When can liquid democracy unveil the truth? (2021)
arxiv.org
arxiv.org
Well, first of all you have to ask if the 'decision to delegate' can be monetized or not. If American citizens could sell their vote directly to the highest bidder, then many likely would (most elections have relatively low turnout). How much would the average US citizen want in return? $100? $1000? $10? Would votes be purchasable only by other US citizens, or by corporate bodies, or by citizens of foreign nations?
Beyond that, this is already supposedly how representative democracy works. People ideally elect representatives, who go to Congress and sit on committees, where they make 'expert-assisted decisions' about budgets and projects. If the state wants to hire an expert to design a bridge, hopefully it's not the committee chair's lazy incompetent relative who gets the job, rather there's some kind of competitive merit-based assessment.
However, given the kind of people we have running Congress... this system doesn't seem to work that well. Geriatic insider traders who owe their positions to various corporate conglomerates (finance, energy, defense, pharmaceuticals, etc.) have ended up running all the committees, and the evidence that this is a failure can be easily seen by looking at America's crumbling domestic infrastructure.
P.S. 'Liquid democracy' is a rather meaningless choice of words. Should we be comparing it to 'gaseous democracy' or 'solid-state democracy'?
You're making up problems. The same exact problem, vote buying, exists in every form of democracy. Secret ballot is supposed to solve that. And has nothing to do with direct, liquid or representative democracy.
> Beyond that, this is already supposedly how representative democracy works.
No, you misunderstood liquid democracy if that's what you think. The difference is that anyone can withdraw their vote at any time for any reason and cast it on their own. It has nothing to do with committees. You can read more about liquid democracy in Wikipedia if the article wasn't enough for you [1].
> However, given the kind of people we have running Congress... this system doesn't seem to work that well. Geriatic insider traders who owe their positions to various corporate conglomerates (finance, energy, defense, pharmaceuticals, etc.) have ended up running all the committees, and the evidence that this is a failure can be easily seen by looking at America's crumbling domestic infrastructure.
Yeah, this is what liquid democracy solves. Please make sure you understand the concept before arguing against it.
Sure, liquid voting can solve vote buying by making delegations and individuals' votes secret with software (afaik the problem of a person being able to secretly delegate their vote to another person who is in turn able to vote secretly is basically unsolvable with pen and paper and ballot boxes though, unlike regular secret ballots)
But liquid democracy with secret ballot so voters are unaware that another person has delegated voting power to them can introduce a new edge case issue though. Two people have similar views on most issues so each of them secretly delegates their vote to the other person. This means that neither of their votes are cast for any actual proposal they actually both would be likely to support (and anyone else delegating their vote to one of these people also casts no vote)
[FWIW I'm talking about a form of liquid democracy similar to that outlined in the paper, where votes are delegated to individual neighbours who in turn may delegate to people they trust, not the form that looks more like representative democracy but you can pick different representatives for different issues)
Any form of voting can use secret ballot or not. Liquid democracy and ballot secrecy are entirely orthogonal issues and neither necessitate software.
> Two people have similar views on most issues so each of them secretly delegates their vote to the other person. This means that neither of their votes are cast for any actual proposal they actually both would be likely to support (and anyone else delegating their vote to one of these people also casts no vote)
This isn't something that would happen. One would be made aware one had become a delegate.
But they're not orthogonal issues (particularly not in the format discussed in the paper, where chains of neighbours may delegate to each other until one person in the chain casts a vote). You can't have a system in which multiple votes are delegated to X and yet the identity of X is indistinguishable from the single votes of Y and Z.
> This isn't something that would happen. One would be made aware one had become a delegate.
That depends heavily on mechanism design though. If I'm aware that I've become X's delegate, the objection upthread is sustained because no secrecy exists and it is practical for me to purchase X's vote (and indeed to purchase and validate that I possess the votes of tens of thousands of indifferent voters). If I am simply aware at some stage that I have become someone's delegate and am not made aware that person is X, the level of secrecy means that I may rationally choose to delegate my votes to X without realising the two delegations cancel out.
