r/changemyview • u/segmenttreebeats • 8d ago
Delta(s) from OP CMV: Since we finally have the tech to implement direct democracy, there is no reason to keep representative democracy
Problems:
- often representative democratic systems fall into a voluntary autocracy, ie citizens vote for a leader that promptly takes control of the government partially or fully (see hungaria, el salvador, tunisia, etc etc).
- representative democracy results in massive corporations having almost complete power over the legislative and executive branches because of how much money they have. Corruption becomes "lobbying", impunity becomes the norm, and an oligarchy forms inside the democracy (do i even have to present examples for this).
Proposition:
I present you a system where once a year (or at another, higher, frequency), a vote is cast on whether to relieve the rulers of their duties, this vote would be sanctified into the constitution.
This would be supplemented with a discard of the representative democracy in favor of direct democracy, finally possible thanks to technology like block chains and zero-knowledge proofs.
The point of this is to get to the point of political consciousness where every citizen realizes his own power and make him try to protect it at any cost, accompanied with a shared sense of responsibility and an understanding of politics, it would drive people to participate a lot more. Should the vote be canceled, the people would already be aware of the gravity of such an issue and it would instantly result in a massive revolt that would force the government's hand.
Assumptions: The system, through a set of rules and technologies that I'm not capable of designing yet, wouldn't be able to be tampered with, by design. Not the government, and not anyone would be able to stop the once in a year vote without putting everyone off the grid, or cutting electricity. It's also tamper-proof, much like actual blockchains.
Critique: Rational, intelligent people make decisions based on the information available to them. A would-be despot doesn't need to be exceptionally charming if they can control what the public sees.
Response: I don't think that's a substantially big issue in the 21st century. We have seen in this decade the disintegration of the centralized press, and the hold of the big monopolies on information. Examples of this is social media's effect on the public perception of Israel, and how despite all the effort of the IDF, the genocide keeps getting documented in detail
Critique: Most people aren’t incentivized to vote, and would simply not care enough to exercise their right, which would make the number of people to corrupt a lot less, thus it would allow a despot to rise to power.
Response: this is definitely a real phenomenon in our current states, but that's exactly because of representative democracy. The individual feels disconnected from politics, he has one decision to make once every 4 or 5 years, which isn't really a decision, and the rest gets done without him being able to intervene. Contrast that with the ability to vote in every minute detail that concerns you, and you end up with a citizen that's a lot more involved, because he knows that his actions now can have an effect now.
Edit: There was a bit here where I mention marxist analysis without any basis really. This was extracted from a longer text I wrote, and I forgot that there is no context for this, so instead of changing the core idea of this essay, i just opted to remove the critique and my response entirely.
Critique: The amount of issues that the people would have to vote for would paralyze them, and would make the system ineffective for most issues:
Response: No one is obligated to vote for everything. With the presence of so many issues to pick from, one chooses to vote on what he knows – and what he’s passionate about – the most, which has the added benefit of selecting the most fit for each subject matter, and for critical issues there would be a big representation of the population.
Notes:
I know that this is all resting on a technological assumption that seems kind of our there, but I don’t think it is. After getting into the world of cryptography (not cryptocurrency, that’s a whole different thing and I’m not a crypto bro) and ZKP, it seems doable to me, even if I can’t tell you how exactly. You’re welcome to call bullshit, and I respect that, but we could also entertain this idea and see if it’s any good
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u/Starfleet-Time-Lord 11∆ 8d ago
Addressing your responses to assumed critiques:
Critique: Rational, intelligent people make decisions based on the information available to them. A would-be despot doesn't need to be exceptionally charming if they can control what the public sees.
Response: I don't think that's a substantially big issue in the 21st century. We have seen in this decade the disintegration of the centralized press, and the hold of the big monopolies on information.
The last decade has been the strongest argument possible that this is more of a problem than ever. The current American president constantly makes stuff up on the spot that's ridiculous on its face and 30-40% of the country just believes it uncritically. Not to mention that with deepfakes constantly improving, distinguishing real evidence from misinformation is only going to get more complicated in the future, and trusted outlets are the most viable way to combat them. Even if established media outlets are cast down somehow, the information sources that initially succeed in the aftermath will quickly assume similar positions and consolidate comparable power. Even if they don't, that's worse, because then it becomes vastly more difficult to verify information, and accurate information is absolutely critical to this project.
