Most budget/spending and political decisions by the government should be subject to approval by the people. Everybody should have a government login and could vote through a website or app. I wouldn't mind voting once or twice per day or even more, as it would be more productive and fulfilling than social media.
A while back I heard someone propose the idea of "delegating" your vote to an arbitrary person and they'd vote on individual vote items on your behalf, or consequently "delegate" it yet again to someone above. Essentially creating a giant hierarchy of representation.
I'm not sure people need any more authority or engagement than they already have in making decisions for people 1000 miles away.
We also have data now, and for what we don't have data we should be running experiments and collecting data to make better decisions.
I've argued it before, and get rebutted with things such as "we need to let the experts decide, average people don't understand nuance" or "we don't want rule by mob/majority" or "get involved in your local community meetings instead" or "what if the people vote to exterminate minorities", etc. But the fact of the matter is that some sort of direct-democracy, or individual-level decision making (such as suggested above regarding tax-spending) would allow society to self-correct and adapt without the need for complicated and "expert" interventions. I understand the extreme examples, sure, but we're not even trying to involve the populace more for even minor things.
On a side note, with my conspiracy hat on, this is why "electronic" voting is opposed so heavily. That and the whole "votes have to be anonymous yet independently verifiable but not linked to your identity because you might sell your vote" nonsense. Because the natural consequence of a reduction of cost when it comes to voting is that we'd end up voting on more granular things and more often, and we can't have that. Instead we want people to enact change by fostering "movements" and "protesting for change", because that really doesn't do anything at the end of the day.
The average American isn't remotely qualified to make these types of decisions. That's why direct democracy has never, ever, in the history of humanity, worked in a society above a few dozen people.
> I understand the extreme examples, sure, but we're not even trying to involve the populace more for even minor things.
Let's try a non-extreme example - naming a post-office. The lefties want to name it after Rosa Parks and the righties want to name it after Stonewall Jackson. The vote ends up 51/49 in either direction - how do you feel that type of conflict would resolve itself in 2020? It's much, much better for the stability of the government to keep passionate people away from the majority of the mundane work of government. Plebiscites should be reserved only for massive issues, like changes to the Constitution.
> On a side note, with my conspiracy hat on, this is why "electronic" voting is opposed so heavily.
It's because security experts have repeatedly exposed how flawed these systems are, and how cheaply and effectively voting is done with paper and pencil.
So what? that's just an excuse to keep power away from them. We are already getting incredibly important decisions made by totally unqualified people (e.g. Pandemic response by the current administration) not only are making bad decisions, they are making them in their own best interest, in detriment to the people they are supposed to represent.
> That's why direct democracy has never, ever, in the history of humanity, worked in a society above a few dozen people.
Examples please? What country/government has ever implemented a real/direct democracy?
> Examples please? What country/government has ever implemented a real/direct democracy?
That's my point. The French revolutionaries tried it for a minute until they realized you can't run a nation-state that way - it's too complex and the average person is too disconnected from the issues to fully grok the n-th order consequences. Plus the tyranny of the masses tends to get out of hand.
The current administration is a product of the current system. And it is a great example of what's wrong with it. It's amazing that you are using it to defend the system instead.
> The French revolutionaries tried it for a minute until they realized you can't run a nation-state that way - it's too complex and the average person is too disconnected from the issues to fully grok the n-th order consequences. Plus the tyranny of the masses tends to get out of hand.
Technology and data should help tremendously in solving the issues you present. Tools which were not available to the French revolutionaries. Also you shouldn't throw something completely out the window just because of one failed attempt hundreds of years ago.
It's the worst system, except for all the others that have been tried. Not making rash decisions off black swan events is another reason to avoid direct democracy.
> Technology and data should help tremendously in solving the issues you present. Tools which were not available to the French revolutionaries. Also you shouldn't throw something completely out the window just because of one failed attempt hundreds of years ago.
Adding technology and data make the process even more fragile and prone to being messed with. How are you going to bash the existing government, and then act like we're somehow going to create a direct democracy based on technology that's fully secure and consistent? What happens when a hurricane knocks out power in Florida? Are they just paralyzed because no one can do their daily voting?
Voting systems should use the minimal amount of technology and the maximum amount of privacy. That doesn't even get into how most people wouldn't want the cognitive burden you are trying to impose on them.
We don't need optimal decisions, in fact politicians are also not experts at the decisions they make, even worse, they make decisions based on who paid them to make them. What we need is proper representation and distribution of power.
I don't know how to fix that, but I'm very doubtful that abandoning representative democracy in favour of direct votes on all governmental decisions would be a positive step. It seems likely to just hand even more power to whichever charismatic populists and fashionable "influencers" can persuade people to vote blindly for whatever they promote.
The idea of a republic is that one elects a wise leader who can take the time to understand the issues and surround themselves with knowledgeable experts that can help fill in the gaps — which isn't even remotely possible in a direct democracy, as not everyone can know an expert in every necessary field.
Now, that said, our country is obviously quite far from an ideal republic. But I think it's other things — gerrymandering, a lack of good participation by voters, and a FPTP voting system that forces a two-party system — which many people think would persist pretty much as-is in a popular vote system —, and forces voters to vote for someone other than who they want to vote for. (Some would also add money-in-government, i.e., rolling back Citizens United; I'm still on the fence there, myself, as it would also prevent coordinated efforts by citizens.)
I’d rather we could earmark our tax payments.
I wouldn’t send anything to any department involved in trampling basic human rights. I also wouldn’t pay a cent to oil or corn subsidies.
In such a system, I imagine Amtrak and the department of education would be getting 10x more than they do now.
Similarly, I suspect the US would be carbon negative in a few years.
The supreme court ruled money is speech, so I argue that not letting me earmark my payments is suppressing my speech.
Why would that be broken on a societal level, and how is it not "democratic" to allow people to allocate their "voluntarily given" taxes how they please? What are we afraid of happening? Can we not control the problem slightly and just give them high-level categories to try it out?
There are merits to such a system, but I suspect they don't align politically with what you intended.