This is just one form [1], there are many. The two variables are independent. You can have direct, liquid, representative democracy with or without secret ballot; therefore, they are orthogonal issues.
> If I'm aware that I've become X's delegate, the objection upthread is sustained because no secrecy exists
As I commented elsewhere, you don't need to be aware that you are anyone's delegate, just that you are a delegate. You don't even need to know how many votes you have to cast. The only thing you need to do is cast the votes that you have, however many, an to whomever they belong, which you need know nothing about.
The two variables are not independent because the delegation system destroys the principle feature which makes ballot secrecy trivial (every person casts the same number of votes in the same way over the same time window).
Workarounds for this have significant cost (requirement to use "black box" software or requirement for delegation to take place strictly prior to the actual vote and for a person with a lot of delegated votes to fill in potentially hundreds of ballot papers, or requirement for delegates to fill in special multiple-vote ballots which may end up being personally identifiable despite best endeavours to anonymise them).
> As I commented elsewhere, you don't need to be aware that you are anyone's delegate, just that you are a delegate.
And if you don't know whose delegate you are, you might unintentionally cancel out a vote you would normally delegate by delegating to someone who delegated to you. As I commented in the very next sentence. Individually identifiable delegations or permitting edge cases with cancelling-out delegations resulting in no actual votes cast by a particular group, pick your poison. (I guess you could also avoid this collision by only permitting delegation to a separate class of people who are not allowed to delegate their own votes but that's a completely different system to the one described in the paper which will yield completely different results...)
> If I am simply aware at some stage that I have become someone's delegate and am not made aware that person is X, the level of secrecy means that I may rationally choose to delegate my votes to X without realising the two delegations cancel out.
Isn't the obvious solution to simply make the software enforce such situations? Or am I misunderstanding?
If the software blocks me from delegating my vote to X because X has already delegated their vote to me, then ballot secrecy is violated. If the software blocks me from delegating my vote to anyone because somebody has already delegated their vote to me, any third party willing to "burn" a vote on delegating to me (to troll me, perhaps) can change my vote from my original intention to delegate it to $subjectexpert and force me to take a stance on the polic(ies) themselves or not vote, which seems like a pretty undesirable outcome even if it doesnt benefit the troll. Both measures partially violate ballot secrecy in another way (if the software doesn't block me from voting to delegate to a person, then it reveals they didn't delegate their vote to me)
The only way around it is for delegates to self select [or be selected] in advance as a separate class of voters unable to delegate their own votes. This avoids this conflict and could work, but isn't the system described in the paper and will have different dynamics as a result.
If people are not interested they might also be inclined to sell their votes which would shift political power to wealthy individuals even more.
With representatives people usually don't vote on every single issue, on the contrary, the democratic will is already heavily delegated to a party, even if the logistical problems of collecting opinions would be pretty small these days.
It's much better to buy votes from someone who has lots of delegations
My understanding is either you know how your delegate voted and vote buying is likely a large problem or you don't know how you delegate voted so it's hard to impossible to actually trust that you've delegated as you intended to.
Do you have any real-world examples of where this was implemented & provided better results than a normal, representative system? If not, this seems like an overly strong statement- history is littered with hundreds of examples of social, economic or electoral systems that in theory sounded better, but didn't really work out in practice
Everywhere it's used is an instance of broader interests being taken into account, by definition.
In theory, again.
It is also a well known fact that it is gonna have a worse type of corruption: incompetence supported by numbers.
Liquid democracy is nothing more than a system where social connections have been replaced by popularity.
It is in practice a system run by influencers.
Beware of what you wish for.
> It is also a well known fact that it is gonna have a worse type of corruption: incompetence supported by numbers.
That's a real criticism, for sure.
> It is in practice a system run by influencers.
We already have that problem. Our system is a system run by influencers. Enough people will never hear about any candidate or idea that the people who own the media (the state an capitalists) don't want them to hear about.
There is a temporal component to the problem though: given time and education, voter minds can be upgraded.