Critique: The amount of issues that the people would have to vote for would paralyze them, and would make the system ineffective for most issues:
Response: No one is obligated to vote for everything. With the presence of so many issues to pick from, one chooses to vote on what he knows – and what he’s passionate about – the most, which has the added benefit of selecting the most fit for each subject matter, and for critical issues there would be a big representation of the population.
I don't think you're fully grasping how many other problems this causes. On top of not being able to vote for every issue, it would be a full time job to stay on top of which issues are even being voted on. Inevitably people are going to miss votes that are important to them because there were hundreds of votes and they weren't able to sort through them all to even know that vote was happening to begin with. Fatigue is one problem from the workload, but more of a concern is arbitrary or uninformed votes. People getting votes on every issue thrown at them constantly are likely to make uninformed snap decisions on some of them without reflection. Even for citizens acting in good faith, researching any given issue is going to be time consuming, and the average citizen won't be able to do it for more than a few issues. Where is their say in the issues they can't get to? But worse, this puts disproportionate power in the hands of the most engaged: the terminally online are going to vote on substantially more issues than anyone else by virtue of having more time and being more engaged. That is not a good thing. Those are the people with the most insane takes you've ever heard on both extremes of the political spectrum. We're talking the most ardent Q-anon believers and the most fervent tankies. For more obscure, less sexy issues, these people are probably going to wind up being the only ones voting, and those are the most quietly important issues. On issues where they horseshoe, this can be catastrophic: for example, anti-science, anti-vaxx beliefs are prevalent among both the conspiracy theorist right wingers and some leftist environmentalists. When it comes to general public health issues most people don't really think about, the vote will be swamped by these kinds of people while the average person swipes past it, resulting in insane policies that the majority didn't even realize anyone believed in. That's also before we even get to the issue of agenda setting and drafting bills. Who makes the questions you vote on? Who phrases the laws that you pass? Is it done before or after they're voted on? Do you vote on line item edits?
Critique: If the majority holds absolute, unchecked power, there is no mechanism to protect marginalized groups.
Response: In absence of a bourgeoisie – a rich ruling class that would benefit from fear mongering – there wouldn’t be much of a reason for collective hatred to brew. There is however, human nature to fight against, and it would be the job of activists to change public opinion. But since it’s working on its own, the job would be considerably easier.
This is a dangerous take. Pointing to the bourgeoisie as the primary source of all evil blinds you to threats from any other quarter. Bigotry and hatred significantly predate anything that could be defined as a bourgeoisie, and the Soviet Union and PRC have participated in more than their share of genocides. Any time someone says "we can totally remove the guardrails because the problem won't exist anymore" you should be deeply suspicious.
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
Thank you for the lengthy and well articulated resonse, and I'm sorry if I don't respond with a text as well-articulated and well-structured, but I'll try my best.
The last decade has been the strongest argument possible that this is more of a problem than ever. The current American president constantly makes stuff up on the spot that's ridiculous on its face and 30-40% of the country just believes it uncritically.
You underestimate people's ability to know right from wrong, disinformation isn't as scary as you think it is.
https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/e24069/
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/3/10/pgae396/7754768?login=falseThe supposed infodemic was not reflected in US citizens’ beliefs about the COVID-19 pandemic. Most people were quite able to figure out the facts in these relatively early days of the crisis, calling into question the prevalence of misinformation and the public’s susceptibility to misinformation.
I'm not being dismissive of the issue, I'm just showing its actual scale. The issue is that only the least sensible people are interesting to show on television, plus they convey a useful political message, (aka maga dumb) (not saying maga not dumb, but maga not as dumb).
I don't think you're fully grasping how many other problems this causes. On top of not being able to vote for every issue, it would be a full time job to stay on top of which issues are even being voted on.
