Why Y Combinator Funded a Radical Political Party in Argentina | Hacker News Reader

Why Y Combinator Funded a Radical Political Party in Argentina

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127 pointssantisiri104 comments

Man, even if well intentioned, this is bad. This kind of "passive" intrusion (combined with the not-so-passive, government sponsored intrusion) is why some South American countries have a deep-settled distrust of the United States.

Disclaimer: I was born in the US but grew up in Argentina. I have a pretty good grasp of the subject, but I'm obviously not free of bias.

"What could possibly be bad about a young party of people looking to introduce some liberal, progressive changes?" you ask. Well, the problem is that helping a party that caters to younger people (read: rich and middle class young people; the working class in Argentina doesn't care about getting pot or being able to ride the Subte back from the clubs) can be seen as anti-government. And to a certain extent, it is. I won't go into what I believe about the current government or the opposition, but having foreign money influence a very vocal sector of the population is definitely meddling with the country internal affairs.

At the end of the date, this is drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money channeled through the State department, but if you put all like efforts in the same bag then you have a very strong case to support the theories that the US government is actively trying to get Kirchner and her allies out of power. It's not as overt as a coup, but it's still bad.

Hi! Firstly: not sure how aware you are of Argentina's working class, but the subte is a huge issue. Folks working late hours, doing night shifts, students that attend night uni because they work during the days have to get the bus back home, which not only takes longer but it's very dangerous. The PDR doesn't cater to middle classes. Actually the project that was pushed through congress because of DemocracyOS was the Worker's Party (PO) project to make better conditions for nurses in public hospitals.

That said, YC is not funding the net party, they are backing a non for profit that develops DemocracyOS the software the party (and many other organisations around the world use). The title is click-bait and misleading.

Finally, please do produce evidence that the US is actively trying to oust Kirchner.

Pia don't get me wrong, I think all the initiatives taken in isolation are for the better. Heck, I've been stuck in Belgrano after 2am and the only options I had to get back to Retiro were taking an expensive taxi ride or take two hours on a bus. I get it.

As someone who spent countless hours in public hospitals in La Plata, I applaud giving nurses a tool to get the rewards they deserve. I wonder if my favorite nurse - Gladys - who cheered me for hours every day while I was laying on a bed feeling like crap, is using it. She grew up in a slum outside La Plata. I remember having conversations with her about what I was doing with my startup in Sacramento and how the whole thing flew right over her head: there's not much time to get acquainted with the internet when you work extra hours every day and you go back to a home without internet.

And that's the general gist of it: all these things are great, but they are not really accessible to everyone. The people in Chaco or Formosa who barely have enough to support their families don't care about internet polls. People who first need to survive and barely have access to basic education won't have a vote in this "democracy". A democracy of the lucky few is no democracy.

As to the funding: a greenback goes a long way in Argentina, and YC gives a substantial amount of money to their startups. I'll take your word, and that of your associates, that the money will be spent on the startup. I believe you, but that doesn't mean it can't be used as a straw man by some disgruntled government supporter looking to discredit your work.

About the US influencing Argentinian politics... I'm not saying there's anything more sinister than the obvious influence exercised through diplomatic and economic means, but denying the US considers every country within its sphere of influence would be myopic. I can guarantee that the US doesn't like this new string of leftist South Americans governments one bit.

YC couldn't care less about the Kirchners...

The goal is to build a governemnt for the internet society, a government for the world.

We have lived in an infrastructure that basically consists of corporations and the nation state. The internet is an emergent superstructure that makes such infrastructure obsolete.

That's the world we are looking at and hopefully aiming to provide governance to with free software.

I know that, but you can't divorce that from the fact that people (specially people in a government that is feeling under attack) will see any funding from a US-based entity as proof that the US is behind attempts to destabilize it.

And to be fair: can you blame them? Every effort by tech companies to support "free speech" during the Arab Spring did end up in massive unrest. Why would the government of Argentina want something like that?

Again, it's a question of 'optics', and the optics are already pretty tainted down there.

What these guys are doing, is simply an idea for which the time has come / is coming. There have been a number of similar attempts in Europe, in countries where US influence is not a factor (or rather is given for granted). I am very critical of US foreign policy and influence, and tbh, funding a "net democracy" party would be way too honest and "good" compared to their usual modus operandi; they have much more effective and risk-proof methods they use to effect change. For once, they don't back players who struggle to reach 3%; they only back horses with a realistic chance to get in power relatively quickly (see for example Ukraine).

> you have a very strong case to support the theories that the US government is actively trying to get Kirchner and her allies out of power

That being true has little to do with experiments in direct democracy which are being attempted all over the world. YC is not (yet) a CIA cover, as far as we know.

At which point does it become bad intrusion?

Is sharing ideas bad? Money? Offering, rather than being asked?