I think an often unrealized potential side benefit of liquid democracy is that it could be used as a way to sneak proper education in philosophy (logic, epistemology, rhetoric, etc) into the curriculum, like an end run around the department of education and current internet forums that seem almost designed (both software and moderation, like the throttling undesired points of view) to produce a voter base that is unable to think skilfully.
if you can't see why this is completely false, I don't think it is of any use to argue further.
You should also prove me that in practice it never happened, because it's impossible.
> We already have that problem.
No, we don't.
Our system is run by politicians, influencers and politicians are different jobs, if you think Obama, Bush , even Trump, could be replaced by Shane Dawson, you're delusional.
Short lesson about the difference: politicians have to reach consensus,often with people with very different ideas, influencers value only their own personal popularity and would do anything to increase it. Also: politics is strictly regulated, influencers are not. There's a reason why proponents of liquid democracy are against public funding of free press and politics: that way they only have to buy influencers and not much harder to convince politicians.
Putin is financing many influencers and very few politicians.
He knows!
What are you talking about, if the system has zero politicians then it is literally impossible for any politicians to become corrupt.
then you simply corrupt someone else.
corruption is not the act of paying politicians. but those in positions of power that can influence decisions.
doesn't matter of they ate politicians or actors or soldiers.
So there's no reason to change if there is no difference...
But actually a very important difference exist: the right to vote is a right that can be exercised only going to vote
Seems trivial, but that little friction there makes all the difference there is.
If you order take away pizza, you're not cooking, if you "donate" your vote to someone else, you're not voting!
But someone else is voting 1+N times.
Which is not what democracy should be about.
You can donate and undate your vote as much as you want... That's the point. You don't vote on things you don't care about and you do vote on things you do care about. You turst someone elese for the things you can and you don't for the things you don't. You've created a false dichotomy.
that's not how democracy work.
> Two systems having problems in common doesn't mean they have all problems in common.
at all.
in fact I am saying to you that what you propose have all the problems of the current system, plus some on its own.
> You can donate and undate your vote as much as you want...
It doesn't matter.
People spoke, and they said we don't want it.
Anyway, it would not be possible in Italy where the Constitution at art. 84 says
"... Vote is *personal* and equal, free and secret. Exercising it is a civic duty"
Case closed.
> You turst someone elese for the things you can and you don't for the things you don't. You've created a false dichotomy.
That's not why we vote. we vote because democracy needs to engage us personally.
You still don't get that technicalities are the tools of tyrannies.
That's why I called it autonomy, not democracy.
> > "... Vote is personal and equal, free and secret. Exercising it is a civic duty" > Case closed. > > You turst someone elese for the things you can and you don't for the things you don't. You've created a false dichotomy. > That's not why we vote. we vote because democracy needs to engage us personally.
It's pretty clear that you don't know what liquid democracy is if you think it's not personal. Here, check the Wikipedia article[1]
That's why liquid democracy it's not democracy, but autarchy.
> It's pretty clear that you don't know what liquid democracy is if you think it's not personal.
It's pretty obvious that you don't know Italian and are trying to explain my Constitution to me... [1]
Liquid democracy supporters prove, once again, that they don't understand consensus.
[1] scholars of Constitutional law and jurisprudence established that "the vote is personal" should be read as
Il voto è personale nel senso che non può essere delegato salva soltanto la possibilità di valersi di un accompagnatore in caso di grave impedimento fisico. Non è ammesso il voto per procura.
I'll gladly translate for you
Vote is personal means that it *can't be delegated*
Proxy voting *is not admitted*
If you read something on proxy voting, you'll know why civilized countries don't admit it.
Here's a list of countries where proxy voting was used in the past
- Albania
- Algeria
- Canada
- China
- Gabon
- Guyana
- India
- Iraq
- Russia
- United Kingdom
- United States
- Vietnam
As I've said before it disincentive people to actually exercise the right to vote.
For example:
According to Arch Puddington et al., in Albanian Muslim areas, many women have been effectively disenfranchised through proxy voting by male relatives.