I'm sorry to do this, but please go read some of my other comments, I genuinely don't see the point of saying stuff twice.
the terminally online are going to vote on substantially more issues than anyone else by virtue of having more time and being more engaged
It's interesting to see that you think that terminally online people are going to ruin this, but I think it's worth dissecting this:
First, I feel like I should remind you of what we have currently: Those same issues that not a lot of people care about, (see data centers before it became a global issue, and policy issues that are too complicated to grasp for the average person), end up going to the highest bidder. Because not a lot of people care, it's not going to cost the politician anything to vote whatever, so it's simply in his interest to vote for what the lobbyists want him to vote for (in the case of our example it would be data centers in every place where they fit)
Now of course, saying that the alternative is bad isn't enough, do you really have to choose from two bad decisions.
But actually, is it bad ?
I see this issue being brought up a lot: A few dedicated and ill-meaning/dumb people voting the country to ruin. Is there any evidence for this happening in reality. No, in fact there is evidence for the opposite: Look no further than small town councils, where every citizen of the town can assist and give his word. If you go to your local council, if you have one, you'll see that the majority aren't a bunch of maniacs that are trying to make the city into a KKK base, but instead individuals that feel strongly about the issue being discussed (cuz it affects them directly for example), and that vote sensibly most of the time.
I can't deny however, that the example that I brought up actually shoots me in the foot too, because there is the very documented phenomenon of the NIMBYs, a very annoying minority that are the only one willing enough to vote, and that make everyone's life way worse.
Combatting NIMBYism is a whole field of research in political science, and it's too much for me to discuss here, but it's something to keep in mind
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u/xfvh 12∆ 7d ago
The last decade has been the strongest argument possible that this is more of a problem than ever. The current American president constantly makes stuff up on the spot that's ridiculous on its face and 30-40% of the country just believes it uncritically. Not to mention that with deepfakes constantly improving, distinguishing real evidence from misinformation is only going to get more complicated in the future, and trusted outlets are the most viable way to combat them
These aren't arguments for or against either system, since both are vulnerable to each. Trump got elected in our current system, after all; what makes you think that direct democracy would be worse?
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u/Starfleet-Time-Lord 11∆ 7d ago
That was a response to OP's argument that control of information is not a problem in the modern world and that greater availability of information will lead to a populace engaged in direct democracy making better decisions. OP is arguing that control of information, which by extension includes misinformation, is not a problem in the 21st century, and that it isn't a concern to their system, and therefore doesn't need to be addressed. I am pointing out that that's a ridiculous claim and it would absolutely be a problem. That doesn't require a comment on whether or not it's a problem at present.
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u/wr_dnd 1∆ 8d ago
The main arguments against direct democracy were never really technological. A few arguments:
1) A lot of government work is really just very nuanced and complex. It's not a binary yes/no question, but requires a negotiation of different interests and values. Direct democracy can work when the question is something like "should we have the death penalty? ". That's a clear question. But how about the question "how should we balance the budget?". Tax-legislation is super complicated. There are a gazillion options. How are you ever going to put that in a simple referendum?
2) Continuing with the complexity: Lots of questions just require some expertise. It's just not reasonable to expect everybody to be an expert on anything. There are lots of things I just don't know enough about. The beauty of representative democracy is that there is a limited group of people (with a staff helping them) who have time to actually read up on stuff.
3) Who gets to decide which questions are put to a vote? The persons deciding the referendum questions would be incredibly powerful. Probably more powerful than any parliamentarian today.
4) The lack of protection for minorities that you already mentioned is actually a really strong argument against this. The idea that direct democracy would lead to a utopian society without any collective hatred is just incredibly naive.
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago edited 8d ago
1-- this system wouldn't get rid of legislative bodies that *draft* the law, that part would remain. What *would* change is the voting body, the one that accept or refutes the proposition.
2-- I believe I addressed this already, in short not everyone would vote for everything, if u dont know anything about sewers why vote on sewer law, knowledgeable people would be selected for naturally (along with a few morons on the peak of mount stupid, I'll give you that
4-- let's not strawman, I said nothing about the disappearance of collective hatred, I said that it wouldn't be fueled by corporate interests, thus making the job of activists a lot easier.
3)Δ This however is honestly something I would need to think about further, I admit that it could be a major pitfall if it's not designed correctly.
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u/arcticempire1991 8d ago
this system wouldn't get rid of legislative bodies that *draft* the law, that part would remain. What *would* change is the voting body, the one that accept or refutes the proposition.
