government wasn’t “subsidizing” the same states that vote against “socialism” they would have to have more economically (not politically) progressive policies.

> If the federal government wasn’t “subsidizing” the same states that vote against “socialism” they would have to have more economically (not politically) progressive policies.

Restating, is this what you mean?:

Federal "subsidies" allow states that vote against "socially" oriented policies to avoid implementing more economically progressive policies.

(Hopefully this comes off as even handed. There are policies championed by the left and right that I don’t like).

No, what happens is that the federal government ends up subsidizing more conservative states in ways that benefit them - farm subsidies, “disability payments” for people who could work, but can’t do manual labor and would need job training, make-work military bases and other military spending that the military themselves are trying to get rid of but can’t because the civilian government doesn’t want to lose the jobs, etc.

Would states that are more welcoming of LGBTQ (who have higher income and education), have state provided health care (meaning a company could set up shop without paying for health care), taxpayer funded college/vocational education - attracting businesses and educated families, etc be more attractive than states that don’t?

On the other hand, what would happen in states that wanted to pull companies out of California (like Texas) that made it easier to build houses? More recently, if you are an independent trucker, the last place you want to live is California. The new law that passed has made it almost impossible for people who want to stay freelance/contract to do so. (http://www.dailynews.com/truckers-file-suit-challenge-states...)

Can you imagine a country where each state had to compete more vigorously for people?

Agreed, I didn't mean to imply that this would be revolutionary. But people who care about policy shouldn't be told to just vote, they should be told about the other mechanisms of influence as well, which are much more rarely discussed or brought up in this way.

This is (unintentionally?) a fairly strong argument against the desirability of democracy, at least as she is practiced in the US.

This feels like a Unix poweruser telling grandma why she doesn’t need Dropbox.

If you don't mind, could you elaborate on your opinion further ?

IMO power users in democracy (lobbyists, influencers and special interest groups) will always have more leverage unless the population is educated and informed enough to be skeptical to not associate with an identity or ideology.

The recurrence of such groups throughout history seems to indicate that this hasn't become part of our collective knowledge yet and I doubt if we will ever learn. Maybe the sense of collective identity is part of human nature.

> This feels like a Unix poweruser telling grandma why she doesn’t need Dropbox.

If you meant to imply that the "Unix poweruser" is likely to make a weak argument through misapplication their own narrow expertise to a domain outside of that expertise, I agree. If you mean that Unix powerusers as a group so regularly missapply their narrow expertise that I can't even take on faith that they're picturing a human being when they utter the word "grandma", I agree.

But then I don't understand the analogy to what you call a "fairly strong" case against the desirability of democracy. If you're unfamiliar with U.S. democracy from local to federal level, you should instead be assuming the OP wrote potentially true but incomplete (and, therefore, misleading) set of statements about a domain outside of whatever their narrow expertise happens to be.

For example, there are a lot of local and municipal governments in the U.S. where elections are non-partisan. That is, elected officials don't belong to or get funding from political parties. Further, the "advocacy" groups in these areas are ones that typically organize citizens on the local or regional level to serve the community's needs.

If you run the numbers on those voting districts you'll quickly realize that individual citizens there have a considerable amount of power to affect the conditions of the town or county where they live. A lot of those decisions aren't subject to outside manipulation and are mostly bound by a citizen's time, energy, and ability to persuade others of their position.

What I just wrote is completely compatible with what Merrill wrote. But the important point is that you didn't intuit it from reading their post.

> Regular elections pack together so many decision points into so few options that it's barely worth participating.

> If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on.

>> get them to talk to their representatives regularly

The average US representative represents more than 700,000 people. If people talked to their representatives regularly, representatives wouldn't be able to vote -- or sleep. Assuming "regularly" means "once a year", the poor representatives would be meeting upwards of 2,000 people per day.

I think this is related to the problem you identify in your first paragraph, that a US election packs too many decisions into too few options. The main issue is size: at the scale of the US, there are too many decisions for democracy to be able to resolve them. Democracy is a high-involvement, high-consensus approach that works on a small scale.

Which, I believe, is why states rights and autonomy are so important. The federal government wasn’t intended to be a behemoth overseeing half a billion people. It wasn’t to have any authority other than that afforded by the constitution. The balance was intended to be controlled locally at the state level.

When recently reading about the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the individual mandate I saw that 26 or so states were in support. That sounds great: to enforce at the state level. When it’s not a violation of human rights issue, I’d love for states to pursue these goals, then document and communicate them, build communities of ownership around them, and if/when they fail, provide experimental data to other states interested in pursuing that path.

Some states are better at this than others, but I would like to see increasingly liberal policies at the local level and more conservative policies at the federal level (personally).

Well, that's the problem with states' rights. The states then can do abhorrent stuff cause it's their right.