In Algeria, restrictions on proxy voting were instituted circa 1991 in order to undermine the Islamic Salvation Front.
In Canada David Stewart and Keith Archer opine that proxy voting can result in *leadership selection processes to become leader-dominated*. Proxy voting had only been available to military personnel since World War II, but was extended in 1970 and 1977 to include voters in special circumstances such as northern camp operators, fishermen, and prospectors. The Alberta Liberal Party ran into some difficulties, in that an unknown number of proxy ballots that were counted may have been invalid
According to Mim Kelber, "in Central Africa, all it takes for a man to cast a proxy vote for his wife is to produce an unwitnessed letter mentioning the name of the person to whom the voting power is delegated." The Gabon respondent to an Inter-Parliamentary Union letter commented, "It has been observed that this possibility was exploited to a far greater extent by men than by women, for reasons not always noble."
Proxy voting was used in some American U.S. presidential nominating caucuses. In one case, Eugene McCarthy supporters were in the majority of those present but were outvoted when the presiding party official cast 492 proxy votes – three times the number present – for his own slate of delegates. After the nomination of Hubert Humphrey, the New Politics movement charged that Humphrey and party bosses had circumvented the will of Democratic Party members by manipulating the rules to Humphrey's advantage. In response, the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, also known as the McGovern-Fraser Commission, was created to rework the rules in time for the 1972 Democratic National Convention. State parties were required to ban proxy voting in order to have their delegates seated at the national convention. It was said that these rules had been used in *"highly selective" ways*. Several attempts have been made to place proxy voting-related initiatives on the California ballot, but all have failed.
Please, stop pretending you actually understand the matter.
You don't.
In theory.
In practice we kinda tried it in Italy (not me, I always thought it was a scam) and the party pushing for it was able to elect the mayor of Rome.
It has been the worst mayor of Rome since Rome was founded.
Thanks, but no thanks.
(also: since founded? that's a while :))
In the case of Virginia Raggi, people believed her lies about "not trying to win the candidacy to the Olimpic games because they are all about corruption and stealing from the taxpayers"
For a little time it worked, but it was simply to hide her incompetence as administrator.
She spent 5 years in the office arguing over minutia, while the important stuff was left there to rot.
From subway stairs that have been broken for over a year to buses catching fire[1] to unkempt public gardens.
Her political identity has been inaction: to hide her lack of competence she found refuge in doing nothing of importance, taking credit for everything good happening that was planned before she was elected! while also blaming those before her when something went wrong (it happened literally everyday!).
So routinely things like this happened [2] because she could not afford to take counter measures, every group could say "we put you there" and she had no interest in doing what's best for Rome, only what's best for her.
In the end even those that gained from her election realized that a city like Rome needs a good administrator, because even if we call it "the eternal city", neglect can do a lot of damages in a very short time.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44041597.amp
[2] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2895104/Fury-Italia...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Rome_escalator_accident
It also simply says that people know nothing about govern, they should only vote once for themselves to protect their personal interest.
And that liquid democracy doesn't work at all, when applied to practice,unless you have proof of the contrary.
Because I have proof of what I say, you can ask the majority of romans what they think of Virginia Raggi's cabinet, she went from 50% of the votes to 14% in 5 years.
Also: the same party that elected her has been critique of how she managed the City since few months after her election.
https://www.politico.eu/article/the-sack-of-romes-mayor/amp/
Please,if you wanna criticize something, at least make the effort of informing yourself on the matter.
But most of all your answer proves why liquid democracy doesn't work: you seem to know virtually nothing about Rome and yet you expressed your opinion as it was a fact, because instead of checking if what I said was true or not, you simply found an angle to argue.
Now imagine million of people doing the same while voting on important matters that impact the lives of the citizens of a large city like, say, New York.
"I don't like face masks so let's delegate my vote to my friend who owns a pizza restaurant and let me eat there without wearing one".
Now tell me that it's actually what you wish for the big apple.
> But most of all your answer proves why liquid democracy doesn't work: you seem to know virtually nothing about Rome and yet you expressed your opinion as it was a fact, because instead of checking if what I said was true or not, you simply found an angle to argue.