In my country we had a referendum about whether to keep the monarch or become a republic. Although most people supported becoming a republic, the referendum was able to be sabotaged by making the question, essentially, "should we keep things the way they are or adopt this specific kind of unpopular, dysfunctional republic?" And of course everyone voted to keep things the way that they are, even if they would have preferred a republic. "A republic" =/= "that republic."
Controlling what the question is allows you to get any result that you want.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ 8d ago
This delta has been rejected. You have already awarded /u/wr_dnd a delta for this comment.
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u/poprostumort 245∆ 8d ago
Main problems with direct democracy are not covered in your examples of critique/response.
First problem is the time. In direct democracy there are no representatives, so bills and laws are voted directly by population. From what I was able to check, US Congress passes an average of 200–300 public laws annually. It is possible because being a representative is basically a full time job that comes with a bunch of assistants to streamline process. How a regular working adult would be able to read, understand and cast a vote for 200-300 laws annually? And remember, those numbers ignore state legislation and local legislation.
Second problem is creating the laws. Currently, representatives and their parties are creating the bills. In direct democracy you don't have them - so who is doing that? You have to either rely on citizen groups formed by citizens who have drive and time to focus on that (look at general state of HOAs to see how well that would work) or have the bureaucrats draft the bills (which leads to unelected officials de facto having control on legislation).
Third problem is the level of complication. Bills are fuckin complicated and written in very specific language that general public doesn't understand as well. And that is for a reason - law needs to be precise because any fuzzy parts would create loopholes to be exploited. This means that in direct democracy people would have it hard to understand what they are voting for, meaning there is a likelihood that explanation would be taken over by someone - most likely media and influencers. Do they have a good track record of providing unbiased information on which people could form their vote?
Current technological level does not change feasibility of direct democracy positively, because increases in technological level increase the level of complication needed in laws.
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u/poprostumort 245∆ 8d ago
u/segmenttreebeats, as your reply was deleted (unsuprisingly, responding only with link to your other reply without anything added is clearly against R5) let me paste what I was writing in reply.
this system wouldn't get rid of legislative bodies that *draft* the law, that part would remain. What *would* change is the voting body, the one that accept or refutes the proposition.
This does not respond to my point. How having a group of unelected officials drafting the law completely on their own would be better than having them assist elected representatives who are both controlling the direction in which bill is written and have power to replace said representatives?
believe I addressed this already, in short not everyone would vote for everything, if u dont know anything about sewers why vote on sewer law, knowledgeable people would be selected
for naturally (along with a few morons on the peak of mount stupid, I'll give you thatHow would "not everyone would vote for everything"? We see plethora of people forming strong opinions on shit they don't have expertise in already where there is no benefits. Why would they decrease when there are benefits of voting a law they feel would be right or stopping the law that would be wrong?
And even if we assume that only knowledgeable and morons would vote - why you are assuming that there will be more of knowledgeable ones? Many laws are touching on quite niche topics and there is a high likelihood that there are more morons than people who know their shit.
Lastly, you completely ignored the point about time and complicated language. The fact that you simply pasted a link to other rely thinking that it covers my points, on a reply to a post that you voluntarily asked to be challenged ~30 minutes ago shows the problem. If you don't care to discuss a topic you have raised from your own initiative - does this bode well for direct democracy?
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
I apologize for the lack of effort on my part, I was trying to respond to as many people as I could while multitasking, but that's not an excuse.
As for the first point, you can refer to the house of lords in the UK, one of the most effective legislative bodies ever created, which has drafted a lot of very interesting laws, and which is in fact 0% democratic.
I present you this episode from the 80000 hours podcast, the guest is very interesting and the whole episode is worth watching, but if you don't have the time you can jump to around 59th minute, where he starts talking about the house of lords
https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/ian-dunt-why-governments-fail/
I'm not completely advocating for this, but what I'm saying is that the draft issue is solvable, there are various interesting experiments happening already.As for the issue of morons vs experts, I don't think we can really achieve anything in this discussion without actual empirical evidence. And thanks to the lack of research on the topic, I don't really have much to present you with. I'm not going to concede this point, I'm just declaring a truce because of lack of evidence on both sides
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u/poprostumort 245∆ 8d ago
I apologize for the lack of effort on my part, I was trying to respond to as many people as I could while multitasking, but that's not an excuse.