What about something like the concept of democracy. Or, since the intrinsic value of a concept may be difficult to understand, let's consider the US constitution. It likely cost quite a bit to produce in inflation adjusted dollars. What if they ask us for it, they seek it out themselves, or we give it to them?

I'm very confused. This is a very gray area with a fantastically slippery slope.

I hate to answer on political threads because I'm always downvoted into oblivion, but there we go...

I'm writing from Brazil but lived for a while in Argentina and do business with people from other places in the subcontinent.

I grew up during the iron years, where the military dictatorships here tortured and killed hundreds of dissidents, so most parents educated us to fear the police and avoid talking about politics at all costs. I guess this is why people don't like to participate in the civic life (hell, in Brazil people avoid even condo meetings because "I don't like controversy").

I think lobbying is frowned upon here because most people equate it with public bribing (not too far from the truth), which leaves us we with traditional bribing only.

Go figure.

I always found the difference between Argentina and Brazil quite surprising. While I lived there (for seven years, in Santa Catarina) I felt like people were very divorced from politics, and would avoid the topic as much as possible. The only people that would engage me when I asked questions about politics (mostly because I wanted to learn the history of the country) were people from bigger cities (mostly Paulistas.)

Argentina went completely the opposite way: once the dictatorship was over, people became incredibly political because we wanted to avoid the same kind of political vacuum that created the first coup. As a result, most people in Argentina will argue about politics, even when they don't have a completely educated opinion on the matter (but hey, that's how we work on most stuff anyway, heh.)

Agreed on the conflation of lobbying with bribing. Unfortunately there's too much evidence suggesting that private interests putting money into politics is not a good idea.

Hi! Please read beyond the title that is simply clickbait. YC is not funding a party, they are backing a non for profit that develops democracyOS the software the party (as well as other parties around the world) uses.

It appears that I'm one of the few people here that did. I invite you to reread my comment in that light. Sharing services or even ideas could be construed as monetary support or excessive intrusion.

Hell even introducing democracy to a non-democratic place has been considered subversive.

"At which point does it become bad intrusion?"

When it starts.

"Is sharing ideas bad? Money? Offering, rather than being asked?"

Ideas? Probably not. Money? Very yes. And before you try, there is a huge difference between ideas and monetary support, and money is not speech.

"What about something like the concept of democracy."

You're not a member of that democracy. It's like Israel donating to political campaigns here in the US.

"I'm very confused. This is a very gray area with a fantastically slippery slope."

No, it really isn't.

Snarky. I'm curious if you believe that's an effective way to interact with another person? Would you treat someone like that in real life? How would you feel if someone responded to you that way? Would you find them convincing?

In any case, you completely missed the point. Based on your model, we're not giving them any money, so there is no problem. Right?

Or perhaps you'd actually like to RTFA and my comment, and make a constructive, intelligent, relevant reply.

Update: It looks like it is not just polls - there is also a debate tool (although does not look very sophisticated). Still the article talked mostly about polls.

I don't know - maybe it is a step in the right direction - but I have the feeling that polls are not very good way to make decisions. There is a lot of thought put into stuff like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making - and hey - there are even very pretty web apps that claim to be based on this: https://www.loomio.org/

And by the way: http://beforeitsnews.com/obama-birthplace-controversy/2014/0... - I don't know, maybe the current parliaments are not very good - but at least they are real - not armies of sock puppets.

I used to feel that way, and was strongly against the argument of using tech for direct democracy.

For years I worked on leveraging tech to improve the transparency of (local) government, and to close the gap between the voters and their representatives. I believed in the representative democracy (unlike many other techies), I just believed it needed to be improved.

I unfortunately came to the conclusion that party politics have completely corrupted the current systems. Over generations the establishment has learned to game the system so perfectly that the elite will remain in charge no matter what happens. Even new "anti-establishment" parties are quickly absorbed or corrupted.

I've come to believe that the essence of renewing democracy is change itself. Not because one system is fundamentally better than the other, but because it will break the stranglehold the current political elite has on the existing system.

Change is the essential ingredient. Undermine the power of the establish parties by any means necessary, even if that means decision making will initially get "worse". At least it will be a return to actual democracy.

That, and transparency. Pretty much any political system can benefit from much more transparency

I think I would be okay with a direct democracy as long as any legislation passed through direct means underwent a judicial review for constitutional issues before someone was directly harmed by said legislation. The current system of requiring locus standi before a law can be challenged is bad enough with representatives who are supposedly more educated on legal matters passing laws of questionable constitutional legality - I could only imagine how much worse it would be with a largely uneducated (on legal matters) population.

What's that saying? Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner or something?

That's what Great Pyrenees are for ;)

I do believe that transparency is already changing politics. This is unstoppable - from the FOIA formal rights to lowering the barriers for mass distribution of information with internet to the the miniaturization of microphones and cameras (plus commercial drones). The rulers have never been so much under susveillance.

