Imagine a country entering in a war. People vote using DemocracyOS and decide to start the conflict. Is this good or bad?
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 ;)
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.
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.
I understand the basis of democracy, but you can't ask a lumberjack to legislate deforestation.
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.
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 ;)
I would rather be governed by a few intellectuals than by a stupid majority.
Could it be that representative democracy produces part of the political disinterest and lack of knowledge?
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.
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.
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...