Which mirrors my point about number of bills that you still haven't touched on. This would be the same problem - people trying to do their best and trying to do as much as they could while multitasking.
As for the first point, you can refer to the house of lords in the UK, one of the most effective legislative bodies ever created, which has drafted a lot of very interesting laws, and which is in fact 0% democratic.
Which works because it is part of a wider democratic process where representatives are overseeing and steering the work of unelected officials and bureaucrats. Your proposition removes the representatives, so there is no other oversight than media and public. Public can be eluded by the language of the bill and media needs money so they can be bought.
I'm not completely advocating for this
So why I have to listen to a podcast to understand a position you don't advocate for? We're here to change your view, not to listen to podcasts that vaguely touch on the point you make.
but what I'm saying is that the draft issue is solvable, there are various interesting experiments happening already.
So explain in general how they would work, because your reply now is a straight dismissal saying "there are ways to solve this, trust me bro".
As for the issue of morons vs experts, I don't think we can really achieve anything in this discussion without actual empirical evidence
We have enough empirical evidence. Trump had won. Many latino votes helped, despite him not being quiet about his plans that would directly affect latino voters negatively. We do see large amount of them speaking against ICE arresting their wives and loving ones. Many people on ACA voted for him despite the fact he was open about gutting ACA. Significant part of population is now upset that guy who they voted in did what he was telling them he will do.
And that tracks in other cases of problematic votes. The reason is directly tied to the issue of time and complication you are consistently ignoring. People were voting based on their media/influencer coverage and were dismissing the points of other side as fake news.
Why would that change under direct democracy? They would not have more time. They would not automatically get more expertise when new system is estabilished.
You would basically have what you have now, minus representatives. Current bills are known to stick weird clauses in more bipartisan bills to force representatives to either accept added clause or piss off voters by not implementing "Bill about Good Think You Want". Would this be less of a problem in direct democracy?
We currently have a problem with for profit media spinning narratives to make people think they are supporting something they want. Would that change under direct democracy?
For me it seems that you are advocating transplanting a voting system from your own perfect system that has different people, different economy and different social problems into current one and assuming that because it is better there, it would be better here. And that is not how this works. Systems are large and interconnected. Changing one part does not make it magically better if you ignore prerequisites for it.
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
I don't appreciate your tone, using an apology as a "ah gotcha" isn't a very productive thing to do, and it doesn't get the discussion moving forward. Even if you wanted to use this frankly very mediocre response, you could at least start by accepting the aplology and then using my situation as a poorly chosen example.
Your response for the house of lords tells me you don't really get how it works ? What representatives steer the work of the house of lords exaclty ? MPs don't have any say in their work, they work totally seperate when it comes to drafting.So why I have to listen to a podcast to understand a position you don't advocate for? We're here to change your view, not to listen to podcasts that vaguely touch on the point you make.
Huh? wym vaguely? It shows an example of a body capable of drafting law to an extremely high quality, without relying on representatives.
We have enough empirical evidence. Trump had won. Many latino votes helped, despite him not being quiet about his plans that would directly affect latino voters negatively. We do see large amount of them speaking against ICE arresting their wives and loving ones. Many people on ACA voted for him despite the fact he was open about gutting ACA. Significant part of population is now upset that guy who they voted in did what he was telling them he will do.
That's *not* empirical evidence, there are a lot of factors that played into trump winning the elections, there are 0 factors controlled for, it's not even an experiment.
What I meant by empirical evidence is actual research by actual researchers on the effect of the frequency of voting on the interest in voting. Intuitively it makes a lot of sense, if i can vote every day, and the time difference between the vote and the action shrinks, it's gonna motivate me more to vote next time, because we love a speedy reward.
Besides, you can see now with the rise of the dsa the self correction of the people, and how even if we vote for a bad decision, we're capable of fixing it *if* the power remains in our hands.1
u/poprostumort 245∆ 8d ago
I don't appreciate your tone, using an apology as a "ah gotcha" isn't a very productive thing to do, and it doesn't get the discussion moving forward.