I wouldn't be voting on Rome, which isn't something I really need to know about today. You said you had liquid democracy, so I assumed you did; apparently you didn't, otherwise you wouldn't be complaining.
1. I said kinda
2. You're wrong again. If we had liquid democracy, the situation. would have been even worse. Lucky us she had to respond to the laws and the hierarchy of powers, not only to her supporters or we would be all f***ed by now.
For once: they said she could be removed if she didn't do what she said she would, when they tried she refused.
End of liquid democracy! there's no way to bind an elected representative to the voters opinion, if you live in democracy. It would be far to easy to "buy" or "force" the elimination of someone "the occult leaders" don't like.
We already had these arguments decades ago, "Tyranny of the Minority: The Subconstituency Politics Theory of Representation" explains it well, "Tiranny of the structureless" explains why (the) lack of structure, disguised an informal, unacknowledged, and unaccountable leadership and ensured its malefaction by denying its existence
Delegates are unaccountable leaders, nothing more, nothing less.
Looks to me that every 5 years someone rediscovers politics and propose solutions that have already failed both in theory and in practice, since the 60s of the past century.
It's either liquid democracy or not. It seems the fact that it was not was a big problem for you.
> 2. If we had liquid democracy, the situation. would have been even worse
If you say so.
> End of liquid democracy! there's no way to bind an elected representative to the voters opinion, if you live in democracy. It would be far to easy to "buy" or "force" the elimination of someone "the occult leaders" don't like.
Liquid democracy doesn't have representatives. You've misunderstood what it is, which explains why you think having elected a mayor has anything to do with it.
> Delegates are unaccountable leaders, nothing more, nothing less.
That's why you should have liquid democracy, where you can withdraw your vote at any time for any reason and don't need a delegates permission.
this makes absolutely no sense.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
> Liquid democracy doesn't have representatives.
I love when people don't realize that changing names to things doesn't magically make those things disappear...
Edit: to make it clear why you're wrong. In Italy they tried to implement what you talk about, but when they tried to enforce those rules, elected went straight to justice that deliberated that it is incompatible with the constitution to remove an elected person before the terms have expired based on a private vote - not officially recognized (before you blame Italy it is incompatible with virtually all western constitutions, that basically represent all the liberal democracies in the World!)
But it's even simpler than that: elected have ways of opposing to their leaders because every constitution recognizes their freedom and independence.
Take for example filibustering in the US senate. Those are simply senate rules, they could change them because justice said that simple.majority is enough, but it is hard to change the rule of the game while you are playing the game so filibuster is still there.
Technically, these are beliefs that you have formed, not facts demonstrated by your example.
For proof:
> ...unless you have proof of the contrary.
How would him providing proof change the epistemic state of underlying reality that you are allegedly describing?
technically democracy is all bout that.
millions of people forming beliefs based on the action of those in power.
Virginia Raggi has constructed her reputation of worse mayor ever by herself, you should investigate what she's done, if you really are interested.
> How would him providing proof change the epistemic state of underlying reality that you are allegedly describing?
by proving the thesis that "liquid democracy solves that"
I presented a case where it didn't.
It's enough to disprove it.
> technically democracy is all bout that.
For now, to some degree (the degree that it is true, which is unknown).
But if you won't exert effort towards sound logic and epistemology, or show any interest when you are mistaken, should you be criticizing others? Granted, Western Culture is also "all about that", but it's not a great excuse.
>> How would him providing proof change the epistemic state of underlying reality that you are allegedly describing?
> by proving the thesis that "liquid democracy solves that"
Note that I was challenging this: "It simply says that people know nothing about govern, they should only vote once for themselves to protect their personal interest. And that liquid democracy doesn't work at all, when applied in practice..."
...but now you are addressing this different claim:
>> However, given the kind of people we have running Congress... this system doesn't seem to work that well. Geriatic insider traders who owe their positions to various corporate conglomerates (finance, energy, defense, pharmaceuticals, etc.) have ended up running all the committees, and the evidence that this is a failure can be easily seen by looking at America's crumbling domestic infrastructure.