But what the effects will be is not very clear - surely we'll see a lot of good stuff - but I am afraid that this can lead also to the a kind of 'small village mentality' - where everyone knows everything about everyone - and the social pressure for conformity is enormous.

> Over generations the establishment has learned to game the system so perfectly that the elite will remain in charge no matter what happens. Even new "anti-establishment" parties are quickly absorbed or corrupted.

Is this a bug or a feature?

Consider who the user of this system is, in this instance.

How about this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_voting_system

We are definitely exploring different voting systems. Thanks!

We are very concerned to make the app not just about polls. That's why we are developing support for the blockchain: every vote must be counted independently of the application.

Accountability is a fundamental aspect of this technology. That's why its also free software.

And yet another problem with this is that on computer systems root is the god - it is very hard to prove honesty in the system. Maybe with crypto we'll have some methods here - I am all for experimenting with this - but it is important to remember that it is very different from physical systems and that many things that we take for granted will not work there.

You have a very valid point. We are looking for funding now to be able to provide blockchain support for voting in democracyOS

I've got a few issues with this sort of idea, and to be frank, Internet-based pseudo-direct democracy has been raised many times before, although DemocracyOS.org seems to have married the idea with political consultation software.

1. I don't see anyway that direct democracy by way of an online poll or consultation is any better than the representative democracy that many countries already have. Such an approach will result in a representative in a legislature who will be biased towards a more technical and engaged audience than the wider community.

2. If there is a need/desire for direct democracy to be more widespread, why not just bring about true direct democracy? It might take years or decades for the approach of The Net Party to spread to a wider number of jurisdictions. Why not put the same efforts into the wider adoption of true direct democracy, which will probably take the same amount of time.

3. In a (my) perfect world, a mixture of representative and direct democracy works best. I'm not sure turning representative democracy into a pseudo-direct democracy will have good long term consequences. I doubt (putting cynicism aside) that every voter in a democracy has the time and energy to put as much into politics as a paid politician puts into it nowadays, hence I think we'll always need a bit of representative democracy.

> although DemocracyOS.org seems to have married the idea with political consultation software

Agree, as long as the legislatives have not a legal commitment with a system, it is just a very sophisticated poll.

> 2. If there is a need/desire for direct democracy to be more widespread, why not just bring about true direct democracy? It might take years or decades for the approach of The Net Party to spread to a wider number of jurisdictions. Why not put the same efforts into the wider adoption of true direct democracy, which will probably take the same amount of time.

I'm a member of the Pirate Party of Argentina, and we're trying to do just what you're saying. We've got a direct democracy platform[1] and we use our processes to collaborate with different social movements and government institutions.

For instance, the previous year we participated in several actions and discussions about national bills using our transparent and open process[2]. In our experience, direct democracy works very well as a bridge between real people problems and the representative system. It encourage people participation and it provides real engagement within the organization.

Thanks for pointing out these points!

[1] https://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Carta_Orgánica/en [2] Here is an article about what we done the last year: https://piratetimes.net/a-report-from-the-argentinian-pirate...

I'd you don't mind me asking, how is your direct democracy platform any different to how most political parties work internally anyway? What that charter describes is how a lot of political parties reach policy decisions, and it doesn't really describe anything that resembles direct democracy that the whole electorate takes part in.

The platform is not for the whole electorate because we are no longer trying to participate in elections (it is explained in the journal article), we are now a non-electoral political organization. There is a lot of literature[1][2][3] and a bunch of experiences[4] related to the implementation of high-scale direct democracy, but looking at the argentinian politics it is a very far horizon at the moment.

Despite of that, we're not that special. There are a lot of organizations (social movements, collectives, local assemblies) all around the world that do organize by using some kind of direct democracy strategy. But we want to bring direct democracy to institutional areas at some level[5]. In order to reach that purpose we've got three main values: direct democracy to take decisions, transparency as the social contract, and free culture as the foundation of our values and principles. Based on these values, we're focused in organizing actions related to the political space.

Regarding direct democracy, we take decisions based on a consensus process rather than voting. This changes the people's mindset and promotes participation instead of competition, it breaks hierarchies and distributes the power among all members. We have not a "board", we have a process to take decisions that we call "dissensus-based process". We consider that consensus is a permanent status, and dissensus is the lack of consensus. So in order to take a decision there's a very simple constraint: the three pirates rule. If three persons want to organize an action, they just do it unless someone says "I DO NOT AGREE", so it must be discussed until there is consensus again.

Regarding transparency, we have our own infrastructure and we adopt tools that helps with transparency: mailing lists, wikis, git, loomio, etc. There're are not "private activities", everything we do is public or "semi-public" (post-facto) when it is quite critical.

Of course, it has several issues. It is a challenge to make the organization grow because it depends on people that think based on quite similar values. We've got a set of principles[6] and political guidelines[7] to appeal when there is dissensus.

I hope you now could figure out yourself how different we are from other political parties.