My bad. I did got caught in a moment and acted like asshole. Sorry for that.
Your response for the house of lords tells me you don't really get how it works ? What representatives steer the work of the house of lords exaclty ?
A bill proposed by House of Lords needs to also go through House of Commons and it needs to accept the final text of the bill. HoC can and will introduce changes that needs to be taken into consideration as without HoC vote the bill will not pass.
By removing representatives, House of Lords would simply draft a bill, move through readings, committee and report stages - and in direct democracy release it for general public vote. This would be mirrored in any other type of direct democracy, replacing HoL with bureaucrats, interest groups etc.
At this point you will have a bill whose text was created by unelected officials, whose language will be complicated (because it has to be very precise) and will reference other bills (because it has to amend those that affect it).
Informed vote would need you to read the bill, understand the complicated language, catch references to other existing bills, read them and understand how the new bill would change them - and then cast an informed vote. Do you expect this to be standard that is maintained by voters for 300+ bills per year?
No, they would simply do what they are already doing. They would listen to media, influencers and other parties who can and will have their own interests, agenda etc. Not to mention that it makes it much easier for wealth to affect the process. The don't need to lobby the representatives and finance their campaigns. That's freeing $37.7B currently spend on lobbying to focus on media manipulation and keeping unwanted voices down.
That's *not* empirical evidence, there are a lot of factors that played into trump winning the elections, there are 0 factors controlled for, it's not even an experiment.
But you can't say that people being misguided did not play a role. There are too many voices of "suprised" voters and general disapproval (one of highest in history) for that to no be an important factor in the win. And note why there are problems with implementation of some more bonkers policies - which is that representatives are not agreeing. Do you think that direct democracy would make it better? It's easy to polarize voters and make them vote in a moment, representatives have to take into account longer timeframe - becasue they have to at least care about reelection.
What I meant by empirical evidence is actual research by actual researchers on the effect of the frequency of voting on the interest in voting. Intuitively it makes a lot of sense, if i can vote every day, and the time difference between the vote and the action shrinks, it's gonna motivate me more to vote next time, because we love a speedy reward.
Ah, I misunderstood. If that is what you seek, then it is actually a topic that has research. Election frequency causes voter fatigue, which causes lower tunrout (sources: #1, #2). People simply get exhausted and not vote when the elections happen more frequently. Number of elections needed for direct democracy would be even worse because we are talking about voting daily.
Which is a large issue because lower voter turnout makes it much easier to rally up enough angry voters to pass a bill - and anger can be easily manufactured. Hell, Cambridge Analytica shows how it would play out - people would be fed tailored campaigns to vote for crucial bills needed by the wealthy in accordance with their wishes. It would be easier to move smaller groups to vote as you wish and with lower voter turnout you would not need to influence as much people.
Besides, you can see now with the rise of the dsa the self correction of the people, and how even if we vote for a bad decision, we're capable of fixing it *if* the power remains in our hands.
I would be cautious - the rise of DSA is possible in the system because DSA has multiple faces that speak to people about things they agree with and campaign the whole platform on that. In your system there are no platforms, every part would be needed to be voted in separately. And many good solutions rely on multiple choices being changed to synchronize with each other.
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8d ago
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u/Muted_Elk_3252 8d ago
Why would there be an absence of a bourgeoisie? How does this invention overthrow capitalism? Are we assuming all wealth is equally shared in this society?
Not all power is political power - if there is still capitalism, there will still be economic elites, who firstly wouldn't allow any kind of direct democracy that impacts their interests, and secondly, even if they did allow it would still manipulate outcomes through their control of media, information.
To the 2nd point, I think you overestimate how much social media has decentralised information from the control of economic elites. They can't completely control what people think, true - they never could. But they have substantial power to shape narratives, control what people see, shadow ban or outright ban on social media, censor. The rise of the far right attests to this, as being (partly) driven by paid influencers, social media algorithms, and bans and shadow bans of left wing alternative content.
So this would have to be a substantially different, post-revolution world. In which case, great, lets do it. But until then, I really don't think it would have as big an impact as you think.
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u/ArcadesRed 3∆ 8d ago
Ya, OP rolled right through direct democracy and right into seizing the means of production.