> Yeah, this is what liquid democracy solves. Please make sure you understand the concept before arguing against it.
Note that by politicians being removed by the equation that specific problem is solved by definition (opening up new problems, of course).
As I said elsewhere in the thread, I think a big benefit of some form of direct democracy is that it would offer an opportunity for people to develop skills in various forms of thinking that are taught in philosophy, but not in schools.
No you didn't. Electing a mayor isn't liquid democracy. Not being able to withdraw your vote isn't liquid democracy.
So we can definitely conclude that since liquid democracy only exists when it has been enforced once and for all without modifications under the rule of the High Priests of the Liquid Democracy church, it is incompatible with democracy as we know it.
If nobody ever wanted that and when they tried in a not so insignificant western country it failed to be accepted in its pure form and has become worse than the other parties after only a decade, are we allowed to believe that LD is not something people want or should want, or not? Do I risk to be prosecuted by the Spanish inquisition for saying it or do I get by with an excommunication and three days under the snow? [1]
Is it giving people what they want, or giving people something that they are happy with later?
Virginia Raggi failed at both.
I think that failing at everything it's pretty much a good definition of failure, do you agree?
The question is did the people want raggi and did they get raggi
She was a failure that won thanks to the lie that "liquid democracy" would empower the people.
It didn't.
So they both failed.
> The question is did the people want raggi and did they get raggi
Are you familiar with the idiom “be careful what you wish for”?
Now people know that they do not wish Raggi and all her idiotic ideas ever again.
Consider instead where everyone in the running got through, only their votes were multiplied by the number of votes they received. Suddenly there's a much higher value to high voter turnout (because winning by a large landslide matters for voting against opposition from opposing landslides, & one doesn't need the majority of votes for their vote to have weight)
Aside, the idea of selling your vote is explored in Philip K Dick's Solar Lottery
That's simply called proportional electoral system, has existed for a long time and it's adopted in many countries.
Politics happens when different interests clash. Each agent have their own truth.[1]
Let’s model one-person rule: the Truth is whatever that person says is the truth. Thus the Truth is “unveiled” as long as the person who rules is rational with regards to their own interests. Now we haven’t modeled any other agent’s interests, i.e. their truths, so they might not like this Truth.
Rule by the elite: the Truth becomes whatever the group is fine with agreeing on after deliberating and competing amongst themselves.
Rule by the people: same as the previous but every person gets a say.
Now think about the likely course of this apparent research on “truth”: the academics decide what the truth is. What opinions on the economy, the environment, social issues, are within the bounds of the truth. An Overton Window. Then they gauge the population based on that.
But the people might have completely different concerns than the academics.
The book Seeing Like a State discusses things like the monocrop forest industry in Germany in 19th century Germany. The Truth of the German state was that it wanted to maximize efficiency, i.e. output of timber. What would a test on “unveiling the truth” reveal? How competent one is at maximizing yield. But what about ecology? What about the fact (as would later be learned) that chopping down organic forests and then planting the same kind of “crop” for miles ruins the ecosystem and is a bad long-term plan both for the local environment and for harvesting timber? That wasn’t even part of the “domain of discourse” to the German state.
What if you polled someone in a warehouse on the “truth” of running a warehouse? Would the truth be dictated by the management and only be about how to maximize profits? Or would it also include things like how to make a workplace that prevents injury, both of the repetitive and immediate kind? You see, maybe safety beyond things like avoiding employees getting stabbed by forklifts isn’t even part of the domain of discourse since the injured and chronically worn-out workers can easily be replaced. But once the workers become part of the decision-making apparatus then it becomes part of the domain of discourse, because the people on the floor have an interest in their own health and being able to keep their jobs.
