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Comment by zehnfischer | Hacker News Reader

Yes, maybe. But first of all, personally I find, it is ok, to not be interested in all political questions. The chance here is to at least borden political influence, so maybe there are just some people, groups involved, why is that not ok? At the same time I believe people will learn over time, that if they don´t take their chances, they will end up living under laws, they don´t agree with. And since the system I imagine allows constant iteration, there will be ways to change laws to the better, all the time.

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The main issue is going to be, that when decisions are made based on popularity and only those the most engaged are participating, the decision is going to be decided by extremists. This somewhat sabotages democracy, as the representative democracy counterbalances those on the fringes with the lethargic majority.

Issue based politics is leading to a lot of problems, i.e. if you would put it to a popular vote, I am quite confident that the death penalty would be back at least in some European countries for child molesters, etc. Popular opinion seems very volatile and if you are able to time your issue driven vote with some incidents of public outrage, you can pretty much able to pass highly questionable ideas. Of cause there is the hope that bad decisions will "teach" voters to do better next time, but (at least in my opinion) there are not many signs that this learning effect takes place with the current party/election system.

I think, you see it to theoretical. As a matter of fact, we don´t have valid data about a case just as this. Yes sure, there are examples for this, people being populistic, following the loudest speaker and so forth. But first of all, we are talking about one seat in the national parliament, one of 620, not about being the president of the US or the german chancellorship. The influencing towards the law making process will be pretty limited, if existent. At the same time, I see a chance to get some actual situations about how this works, and quite controlled conditions. I dunno, maybe I am underestimating the stress and such, but could be fun to play with thought around.

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