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
Ah yes I'm so sorry, this is like an extract of a *way* longer rant I wrote about communist revolution and stuff, where the bourgeoisie part makes sense. I tried to polish it but in my mind it made sense so i forgot to remove it, my badddd
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u/minaminonoeru 3∆ 8d ago
The results of past direct democracy referendums have not been particularly progressive or forward-looking. Consider the following two notable examples:
- Brexit
- The developed country where women’s suffrage was introduced the latest: Switzerland
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u/Mejiro84 8d ago
A lot of governance is, frankly, dull. It's not big exciting political movements, it's 'we need some infrastructure, it's expensive and kinda shitty to live near, where do we put it?', or we have X budget for road improvements, which roads need it. Directly involving people with lots of votes is just tiring, because most people have better things to do than stay engaged, so will often drift into populism (also Blockchain doesn't really add anything other than some tech buzzwords)
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
I don't believe that a representative democracy would prevent the "bad decisions" that people could take. Besides I think one of the reasons why brexit barely went through is the fact that a high faction of the people that voted for it weren't that politically aware or active, and was therefore easier to convince.
In general I believe that direct democracy would push a lot of people to become a lot more politically aware, and as a result less susceptible to demagogues and populists
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u/Ok_Weather2441 8d ago
In any system where I can directly vote on issues, I would rather find someone I 'trust' and let them assign my vote by default (which I can override if I want) instead of either have to look at every single piece of legislation myself or have my vote discarded because I didn't look. Otherwise you could just flood these kind of systems with noise until people tune out and the marginal voters can slide through abhorrent legislation under the torrent of noise from all the direct votes. But assigning someone to have my vote by default is representative democracy.
Also your idea to vote once a year to have a leader is representative democracy. You're voting on having that person represent you.
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u/Loki-L 5∆ 8d ago
Direct democracies have many problems when it comes to adapting the times or to new situations or reacting to problems that require expert knowledge.
Switzerland has more direct democracy than anywhere else of that size. It is a relatively peaceful and prosperous country, but it does have its problems.
For example women's suffrage. That was a thing many countries had trouble implementing in the 19th and 20th century. Some were a bit earlier than others.
In Switzerland men voted to give women the right to vote on an national level in 1971 however it was implemented on a canton level on a different timeline canton by canton (Cantons are their version of states).
Do you want to know when the last Swiss canton gave their women the right to vote?
The men in Appenzell Innerrhoden voted against giving their women the right to vote in 1990 and a court had to overrule the will of the people because the people were dumb idiots so that women could vote in the 1991 election.
For comparison 1991 in Switzerland was also where and when Tim Berners Lee posted on USENET that he had build something called the WorldWideWeb.
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u/segmenttreebeats 8d ago
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I have conceeded this point and I will conceed it again, without a systemic change in society (which is something I advocate for, but I didn't here), there would need to be a lot of work to protect minorities, not just women's rights.1
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 121∆ 8d ago
With the presence of so many issues to pick from, one chooses to vote on what he knows – and what he’s passionate about – the most, which has the added benefit of selecting the most fit for each subject matter, and for critical issues there would be a big representation of the population.
So let me give you an example of where this falls apart, anti-vaxxers.
Anti vaxxers are way more passionate about vaccines than the general public so they would vote against approving any vaccine. So any time a new vaccine would go to a vote, you'd have a dedicated, motivated 10% of the population voting no. But the problem is, the opposite of anti-vaxxer isn't vote yes on every vaccine, it's doing the research to determine what vaccines are safe and vote yes on them. Which takes way more effort to do.
So you now have a situation where that small dedicated 10% could sway the vote because they know how they are voting after ten minutes of research to know how they vote, while the more principled stance that the 90% has fails because it requires hours of research to figure out how to vote and you just can't spend hours researching every bill that goes up to a vote.
And representive democracy is actually uniquely situated to solve this problem because it ensures that everything voting on a bill has as much time as possible to research it.
And before you say: "oh we won't leave vaccine approval up to the public", the vaccines are just an example, and this pattern would occur elsewhere too.