But this is where (based on my limited understanding) the research on deliberative democracy (which might be unrelated to this research; idk) goes wrong. It seems to want to see if the general population is worthy of getting more democracy, i.e. getting more power. So then it tests them. But based on what? Based on the status quo domain of discourse, i.e. our liberal democracies where the average citizen does not really have much power (just ask some democratic theorists about it). So what are they really measuring? Whether the participants can have rational discourse based on the truth of upper-middle class academics. So the population has to prove that they are worthy of political power by reasoning within the status quo domain of discourse where they don’t have much power at all and are for the most part are spectators. This can in effect just be a sort of perpetual democratic gatekeeping with an academic veneer.
[1] This might be called relativism or post-modernism. But set aside whether there is an absolute truth or not for a minute: the truth in in this context, for all intents and purposes, is political. That’s after all the topic under discussion. (Not whether God exists and whether he has the ultimate Truth or something like that.) For example, a lot of Eurasia had to respect the truth of Genghis Khan that he had a right to rule over them.
Both proof-of-stake and proof-of-work are lotteries, not a voting system. In proof-of stake, you get a number of tickets based on how much you own, in proof-of-work, it is based on how much computing resources you spent, and there is only one winner per round.
In both cases, you can pool with other players and share the gains, so you trade a very low probability of winning big to a more reasonable and steady income.
I don't think there's much in common with PoS though.
Of course you don’t want regular people to rule on behalf of the ruling class: the ruling class does that best. They know their own truth best.
By that criterion, a good democracy can vote to enslave or exterminate a minority.
I don’t think voting to exterminate a group of people would be more straightforward in a perfect democracy compared to our status quo system.
Still though you will always be able to, no matter how I (pithily) define the term, find some absurd, abstract scenario where you can make democracy out to be some devil incarnate political philosophy, in the same way that one can “debunk” utilitarianism by invoking the Utility Monster.
Calm down now...
The way to solve the problem you want to solve is with rights, constitutions, charters and such things, not definitions. Voting alone isn't sufficient for a good democracy. That's all I was pointing out.
> in the same way that one can “debunk” utilitarianism by invoking the Utility Monster.
I mean we literally have multiple living utility monsters, so that's not a very wise comment to make.
I get the sentiment, but these are imperfect solutions. Rights, constitutions, and charters an also be democratically removed. If anything, they simply add a barrier or delay, which I would agree is a good thing for something as significant as revoking a right.
While I am a firm believer in immutable rights in the philosophical sense, immutable rights do not and can not exist in the physical/political world. Rights in the physical world are always dependent on the ability and will to exercise force.
I agree that you can establish constitutions which create barriers and make change difficult as long as people are willing to adhere to the governing constitution.
Ultimately, you still need to come up with a purpose of a political system and criteria for discerning a good one from a bad one, no matter what your selected criteria is.
Yes, exactly. Some things can require a consensus decision making process. Some things can require that the people agree to it through multiple rounds. Some things can be changed easily, like parking regulations in your neighborhood. Some other things should require more effort.
Thanks for countering your own original argument.
Democratic political systems can only add friction and delay the execution of the majority will and no democratic system is capable of maintaining immutable rights against a sufficient public interest.
In this sense, the criticism is empty because there is no alternative.
Seems that we agree.
You’re the one that said “voting”. I originally said democracy.
Voting is just one of the brass taxes of democracy. A democracy is not less capable of making rights, constitutions, etc. than for example a bunch of so-called founding fathers. Or whatever/whoever else.
> , not definitions.
Right. I am not trying to make a foolproof political system from a bunch of axioms, here. Remind me. Who was the one who objected to my off-the-cuff definition of “democracy”? Is that same person now objecting to focusing on definitions?
You did though, with "the interests of most people are exercised." This is just voting. Their interests would not be exercised with limiting measures. That's the point.
Notice that I originally just said “democracy” and then you immediately took that to mean voting and all the apparent downsides that go along with it. Apparently I could have said anything else alongside “democracy” and then you would have drawn the same conclusion, namely your pre-existing hangups with the system. For example “democracy is when the people have power”. And then you retort with “... the power to kill minorities”.