It's one thing if the state doesn't want people to be on the cell while driving. It's a whole 'nother issue when you have "blacks-only water fountains"... And having rights means you can do horrible things cause it's your right.

I'm not sure whom I trust more: the state or the feds. At a state level I see elected officials' religion seeping in everywhere, and that frankly terrifies me.

>It's a whole 'nother issue when you have "blacks-only water fountains"... And having rights means you can do horrible things cause it's your right.

The idea would be that the federal constitution would be amended when two thirds of the states agree to something, only with that larger majority would it then be ok to force all other states to honor the new will of the people.

Let's look at civil rights as a first example. The 14th amendment gives equal protection to all and served as the legal basis for the federal government to overrule those states that didn't agree, passing supporting legislation and even sending in troops where necessary.

Let's also look at national health care. This should be a state issue until enough states agree to pass an amendment, which would happen eventually. The constitution was never intended to allow transitory slim majorities in the federal government to make such drastic changes. Look at the mess created when every couple years that slim majority changes their mind and the law of the land.

I specifically said when it’s not a human rights issue. Federal decisions on human rights should absolutely and do override local laws.

> The average US representative represents more than 700,000 people.

That's because Congress capped the number of representatives. https://history.house.gov/Historical-Highlights/1901-1950/Th...

If they had not capped the number, we would have over 10,000 Representatives now. This would, of course cause problems, but when the house became too large to function, we should have added a third level of representation. But that would require Congress to relenquish some power, which will never happen voluntarily. Instead, Congress decided to solidify the power in the hands of the few, and to ensure that the voices of the many would be drowned out.

> If they had not capped the number, we would have over 10,000 Representatives now. This would, of course cause problems, but when the house became too large to function, we should have added a third level of representation.

This doesn't solve anything; assuming the top layer has the same 435 seats, you just see -- again -- that each seat is representing more than 700,000 people. Those people aren't represented better because of a layer of middle management between themselves and the top level.

Give it some more thought. By having a third level, your representative is only shared with another few hundred people, and you talk to him/her semi-regularly. And the 2nd level rep talks to that person regularly. And your concerns and values get heard and acted on.

Instead, in the current system, whoever has enough income or clout gets to talk to the Congress reps, and everyone else doesn't matter that much, because their vote can be bought with some well targeted political ads exposing the opponent as [insert unacceptable description here].

OK, you're one of just 900 people talking to your intermediary. And your representative has 900 intermediaries talking to him.

How does that improve your representative's ability to hear your opinions?

voting becomes weaker as the government gets bigger because you end up with an enormous not elected bureaucracy that in many cases is answerable to no one, especially the voting public.

worse it is self perpetuating , growing with each cycle, and siphoning off a lot of wealth and energy that could be used to make things better. in the US there are nearly eight million full time employees of federal, state, city, and local, governments. A good number wield no real power but you get into the administrative levels and then you find those who do wield it.

voting is like choosing what flavor icing you want on your cake but you have no guarantee of a cake. to truly make voting impactful more of the administrative state needs to turn over each cycle as well. hell some government agencies have their own courts

> Voting is such a weak control system, that it is obviously not enough. Regular elections pack together so many decision points into so few options that it's barely worth participating.

Yes, and then there is populism, which is in many places the biggest threat to democracy.

What is happening in the space of phones/social media looks a lot like populism.

> Yes, and then there is populism, which is in many places the biggest threat to democracy.

You think that a political movement defined by its emphasis on the people is a threat to the system of government whereby the government is chosen by the people?

I mean, just breaking down the two words etymologically should suggest a link between the two.

Populism is a form of government of catering to the whims of the majority, often by hurting some non-majority group (immigrants, etc). Like letting a board of directors loot a companies coffers, it is only a short term strategy that leaves a country poor and broken.

I don't like it any more than you do, but 'catering to the whims of the majority' seems more like an inevitable consequence of democracy than a threat to it. It's practically written into its definition.

> an inevitable consequence of democracy

This is why we don't typically practice direct democracy and instead have safeguards. The idea you're getting at is typically called "The Tyranny of the Majority" and is something the US founders were very cognizant of. It's why we have a split congress (house/senate), why we have the rights in the way we do (not given by the government but granted a priori to the government) and so on.

Populism can be a result of democracy, but is often times a way to subvert democracy and instead install a dictator. Thus why it's derided (on top of it's direct consequences) and why we should have safeguards in democracy.

It would be interesting to have something like a non-binding direct democracy where people vote on very low level issues. This way, the true "will of the people" could actually be known, rather the the current situation where the government and media pretends that it's known.

Even direct voting wouldn’t reveal the will of the people, because the issues are generally vastly more complex than the information supplied about them.

If my desire is to, say, eliminate the homeless problem, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to implement that as government policy, and anything up for a vote would almost certainly have intended and unintended consequences that are far beyond my ability to anticipate them.