[1] Aaron Swarz - Parpolity or the power of exponents: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/parpolity [2] A classic: The Principle of Federation - Proudhon: http://www.ditext.com/proudhon/federation/federation.html [3] The new anarchists - David Graeber: http://newleftreview.org/II/13/david-graeber-the-new-anarchi... [4] http://www.david-kilgour.com/mp/democracy.htm [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_insertion [6] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Declaraci%C3%B3n_de_Princip... [7] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Bases_de_Acci%C3%B3n_Pol%C3...

Representative democracy today is 500 representatives for 300 million population. That's not representative democracy but corporation democracy. If you think you get to pick, think about who picks those you get to pick.

That's why we also have a political party: The Net Party aims to provide DemocracyOS with a compatible political vehicle that guarantees that the decisions taken online have a REAL impact in the offline world.

Well, what else should representative democracy be? It's a small number of full time legislators representing a larger population. Calling it a corporate democracy veils it in cynicism.

If it want to represent my electorate in a parliament, I can stand at the next election (or ideally, I can attempt to initiate a recall election for the sitting member). Indeed, there is nothing in a well run representative democracy to prevent me from picking anyone who puts their hand up as a candidate.

I think the problems you are referring to with representation are overwhelming concentrated in the United States. The U.S. does have problems with ballot access, voting systems, electorate size, etc., but those are problems with an implementation of representative democracy, and can, if anyone is willing to, be fixed.

Regarding (3), you have the success of Swiss direct democracy to content with.

Switzerland is often portrayed as this political paradise of neutrality and civil liberty, but the truth is nowhere near as rosy. There's plenty of dark spots and inefficiencies in Switzerland's history that can potentially put the idea of pure direct democracy into question. I can list some if you'd desire and are unaware.

What is true democracy in your mind?

True direct democracy would be at the very least the common use of referenda, citizen initiated laws, recall elections, etc.

Hi everyone, I'm one of the founders of DemocracyOS.org and The Net Party (partidodelared.org). Let me know what you think about DemocracyOS as an open source vote & debate tool, and our political strategy with The Net Party where we have candidates committed to vote in congress according to DemocracyOS.

Well, I have to come back to you with a few very basic things that should change immediately if you want to show respect to users and their privacy and would like your business to be taken serious by NGOs and political activists around the globe:

* there is NO https://democracyos.org/ - how deep are your tec guys sleeping???

* please remove the privacy invading tracking links from your website. All of them. Now.

These two issues would be most important to gain some credibility in Europe, where most people still do not accept to have their web privacy delivered to x companies without being asked. This is especially true for a site that offers discussion about political issues - a very heavy fauxpas and you should stop doing anything else and prioritize fixing these issues, these are absolutely vital things for a "democracy enhancing platform".

* I can not download your manifesto pdf without logging into slideshare.

Here again I am forced to pay for your pdf by giving user account information. Why are you letting a third party company take your pdf documents as hostages? I am sure your web servers will not die if you just let people download the pdf from e.g. https://democracyos.org/manifesto.pdf

These things should change before you open your site to the wider public - too many people will see these as proof for "business guys hijacking democracy software market".

1) You're right, we got the SSL certificate ready and we'll be deploying it ASAP.

2) Good point, will look into that.

3) Will put the PDF as you suggested.

Thanks!

From your description I am missing one important idea that you should communicate clearly: you, we and nobody else currently wants to have online voting - what we want to have, are tools that enable transparency and gathering of information, also discussions and preparation of decisions, but the final decision is something you do NOT want to do online.

See this talk from 31C3: http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6344_-_en_-_...

If you still believe that online voting is doable and a great thing, please contact Mr. Halderman and talk to him or read about his work: https://jhalderm.com/

Also I recommend to do some research what the german pirate party is using regarding democracy tools - they have a lot of experience not only coding such tools, but also with real life usage.

A good start could be https://liqd.net/en/ here you can find the adhocracy platform: https://github.com/liqd/adhocracy/

which seems to be in a much better developed state than what I see on democracyOS - but maybe there are many things not visible right now to me, so sorry for this criticism.

Adhocracy is currently in use by several organizations and they have lots of real life experience, especially with user adaption.

An interesting application of adhocracy is https://offenekommune.de/

Another interesting tool for organizing (really big) meetings: http://openslides.org/en/

and of course the brilliant idea of Bundes-Git, a law-making platform: http://okfnlabs.org/blog/2012/12/13/bundesgit-german-laws-on...

Maybe the best way to get some overview would be to contact the awesome people at https://okfn.org/ - good luck!

Are you in contact with the Pirate parties of different countries? Your party sounds like it uses the idea of "liquid democracy" which is discussed quite a bit by the Pirate parties if memory serves right. I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product.

You'll probably end up in some upcoming startup books as an unusual MVP (is it M?). "Found a political party".