Again. A demoracy is not any less capable of establishing rights, a constitution, etc. compared to for example a bunch of so-called founding fathers. A group of founding fathers is after all not a group of automatons that are bound to whatever choices the ballot box says exists. For that matter: who decides what is put on the ballot? The people. Who decides whether to vote or something or not? The people. See? There are no bare facts, some given-by-God things that you start off with. Unless you think that the Founding Fathers of the US were handed the Constitution by God, like Moses.
Yes. Some people do indeed have this bizarre fixation on voting when it comes to democracy. And they have this irrational fear that minority rights would vanish under a true democracy, probably because they falsely think that (1) voting is all that a democracy is about, and (2) they are so ignorant that they think that majoritarianism (say 51% of the vote) is the only kind of voting that exists! However, I personally don’t have the patience to go through this dance every time someone tries to gotcha me by bringing up hypothetical extermination of minorities when I bring up such a non-offensive, off-the-cuff, provisional definition of “democracy”:
> > A good democracy is one where the interests of most people are exercised.
You're repeating yourself now, so I will too. Exercising interests is voting.
What’s this in reference to? Capitalism? Climate change? Is utalitarianism the cause of those things?
Billionaires, who have more than they could ever possibly spend.
I don’t personally care for Utilitarianism. But these counter-arguments are not convincing considering they are so hypothetical. They are just about gaming an algorithm. Or gaming a definition, if you will.
Billionaires were born by capitalism, which accompanying philosohy is political liberalism. Utilitarianism is not central to political liberalism. Interestingly that quote from Wikipedia is from Nozick, one of the few academic philosophers to advocate for Libertarianism.
No true Scotsman
the many times cited Arrow's theorem says that no such system exist: they are all biased and if you use one that favours representativeness, you miss on the fairness side.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theo...
"exercise interest" in a democracy means voting, Arrow's theorem is about the impossibility of creating a voting system that satisfies both representativeness and fairness (in the title of this post is weirdly called "truth").
we are commenting a post on liquid democracy, which is simply a different way to vote.
What does this have to do with my provisional definition of “democracy”? What am I supposed to concede?
we are talking about voting systems.
Arrow's theorem is the definitive answer to "no voting system is perfect so no voting system will solve political problems"
Liquid democracy, being simply another way to vote, won't solve any political issue by itself. Because politics is a social problem.
I agree. It’s weird to me though that you would use pure math to prove that point.
I have always talked about democracy here, not specifically the liquid kind. Not sure what your conclusions are about democracy.
that particular definition, together with other similar ones like "exercising your rights" "expression of people will" etc etc they all mean the same thing: voting.
There can be many forms of democracy but they all revolve about the same crucial moment which is casting a vote, all equal, all secret, everyone got one chance of doing it or not doing it, going or not going.
That's the best approximation we have found over the centuries to make it as just as possible.
If we change that it is proven that things won't change for the better, but it's not impossible that they might change for the worse.
No.[1]
This voting fetishization is bizarre. It’s like insisting that the essence of being a soldier is about wearing olive drab, and then making a bunch of theories about the viability of wearing olive drab all the time.
My original comment didn’t even mention the word “vote” and yet here we are, way down in this subthread, with you having wasted my time because you thought I was talking about something else (and making a point that still eludes me). Thanks for that.
exercising interest means voting, when referred to modern democracies (past 200 years more or less).
there is no fetish about votes, it is simply what you talked about.
Of course there were no votes in Greek democracies three thousands years ago, but those days have long gone.
Do you think being paid causes people to automatically make such important distinctions, consistently and without error?
Is your premise correct?
Is the conclusion even correct?
I feel like you're speaking colloquially.
> Don't you realize the absurdity of deffering the decisions of multi-domain highly technical topics to laymans that have an attention span of 3 milliseconds and a remarkable lack of erudition and critical thinking?
I believe I do, to a substantial degree. And yourself?
Do you realize the absurdity (and the consequences) of assigning this responsibility to who we currently assign it to?
> Epistemology isn't even taught in schools, the joke is at its peak
Here I partially agree, but I think you lack imagination - I think the joke is just getting warmed up (pun intentional).