How the Telecom Lobby is Killing Municipal Broadband (2011) | Hacker News Reader

How the Telecom Lobby is Killing Municipal Broadband (2011)

theatlanticcities.com

36 pointsjseliger13 comments

I think as society becomes more and more specialized, where even educated people will fail to understand issues in a different field (ask a mechanical engineer the importance of Internet security), democracy in its original form is becoming outdated.

What we need, is some form of technocracy-democracy, where only people able to comprehend the problem at hand are allowed to vote.

From an engineering perspective, a more elegant solution might be to allow governments to fail like companies, so that the most suitable form of governance can emerge more quickly, and without bloodshed.

> What we need, is some form of technocracy-democracy, where only people able to comprehend the problem at hand are allowed to vote.

That sounds like one of those ideas that looks good on paper, but then human nature sets in and the 'only people able to comprehend the problem' become corrupt and we end up with a dystopia. I like the idea of dictatorship by benign technocrats too, but when they become corrupt we end up with a plain old dictatorship.

I always took things in the opposite manner in that "if you don't understand it, don't vote on it". A lot of the issues that are discussed and voted on are things that any person of sound mind can understand if they take the time to sit down and do a bit of research. You don't need a degree to understand the importance or pros/cons of internet censorship but what we saw from the ACTA debate is the people in charge are not only ignorant to the facts but completely unwilling to educate themselves.

I feel it is much more damaging to have people weighing in on topics they have no clue about than it is for them to abstain. If a topic is brought forward for discussion where only 20% of the powers-that-be understand it it needs to researched further before any pen is put to paper making decisions permanent.

One problem with this is that whether you understand it or not, it will impact you. Simply not weighing in does not address the problem at all, it allows the problem to continue.

I would say this is simply unavoidable, but it could be mitigated if such proposals were written (or at least summarized) with an eye to fostering universal understanding of the proposed legislation. Failing that effectively excludes people who should have a say from doing so.

If you are incapable, for whatever reason, of understanding something, then that's one thing. Being incapable of understanding it because of the way it's phrased or the manner in which it's presented is vastly more common (the existence of the term "legalese" should be a strong indicator of this) and a far more serious problem, as it does actively exclude people who should and probably could express an informed opinion if being informed were more feasible.

If you don't understand an issue, how do you make a good decision that represent YOUR interest? Or worse, you are mis-informed through media manipulation to vote against your own interest?

Requiring at least x% of people to understand an issue before the vote is legit would be a logical choice.

That's exactly my point. You shouldn't be voting on something you don't understand; the problem is that when too many people don't understand what's being voted on, you can't get a well-reasoned result from a vote.

I think the percentage requirement is an interesting idea, and I think we're on the same page in that requiring a concerted attempt to write legislation in a more accessible way would result in a natural increase in that percentage.

"If you don't understand an issue, how do you make a good decision that represent YOUR interest? "

You follow the advice of someone you trust who has similar interests to you. Don't overthink it.

"Requiring at least x% of people to understand an issue before the vote is legit would be a logical choice."

No, it's a silly nondemocratic choice that can only end with the foxes running the henhouse. Who really understands this 2000 page telcom bill other than the Comcast lawyers that wrote it? Oh well I guess only they can vote. That's an absurd extreme but it's illustrative of the problems you're asking to introduce.

The solution to low information voters is not disenfranchisement on a large scale but instead to go back to the core of republicanism: vote for some person or party to represent you and who's job it is to be informed about the issues. In it's purest form the voter at large only ever makes that one choice although he can change that vote more frequently.

A lot of the issues that are discussed and voted on are things that any person of sound mind can understand if they take the time to sit down and do a bit of research.

I think a lot of local laws are intentionally written in a language design to obfuscate the intention of said law. Add this to the fact that some jurisdictions have multiple laws up for vote at a given election which makes it hard to take the time to research.

One time, I had to vote on a law that would update policy to give $X to survivors of police officers killed in action. I had no idea this was going to be on the ballot before hand. I have a relative who is a cop, so part of me wanted to vote yes right away, but another part of me though about it for a second. Wait, it says update, what if survivors already get >$X? Is this money going to come from cutting teachers' budgets? Are they going to raise taxes for this?

I agree with you, I think it is our civic duty to make informed decisions about how our society should move forward, however, I think politicians are doing their part to make this as difficult as possible though.

I completely agree. My 'wish' for how things could run would definitely not work in our current state of affairs. But in our current technological state there is no excuse to not have a centralized location for ballot info ahead of any vote. The manual process we still use for a lot of elective events is pretty old fashioned.

> I always took things in the opposite manner in that "if you don't understand it, don't vote on it".

That doesn't work when you still expect those same people to pay for it. As long as I have to pay for something, I will most certainly vote on it whether the available information makes it clearly understandable or not, and in the "not" case I'll be voting "no". (And by "clearly understandable" I mean both understanding the issue and understanding whether the actual proposal in question represents a net win or net loss for me.)

Voter education is the job of those who want voter money.

In addition, there's always the very human potential for non-malicious failure. Building a new government in concept is hard enough to occupy truly brilliant minds; doing so in practice requires brilliant minds in multiple fields working hard concurrently and in concert, and that's another very narrow, rickety bridge to cross.

If some form of delegative voting is used, then when someone determines that the technocrat they previously trusted has become corrupted, they move their vote away from that delegate to a new delegate. Or they use their vote them-self. This allows for turn-over in the technocrat pool.

Without discussing the merits of your ideas, I can see that they're echoed by the idea of "post-democracy," to use a term Crooked Timber describes in greater detail here: http://crookedtimber.org/2013/02/11/post-democracy/ . If you're looking for a longer discussion, the Colin Crunch book linked by the CT author is a good place to start.

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