Good luck, political change is really hard and I do like the concept of more direct wisdom of the crowd like politics. I'm not sure about your product but access to governments and understanding how they work is pretty valuable. Government tools tend to be internally-viral (one community usues it, it spreads). I'm curious if the fact that you are also a party might be dangerous for the product though. Pretty often useful stuff is blocked on principle so for example if your party seems "left", conservative city councils might not use your tool due to that (likewise the other way around). Pretty interesting problem to have.

There exist a very active Pirate Party from Argentina[1] based on a direct democracy processes[2]. The "Net Party" actually doesn't exist, it is just a mask to sell DemocracyOS. If you get into their site, there's nothing about politics, it is just entrepreneurship bullshit.

And by the way, they are no longer a "legal" political party, they lost the legal representation because they didn't reach the electoral law requirements it would be irrelevant information if they would have something beyond the software, but they don't.

[1] http://partidopirata.com.ar/ [2] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Carta_Org%C3%A1nica/en

We lost representation this year, but the Pirate Party was never a political party in Argentina. They didn't even run for elections once. So please...

Actually we chosen do not participate in elections, but we're still a political organization. You can take a look at our report published in the PPI journal[1].

Anyway, I've got not problems with experimental politics, I do study anthropology and believe me, I have a good idea what a social experiment is. I personally consider you a very smart person and I know you understand which is my concern about The Net Party. The Net Party is not what it says it is. There's no transparency, you're not looking for political agreements in order to use DemocracyOS in other way than a poll, you're not using the money to develop a software oriented to the principles you say it has, you do not define your ideology and anyone with slight knowledge of politics and history can see which it is.

You operate like a startup company and not like a political organization. I have not problems with your ideas (I personally don't share them, but I think it is an open discussion), I have problems with your actions. You're cheating people and you know it.

[1] http://piratetimes.net/a-report-from-the-argentinian-pirate-...

The Net Party got 1.2% of the votes in 2013.

The Pirate Party never got more than 20 affiliates so they where never able to run.

Thanks for the information! Good luck with your work in AR!

> I think the German one at least discussed some tools to use/build for the entire vote/poll mechanism which I assume is built into your collaboration product

I think they built this tool (or considered using) Agora Voting[0] (Django/Python) which as far as I know, has put A LOT of effort into security and fraud-prevention (PKI, Mix-net's, etc), IMO the biggest issue here.

It's a soft derived from the Spanish Internet Party, I guess it's the equivalent of the argentian side from which DemocracyOS came into existence, or at least both draw a lot of parallelisms.

I wonder if it wouldn't be better for all these DD parties [1] to just unite forces and focus on a single tool... The idea is certainly interesting.

[0] https://github.com/agoravoting

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_direct_democracy_partie...

They even went ahead and implemented a 'liquid feedback' tool. Which seems quite similar to democracyOS?

http://liquidfeedback.org/

While they were doing that they squandered all their political potential by failing to elect strong, media competent leaders and consequently were dismantled by mass media. Of course the media was relatively keen on doing that anyways, with a few exceptions in the more intellectual news papers.

I agree, but the parent was referring to this tool I believe.

Wishing you good luck and hoping (rather selfishly) this luck is contagious to Brazil (where I live).

A long time ago I worked on Interlegis, which is a tool for legislature workflow automation that's used, as far as I know, widely in Brazil. I see some interesting synergies there for you at a later evolutionary stage.

There is http://partidopirata.org/ there :)

Good news: check http://euvoto.org it's a start in Sao Paulo!

As a long-time supporter of your efforts, I have a few suggestions.

1) The name 'The Net Party' isn't going to cut it in the US. Think beyond the fact that you must be connected to participate (e.g. The Popular Party).

2) Don't stay in SV for too long. You can't risk losing touch with the people who are using the software.

3) Your fate will be decided by how easy it is to use your interface. It needs more simplification. The call to action on every page needs to be more clear (e.g. the voting buttons on the /law page ought to be fixed).

4) Look to history for examples. German Pirate Party's LiquidFeedback and Switzerland/Estonia are obvious examples, but there's more. What can you learn from Mondragon in Spain or SEMCO in Brazil? Labor movements that operated on direct democracy? Quaker decision-making?

This is the sort of place real change is going to come from. Transparent public information, that at the very least will shame politicians into voting in the interests of the people.

I understand it's probably not a top priority, but it'd be amazing if prediction markets on the impacts of policies could be included in this tool. It wouldn't even need to be real money, just a way to keep track of people's performance, and weight their impact on later markets accordingly. This would enable true access to the "wisdom of the crowd", and allow citizens to have a proper insight into how candidates and citizens perform in terms of forecasting the impact of policies, and making decisions based on that information.

There's already plenty of accurate forecasting available, but it's suppressed and distorted by elite interests.

So most voters either have no access to it, or they're told expedient lies by the media.

The US has an large organised mass of 'think tanks', 'foundations', and other propaganda fronts which exists solely to lie to the public and directly influence policy makers.