E.g., California’s experimentation with direct voting. The long-term consequences of some of their votes have been tragic and definitely not what the voters would have thought they were voting for.

> Even direct voting wouldn’t reveal the will of the people, because the issues are generally vastly more complex than the information supplied about them.

Well sure, it wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a hell of a lot more accurate than the currently popular belief that who you vote for is necessarily substantially reflective of your actual beliefs.

> If my desire is to, say, eliminate the homeless problem...

Sure, but wouldn't it be potentially useful to know the degree to which people consider addressing homelessness a priority, or their beliefs in what the underlying causes are?

> E.g., California’s experimentation with direct voting. The long-term consequences of some of their votes have been tragic and definitely not what the voters would have thought they were voting for.

Are you suggesting that because one specific implementation was unsuccessful, it proves the idea cannot be successful?

That is a definition of unchecked democracy. It's the reason the U.S. government, for example, positions different powers at varying degrees of separation from the immediate will of the people: to protect the rights of groups that form a minority of voters.

I don't understand why so many people conflate democracy and freedom (as the headline of TFA seems to do). Real democracy only protects the freedom of the majority.

Can you define the word “populism”?

Us Americans have an impractical revulsion to lobbying and industry groups. Most Americans simply do not have the time and, at least until recently, are not too concerned what someone a state away does. Unfortunately, like you pointed out, voting isn't a frequent enough control mechanism on the authoritarians or simply narcissistic politicians ready to hand out favors. So, what do we do if lobbying and industrial groups are automatically not an option?

Agreed on voting. The Dem + GOP cartel has a stranglehold on the process, the market if you will. Their collusion (e.g., gerrymandering) has resulted in a system that perpetrates their lens and their power.

Put another way, just because you get to vote doesn't mean it was a true democratic process.

I've been thinking about this for some time. What if:

- we vote on topics instead of for parties - party affiliation ceases to exist at the national level (might still be useful for city counsils) - we vote for representatives standing for specific topics & solutions. After elections those representatives form working groups

What this would avoid: - huge senates voting on topics they're unequipped to understand - voting the party line

Obviously establishing such a system would require a massive overhaul of our governments, but I'd like to think there's something better than the currently existing democratic systems.

Having separate working groups make decisions on a single topic each doesn't work due to overlap. If the Committee of Environmental Protection and the Committee of Energy Production disagree about the correct amount to subsidize installation of solar panels, you need some way to arbitrate between them. Even if there's no overlap in topics, they'll still compete for their share of the total budget.

It's not like parliamentary systems don't have topical working groups already. If all members of a working group agree on a proposal and it fits within budget constraints, they can get it passed without much friction.

Huge senates voting the party line on topics they're unequipped to understand are the conflict-resolution process for when there's disagreement on a topic. Being affiliated with a party is a compromise where you vote with the bloc on topics you don't particularly care about in exchange for having the bloc vote your way on topics you do care about, but they don't.

Working democracy is not solved only by voting. You have to discuss, negotiate, learn and organize with other people. You need political people who learn the things under consideration, and what other people think. How to get a compromise that satisfies most.

If you vote for X and 60% votes yes, 40% no, those 40% are unsatisfied. Ideally you want negotiate and get a solution where X+b gets more than 60% of the votes.

What makes you think most people want this? I don't think it's coincidence that most people vote the party line consistently throughout their lives. I think they identify with a party and it becomes a part of who they are.

It sounds like you want something that encourages critical thinking. Call me cynical, but I don't think most people want to think critically.

https://www.salon.com/2019/10/12/voters-often-parrot-the-par...

> Research shows that party has more predictive power than anything else.

>If we really want to influence politics, we need to get rid of this idea that voting is all that democracy means, and try to get people more organized, try to get many more people to participate directly in politics, get them to talk to their representatives regularly, get them to organize and pool resources together for important causes and so on.

You think people have time and energy for this? If they did they could already do it.

Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall.

Not all people, obviously. But I'm tired of hearing that everything would be better if only people voted. People feel, correctly, that voting is not always an efficient way of influencing public policy. However, instead of hearing about all the other mechanisms which exist, they simply conclude that they can't influence public policy and abandon the stage completely. If we want to get more people involved in political matters, helping them find ways to influence what they care about with less effort than it takes right now would be the best way (not that I know what would be a real solution to that).

Democracy isn't dead because it got defunded.

> Usually you take the good with the bad and vote for the candidate that agrees with you on the issues that you care about the most, or the one that seems more reasonable overall.

How is that working out in the US?

I don't want to make an analysis of what's wrong or right in american politics. If someone got elected with the message they will burn down the house and everything and he doesn't care... I hope you read this message that after this presidency, you cannot go back to business as usual.

Even if "you" win in the next election, it's going to be more brutal in the election after that one. The EU countries know this and are already planning for an exit of the US on the global stage.