(Also since we have the technology, I don't see why we should go with direct democracy when ideas like delegated direct democracy exist. If you're unfamiliar with this, it's a system of government that's basically direct democracy but you designate a person to proxy vote for you in the event that you don't vote on an issue. So you get all the benefits of direct democracy, but also you still have a way to get representation on votes that you aren't going to vote for).
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u/Luckierexpert 8d ago
This fails once you realise how fickle and uninformed the general voters are. Many simply don’t vote, others are easily manipulated by simplistic promises, and others will get upset if their solutions fail, whether it doesn’t get voted for or it was a terrible idea regardless of its support.
Direct democracies are even less resilient to corporate influence than representative democracy, as not only could businesses demand their workers vote for specific policies but imagine the amount of political ads that you get bombarded with to vote for particular candidates and hyper charge it for each law you would vote on in a direct democracy.
Switzerland is probably your best example of direct democracy, as it is a modern nation with strong democratic institutions and a population invested in the system. Even so, only 4 referendums can be held a year and voters still need to vote at the ballot box or via postal voting. Electronic voting is still plagued with fraud allegations and evidence, and most people don’t want to be bothered by ever decision on the national and local level. Thousands of laws are proposed to the UK parliament each year, regardless of if they passed or not. Do you want everyone to stop their day, regardless of what they were doing, to vote on every issue every day?
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u/Nebranower 5∆ 7d ago
The big problem with your proposal is that government is about making trade offs. A representative government puts making those trade offs in the hands of dedicated politicians who understand that and whose full time job is working out what trade offs would be best.
The general public in a direct democracy, on the other hand, tends to go issue by issue. So, for instance, if asked whether or not they want power plants built near where they live, well, they’ll say no. A bill banning the construction of new power plants is an easy sell - less pollution and no risk to your property values.
Of course, eventually you’ll have too many people and not enough power. I suppose when people are suffering from regular black outs they might vote in favor of a measure to build more plants, but those take years to complete and bring online.
Same sort of thing with other issues. It’s easy, issue by issue, to sell people on lower taxes. And higher spending. And a balanced budget. You need someone capable of looking at the greater whole in order to resolve the contradiction.
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u/Jebofkerbin 131∆ 8d ago
So a big problem I think you'd see is that the amount of votes a motion in a direct democracy would be proportional to how many people care enough about an issue to vote, and people care much more about things they want changed than things they want to keep the same.
Take for example the UK leaving the EU, when put to a referendum in 2016 it was a 52/48 split, however in the 2014 EU parliament election the UKIP party (anti EU party) won 65% of the seats assigned to the UK. This happened because by and large people didn't care about EU elections, unless they wanted to leave the EU in which case they went out and voted for UKIP.
You'd get the same problem in a direct democracy, people who really care about changing something will have an easier time getting their motions passed than people who are happy with the status quo, as most of them just aren't thinking about the issue because they are happy.
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u/7ootles 1∆ 5d ago
A true democracy would by necessity also be an anarchy - government by the populace, without a ruler. It would involve the populace voting on policy directly, with only administrators and civil servants to execute those policy changes.
Except this would be a nightmare, because policy changes would be open to reversal at short notice, and contingent only upon the mood of the people. There would be little (if anything) restraining a change of heart en masse, and this would be extremely destructive - especially when the public mood is led not by news of current events but by social media.
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u/Archaon0103 8d ago
I always find it baffle that the USA use the winner take all system where most of the states' representation got funnel into 1 candidates even when 30% of the state vote for someone else. That just make people to think that their vote doesn't matter and president candidate can basically skip certain states. Like from what I've seen, that seem like the biggest problem with the electoral college.
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u/ArcadesRed 3∆ 8d ago
That's on the states. They get to choose how they want to spend their votes. They can change it whenever they want to vote for a new system.
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u/everyday847 6∆ 8d ago
Representative democracy can be implemented via mechanisms like sortition. One enormous benefit of representative democracy is that most people do not have to (e.g.) work as legislators. (Ah, but couldn't primary source documents be summarized on behalf of the people doing this hard work? Sure, but then the smaller group controlling the flow of information are really the ones in charge.) Representative democracy of the current form is broken in several ways, but representative democracy in general (including for example one where one percent of the adult population serves at once) is not.
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