Debate is not the answer to this. You can only restore real democracy by making the distortions explicit. That means logging and listing all lobbying efforts, making sure no off-record cash transactions go unreported, and removing anyone who lies to the public for profit from any kind of political influence.

DemocracyOS is tinkering around the edges of this. Local democracy is a start, but it won't start to have an effective influence until national policy power is distributed more intelligently.

What's to stop you from fudging the results on DemocracyOS and making whatever choices you want with The Net Party?

Please ELI5, tl;dr, etc.

DemocracyOS is an application where you can get informed on what happens in congress, debate with other citizens in a platform that rewards the best argument and vote.

The Net Party is a political party that ran for elections in Argentina with a very simple promise: its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS.

In 2013 it got 1.2% of the votes. Wasn't enough to put the candidate, but the software got officially adopted by the Congress. Since then over 350 bills where debated by citizens online.

After that, political parties, NGOs and governments from a wide range of places like Tunisia, Kenya, Brazil, Spain, Ukraine, Chile, Mexico adopted DemocracyOS.

We are part of the new batch of Y Combinator and in the US we launched with councilmembers from New York, San Francisco, Boston and other cities agreeing to use DemocracyOS.

The Net Party seems like it defeats the purpose of representative democracy. The system was designed to let congress people differ from their electorate on certain matters. If you take the Net Party concept (as I understand it) to it's logical conclusion, isn't that changing the basic form of government from representative to direct democracy? Or in essence saying "Nice try James Madison, but we have something different in mind"?

It's great to to give citizens a forum for debate and anything that encourages communication between government and the governed is generally a good thing. Not sure how much I like the idea of making major changes to the basic process of government though, at least here in the United States. I can think of many examples of good things that might not have passed in congress if representatives had to vote the way that citizens using a particular software app wanted them to vote (slavery, income tax, segregation, healthcare).

I wish you good luck and it sounds like you're doing good things. Experimentation is good, even if it poses risks.

One of the arguments against representative democracy at all was basically the same: People were supposedly too uninformed, and someone else needed to moderate their wishes.

The arguments against expanding the electorate from land owners to all males in many countries were the same.

The arguments against allowing women to vote, again largely along similar lines.

As was the resistance to steadily lowering the voting ages.

As I'm sure you can tell, I don't really buy that this would be such a huge problem.

Sure, some decisions will end up different. It's not clear it will be better or worse. But personally I believe that giving people more direct ownership of decisions is valuable in itself. As is improving representation - with current systems (even proportional ones), a lot of people are very poorly represented because finding a party or candidate that fits their views and that has a chance of getting elected is near impossible.

There are many mechanisms to counter the issues of an uninformed electorate, such as for example allowing people to delegate votes to representatives (possibly with indirection, so you can e.g. delegate your vote to the candidate from some minor party you agree with, knowing they'll be able to try to parlay a voting block into influence with the parties with seats), or vote "I don't care / I don't know enough about this issue to want to influence it, so I want my representative to count my vote the way they prefer", and many others, while still allowing people to take control and override for things where they do care about deeply about the outcome.

The trouble is people are quite rationally in favour of more spending (especially for people like me) and against more taxes (or in favour of taxes for "the rich" i.e. people who are richer than me).

And let's not even get started on the dangers of a tyranny of the majority.

Think about how our current (200 year old) representative democracy scales: you have only 500 people for a population of 300 million. Power certainly needs to be a little bit more decentralized.

Wikipedia is a great example of how bottom-up approach works better in practice than in theory.

" its candidates are committed to always vote in Congress according to what citizens ask for in DemocracyOS."

Jesus that's scary, I hope you guys fail spectacularly and fast (nothing personal).

It already happened, they lost the legal status this year. It was expected, they're only entrepreneurship bullshit, they never would get real engagement from people.

Oh, the guys at the Net Party would love to prove you wrong. If you are in Buenos Aires you are invited to their meeting today at 20 in Belgrano, reach them via twitter DM.

Let me just say that we got 1.2% of the votes in a 2 million electorate election in 2013.

And you (from the Pirate Party in Argentina) never got more than 20 affiliates to join.

> An oft-quoted story about the "coolness" of the Senate involves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who was in France during the Constitutional Convention. Upon his return, Jefferson visited Washington and asked why the Convention delegates had created a Senate. "Why did you pour that tea into your saucer?" asked Washington. "To cool it," said Jefferson. "Even so," responded Washington, "we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it."

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Senate_le...

This concept applies to the government as a whole as it relates to the general population.

Everyone is focused on their daily lives. The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government, and figuring out where it will go next. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important.

>The point of electing a representative government is to have a group of people whose daily lives are focused on the task of running the government. People outside of the government only have so much time to think about legislation, even when it's really important.

This is post-facto rationalization for why the government operates the way it does. Most governments transitioned from a dictatorship to representative democracy because the masses reached breaking point over a particular issue and demanded greater power, together.

