Democracy via elected representatives is a lie. "Extreme outliers" may even be too much. Is there even a handful of examples?
The whole point of democracy as it got invented was that the people can directly vote on any government issues. No direct voting on every day do day policy, no democracy. Simple as that.
"It would not be possible in practice" is the actual lie. We have since many years the tech to make it possible to vote on everything by everybody.
I'm not saying that everything would be perfect if people could decide about their fate in an actually democratic way. The majority is dumb on average. That's a sad truth. But I'm not sure it would be really worse than what living in our current lie is. Given some fundamental rules (like human rights), which couldn't be overruled easy by simple majority voting, such a system could work, imho.
The "only" question is how a society could arrive at a true democracy. Given for example into what the french revolution culminated I have no high hopes that creating a bigger democratic society is even possible.
No, technically direct democracy would lead to no better outcome, though I'm sure at some point in our history we'll try it.
As people are people, real democracy would not be worse than the status quo as we're already ruled by people with lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.
But you can't for example corrupt the majority of all people. So real democracy would be at least in this point better.
By no means worse, but better in some regards is a clear win imho!
> lack of knowledge, reason, understanding and empathy.
Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything, making them even easily to manipulate. I'll include myself in this.
For real democracy to work it's more than giving all people the right to vote on all things. They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that those people can fully understand. That I'd say is impossible.
It's even easier with single persons or small groups… Just given them a little bit money or alternatively aim with a gun at them or someone they love. This method wouldn't scale to a whole society.
> Currently the majority are too I'll informed to make appropriate decisions about anything […]
> They need to all be informed about all the issues in an impartial way in a way that those people can fully understand.
And you really think the "decision makers" are anyhow better informed, smarter, more altruistic and don't just think about their own well being most of the time? That's a very naïve stand, to be honest.
At no point did I say anything of the sort, and I'm not sure how you've extrapolated that from what I've said.
I'm not saying it's working but I don't think true democracy would work any better either because the underlying issue with democracy is you're relying on ill informed people, people who don't understand either the issue upon which they vote or the consequences of a vote either way, to make decisions.
People easily manipulated by social media filter bubbles and ridiculous slogans. Or in our current democracies just money.
I think democracy is probably the best we've had to date but it's showing its flaws.
No. We own the consequences.
> the most fair one.
The most fair, yes, probably. The fairest? No. Though I’ll admit I’m stumped (though in good company I suspect) as to how to possibly achieve the fairest outcome. I suspect it’s a platonic ideal, barring a Star Trek reality coming to life.
Humans are very diverse in their abilities and society needs to account for that. Division of labour is key here.
Not everybody needs to decide on or be informed about everything. What is necessary is transparency, accountability and the resulting trust in those responsible.
Our societies are so messed up in that regard, we don't even consider that being possible anymore. But it is.
Beyond that it seems to be mostly mythology and nonsense. You either have smart good rulers or you don't. At least if we don't they only have so much time to do damage and we try again.
The idea democracy gives people agency over their future I would put in the category of mythology.
Every effin' politician knows it, yet they conveniently ignore it, or even outright attack it when they are spewing words like freedom and democracy. It doesnt matter if EU or US or any other place.
Politicians here have a completely different role in society. They ain't hero's, they ain't badman's the are just smart people doing their democratic jobs.
And society talks about concrete topics and not politicians.
Any minority will never truly have a say. It doesn't matter if you can vote if you don't have enough numbers to make a difference. Your best bet would be that folks tire of voting on these - but that's only if you can get enough signatures. Hope you can work and get signatures at the same time and that you aren't in too poor health to do this.
It isn't 'freedom', it is just another way to be tyrannical and claim there is "freedom". It isn't like folks born in a country/region can just move somewhere else. Heck, folks fleeing actual war have some issues with this.
Yes more often than not Revolutionary or forward leaning ideas don't get a yes on the first glance.
But at this point the whole population talked about the topic.
And here comes the magic. A few years later a new idea arises better than any idea before and suddenly people get it.
We talk and vote about topics and not politicians.
Imagine getting only men to vote yes to lose 50% of their voting power. Imagine getting a million farmers and their family's to vote for a drastic new way in ecological farming. Same issue, different times.
To be pedantic it was one Canton (Appenzell Innerrhoden) that the supreme court finally forced to let women have full voting rights, as in the rest if the Cantons, in 1990 [0]. So it was part of the state forcing this rather than through their direct democracy, which makes the issue even more interesting.
The other states were still slow at granting universal suffrage, Vaud being the first in 1959.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...
Electronic voting machines and vote counting machines are hackable. Technology is the disease here, not the cure.
I wouldn't trust anything other than hand-counted paper ballots.
Sure. And elections in general aren't malleable? In a lot of cases that's even simpler than hacking a distributed cryptographic system.
The problem with electronic voting is not the security. It's "just" the secrecy. That's the only hard problem.
> I wouldn't trust anything other than hand-counted paper ballots.
So you should stop trusting in any decision made in most parliaments on this planet. Almost all of them are made by primitive and completely nontransparent "press the button" electronic voting, which can be trivial hacked. But "voting" in parliaments is anyway just show for the dump masses. All the decisions are pre-made behind closed doors, of course.
Our governments have since figured out that you can merrily hand out the privilege, as long you remain in control of what is allowed to be put on the vote in the first place. I'm not alone with my view, btw. Lessig has made the same point in his "Country of Lesters" talk.[0,1]
0: https://www.politicallawbriefing.com/2013/04/a-lester-whats-... (overview, writeup)
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw2z9lV3W1g (recorded talk)
Watching the UK vote on "Brexit", without an understanding of what that actually 'means' or if it's possible, shows the failure of democracy.