Representative democracy exists due to the compromise that was brooked at these points between the ruling classes and the ruled. If anything, it exists as a sop by the ruling classes, who from the very beginning tried to exclude people from voting as they introduced it (only property owners, no blacks, no slaves, no peasants, etc.)

Direct democracy is in no way incompatible with the idea that "we don't have enough time to think about legislation", provided you are given the option to delegate your votes to somebody whom you trust who does have time. Any sensible system would do this and let you revoke or move your delegation at any time on any topic.

And no, that is not just representative democracy reinvented. I would delegate most of my votes in a direct democracy to my retired parents.

You mention spain, is the Spanish Internet Party[1] using DemocracyOS? Are you considering incorporating Liquid Democracy features/ideas into DemocracyOS? They have an open source Rails app aimed at this idea[2] that I was very excited about/helped out on... curious how you see Liquid Democracy's problems/potential

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Party_%28Spainw%29 [2]https://github.com/PartidoDeInternet/AgoraOnRails

Imagine a country entering in a war. People vote using DemocracyOS and decide to start the conflict. Is this good or bad?

We know that we need to learn from experience. That's why DemocracyOS has only been adopted at local city-level where 99% of the issues debated have to do with every-day life in the city.

We need to learn the right checks & balances for an app like this to protect minorities and avoid abuse.

And remember: it's only the legislative power. The executive has veto power ;)

Interesting to think about it that way -- you jack it into just a single branch of the US government and you have some built in QA process.

I'm assuming the long term goal is to connect all of these together to have a global state after they're already embedded in each country's government. All hail the internet state we build together (or our benevolent leaders who backdoor the version of DemocracyOS we're running)!

In all seriousness, it's great to be able to think about using fairness algorithms [1] to literally write social contracts.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionally_fair

Good answer. I am looking forward to the next candidates!

There's been some research on adding a "deliberative" component to the entire process. http://cdd.stanford.edu/. This apparently results in different outcomes than mere voting does. There's obviously the question of whether "different" is in fact "better" and how the deliberative process is structured, but given that debate and discussion appears to be an important part of DemocracyOS, I wonder if there's any way to build upon the existing research here.

If we assume that entering a war tends to be more of a rash impulsive, decision than in abstaining from violence, then building DemocracyOS in such a way so as to encourage deliberation could reduce the odds of people voting for war (or, if they do vote for war, assure others that the war is being waged for careful, thought-out reasons).

Also, the Lawrence Lessig refrain that "code is law" seems particularly applicable here.

Most people don't know what they're doing or don't possess enough knowledge to take good decisions on most subjects. Democracy is a stupid ruling scheme.

I understand the basis of democracy, but you can't ask a lumberjack to legislate deforestation.

Many Swiss would disagree with you. Turns out if you give people a lot of responsability, they'd rather use it responsibly.

Could it be that representative democracy produces part of the political disinterest and lack of knowledge?

I agree with you. We've outsourced citizenship and thinking for a long time. It's a long road ahead the one to reverse this.

Even trying their hardest, decisions made by "less intelligent" people will be bad.

That's a pretty cynical point of view. And what's the alternative, handing the decisions over to a "ruling class" of elites? One could make a somewhat compelling argument that current democratic systems are pretty much a "curse of Plato" (term taken from Open Society by Popper) type of system with an extra layer of indirection above it and.

I think there's at least enough evidence from other areas (broadly wisdom of the crowds) + technology is good enough these days to quickly vote on stuff to invest in more direct alternatives.

No, that view could only be seen as cynical if we would be an a either-or situation - which we aren't. Another plausible path would be bolstering education, especially for the underprivileged that usually are exactly the part of the population not integrated into the political process (e.g. Germany too has a problem with continually declining voter turnout, but if you look closer that only affects the working class, for the upper classes it's still 80%).

The big problem with technocratic approaches like Democracy OS or the pirate parties' liquid democracy is the amount of the population you exclude by introducing this technological barrier to political participation for e.g. old people. But as empirics trump reasoning (quite in the spirit of Popper), I hereby make the case that the net party won't have an economically compelling pension concept or health care plan for the elderly in Argentina within the next 10 years. Now we just have to wait and see ;)

The alternative would be for the governing class to be the most intelligent of the country.

I would rather be governed by a few intellectuals than by a stupid majority.

I think it has been an established fact that the only way to convince people to go to war has been through catastrophic Pearl Harbor type events, massive propaganda and lies. It also helps to have a professional army and no draft, so that only certain sections of the population are really affected.

The types of wars and foreign policy decisions the US has been engaged in are more or less inconceivable with an informed and educated electorate that could vote on them.

An informed and educated public's decision to vote is also skewed by how much they care about the issue, which gives certain factions a big say in running it. Cuban Americans[1] and fanatical anticommunists care a lot more about not normalising diplomatic relations with Cuba than the general public cares about export contracts, holiday destinations and Cuban human rights not being any worse than many other countries the US has diplomatic relations with.

Public sentiments are often swayed in favour of war, and have far less reason to take into account its consequences, because the public isn't punished at the ballot box if "our patriotic duty" turns out to be a farcical mistake.

And when it comes to influential minorities, can we even rely on the 59% of Argentines (Yougov survey, 2012) that think military action over "las Malvinas" would be inappropriate to keep the ultra-patriotic 26% that would favour a hypothetical military solution in check? Especially with a substantial majority of that anti-war grouping believing those islands rightfully belong to Argentina anyway. The 1982 war, after all, was a desperately unpopular dictatorship's attempt to appeal to public sentiment.

[1]though due to the quirk of Florida being an essential swing state in the electoral college system they've had a disproportional influence in policy under the existing system anyway...

So you think that the US wouldn't have entered WWII if the US electorate had been more informed?

I believe that if people are not influenced by war propaganda they generally favor peaceful resolutions of conflict. This is definitely true for the recent Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but probably also true of Vietnam, US support for Saddam Hussein, the Khmer Rouge against Vietnam and so on.

If I'm not mistaken public opinion in the US did not support a declaration of war against Germany before Pearl Harbor, obviously in the case of WWII the US really wasn't left with a choice after declarations of war by both Germany and Japan.

Bullshit.

Only administrators can upload new bills, and there're a lot of comments here explaining why it is a awful piece of software.

And you really don't understand how a representative system works in practice if you keep thinking it is possible to get elected and tell your legislative what to do from a software. It is one of the most naive thoughts I read in my life.

we are launching the hub now where everyone, even the pirate party in argentina can have their own democracyos and raise their own issues. Stay tuned

Why it is 'Open Source' and not 'Free Software'?

More palatable to investors, probably. It's harder to turn around and sell out when you've just been offering "open source" rather than truly free software.

They rather miss the point though, if they're concerned about democracy and politics.

It is both. But still the OS in the title plays with the idea of Operating System or Open Society among other interpretations. Read it how you want it.

I was actually referring to http://democracyos.org/ - it says "Open Source Join a community that's hacking the future of democracy today. We are 100% open source with an MIT license."

> Why Y Combinator Funded a Radical Political Party in Argentina

The title made me laugh. If I told you some wealthy Ivy League guy/gal who used to be an intern for the Bush administration was building a political party... you would figure out this new party would end up far from being "radical".

> Mancini's Partido de la Red—"Net Party," in English—is a wild experiment in direct democracy that seems to take inspiration from both Occupy Wall Street and Reddit (a Y Combinator alum and ongoing investment).

"Net Party" has nothing to do with occupy Wall Street. The founders are a few wealthy Argentinians. I find hard to believe they are building a tool to change the status quo in any way (this would mean a risk of losing some of their privileges). It looks like a great self-promotion project though.

Also, the article later mentions: "DemocracyOS already had some revenue when Mancini applied to YC". Now, that makes a little more sense: DemocracyOS is a for-profit endeavor, after all. Gotta give them some credit: mounting a mock political party (and then selling it as a product) is one hell of a marketing stunt! The fact that there is some money making future behind the initiative also explains the backing from YC.

I hope they use the money to ditch the code and do a clean start because last time I checked the system was not safe, transparent,secret or auditable

http://demos.legislatura.gov.ar/ Buenos Aires City Legislature installation

https://github.com/DemocracyOS/app

The Buenos Aires Legislature never agreed to install an SSL. We are doing it. Feel free to contribute to the code.

The difference between Pirate Parties which use liquid democracy and "the Net Party" is that Pirate Parties actually use software to support their political platform. The Net Party has not even something that may look like a political platform, they use politics to sell the software.

And by the way, The Net Party lost the legal status this year.

Hello, I am an argentinian and the reason why I dont like DemocracyOS is because it just adds another middleman. I am sick and tired of representative democracy. It is a hoax and an illusion that we must get rid of as soon as possible. Adding another layer of abstraction between voters and politicians just adds to the noise of this already abandoned channel of communication.

I want to vote on the laws myself and ask politicians for advice and briefs of the projects, not the other way round.

Cheers

The idea is to make that middleman (the representative) committed to the people. We cannot go against the Constitution, if you like that approach there are other political alternatives you might want to consider.

I like this idea, but I don't know if a trojan horse in the footer sends the most positive political message.

This is extremely risky to fund a political party with foreign money, in particular in the CIA's backyard.

The title says that, but its not the reality. The funded The DemocracyOS Foundation. The founders have also created a political party in Argentina to prove their model and ran for elections in 2013 (1% of the votes).

It is actually forbidden by the Argentinian Electoral Law.

make up your mind, are we or are we not a party? if we are not, as you got tired if claiming then it's not illegal.

Because in politics there is always an "investment" side.

Hey, sorry I downvoted you accidentally when switching windows due to my laptop being slow and stupid :)

Hey, thanks)

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