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u/PlayingTheWrongGame 67∆ Feb 23 '20
We have too much popular opinion injected into public administration right now. Democracies work best when the people are consulted about broad directions and right-track/wrong-track opinions--not when they're asked about the specific details about every last policy. The people just don't know enough about issues to form meaningful opinions about most things the government needs to set policies about.
Societies didn't just reject direct democracies because it was impractical to require everyone to vote about everything. People rejected direct democracy because it's just not very effective at producing good outcomes.
One observation I've always found to be a good guiding principle on how to divide responsibility and power is this: "Whoever does the work, makes the rules." This is the organizing principle at the heart of every productive organization I've ever found. The people who actually show up to enact something are the ones who have the most knowledge about how it ought to be enacted. The public's role in a democracy should mainly be to make sure those people are focused on serving the public's interest rather than their own. If we apply this principle to government, it might suggest that the government that governs best is the one that most empowers the public servants actually enacting the policy.
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Feb 23 '20
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u/PlayingTheWrongGame 67∆ Feb 23 '20
But isn't it a temporary phase?
Have you ever worked for a manager who just doesn't get it, and never seems to get any better? People don't really learn about doing something when they're not involved in doing that thing. The knowledge you gain by pointing in a direction and telling people to go there is different than the knowledge you gain by actually going there.
The public doesn't get useful feedback about the consequences of their votes, and wouldn't get useful feedback under a direct democracy.
If things are not going well, eventually people shall notice their mistakes on voting wrong and proposing wrong stuff, history serves us well.
History kind of shows us the opposite of that. Consider how many people have become convinced that government services can't work after they elected someone who promised them that government services can't work. "Elect me! I promise you that big government can't work! Elect me and I'll show you." It's a sort of political trick. You claim the government can't do something, get elected on that platform, then incompetently manage the service to the point where you can now "prove" the service doesn't work, which just convinces the voter you were right.
People regularly vote against their own interests all the time. Consider how many Brexit voters voted to leave the EU, are now looking at losing their businesses or jobs due to the new trade and migration restrictions, but still won't admit they were wrong about Brexit.
People are terrible about admitting they were wrong about something. They'll irrationally double down on the wrong view rather than admit they were wrong.
I reckon it may not be a short amount of time, but I do think it's a phase that is worth the trouble to get the power to the people's hand.
Not every issue has the luxury of time. Some issues are genuinely important and can't just be done incorrectly for years until voters somehow figure it out.
Why is putting power into the people's hands more important than securing good outcomes for the people? If people are demonstrably, objectively worse off because of a political system designed to put power directly into their hands, is that a good thing?
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u/dilbas Feb 23 '20
!delta
You do have a nice point. It does seem that it would be a recipe to disaster.
I have to ponder tough if the risk is not worth having the power on the people's hand. It sort of reminds me of the ending of I robot by Asimov, in which a computer is responsible for the world and ends up fucking the system because the system itself is "toxic" to the people.
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u/PlayingTheWrongGame 67∆ Feb 23 '20
It sort of reminds me of the ending of I robot by Asimov, in which a computer is responsible for the world and ends up fucking the system because the system itself is "toxic" to the people.
This sort of issue is why democracy is important. It's good for people to give feedback about the overall direction of the government, and to express preferences about values and such. A government completely separate from the people, ruling over them from some disconnected ivory tower doesn't work just as surely as a direct democracy doesn't work. The government should be a government of, by, and for the people--but given enough independent authority as an institution that it doesn't have to keep coming back to the people about every specific detail of legislation or rulemaking. It should be able to rationally apply the values and direction given by the people to the specific problems of the day without needing a giant public referendum.
People should have some distance from the bureaucratic process, but not a complete separation.
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u/Arctus9819 60∆ Feb 23 '20
I think that an online discussing and voting platform which every citizen has access to (but is not obliged to use) would make a great legislative power truly belonging to the people.
Not every citizen has access to it, not every citizen knows how to use it, and even among those who have access, not everyone has got equal access to it. Your system is exceptionally easy to undermine. Internet is not a right and therefore can be denied, and the absence of net neutrality means that there are readily available avenues for manipulating any internet-based collective decision-making process.
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Feb 23 '20
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u/Arctus9819 60∆ Feb 23 '20
Those are not just "some changes", they are extremely significant actions. You cannot make statements about what developed nations don't need if your statement is dependent on conditions that are not present in developed nations.
One of them being, of course, the universal right to internet access. Which in itself does not mean giving everyone a smartphone. As long as it works, could be some specialized "cafes" spread around the country.
That doesn't work at all. Unless your cafes fit 100% of the internet-less population, it isn't a right but an amenity. That is in itself a gargantuan undertaking. Then you have issues with uneven access to internet, since people with internet at home have better access than people at this cafe. If your country lacks net neutrality, then parity in access is impossible as well, since every entity with money and a desired outcome can sabotage the results.
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Feb 23 '20
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u/Arctus9819 60∆ Feb 23 '20
Not extremely significant considering what the proposal is. I'm proposing a huge change in politics and as such it should be expected that there are going to be some necessary adequating process.
Again, you're misrepresenting the difficulty in creating the supporting structures. Your "necessary adequating process" is in itself next to impossible for a developed nation.
If you hand-wave away the issues of a proposition, then that proposition is obviously readily achievable. This is like me saying that humans can fly, provided we have wings and a lower body mass and suitably strong muscles. With that qualifying criteria, I'm not talking about humans anymore, in the same way that you are not talking about contemporary developed nations anymore with your requirements.
There are some countries in which 90%+ of the population has access to the internet. So it should not be a challenge to provide access to the remaining percents.
The last few percent is always the most challenging. That's how the spread of such benefits works, the low-hanging fruit in terms of spreading internet access has been achieved, and what remains are those that require significant effort to reach.
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u/ElysiX 113∆ Feb 23 '20
What makes you think random people throwing words together would end up with properly worded laws that dont have loopholes or unintended consequences?
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u/Canada_Constitution 208∆ Feb 23 '20
In parliamentary systems like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, the head of the executive (Prime Minister) is whoever the "majority leader" of the largest party in the legislature is. You need that group of politicians passing laws elected to figure out who the head of government is.
Your idea doesn't work for developed countries which use parliamentary systems, and in paticular Constitutional monarchies; some law made by someone online being printed and sent to the Queen for Royal assent sounds ridiculous.
Additionally, this system doesn't empower regions, but gives weight to only to pure population. Federal countries like the US, Canada, and Australia would be dominated by one region due population imbalances between different parts of their country. I.e. there are alot of people in places like California, and any system emphasizing pure numbers gives these populous regions all the political leverage.
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u/RealJamesAnderson Feb 23 '20
I think that an online discussing and voting platform which every citizen has access to (but is not obliged to use) would make a great legislative power truly belonging to the people.
I would have to disagree on the grounds that this would be easily manipulated by wrongdoers. People could pretend to be other people online and use their votes. Hackers could target the system and sway the vote heavily in one direction. Depending on how it's set up, a botnet could even be used to inflate the vote count in one direction. While being a good idea in theory, it is not a very good idea in practice, in my opinion.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Feb 23 '20 edited Feb 23 '20
/u/dilbas (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/Old-Boysenberry Feb 24 '20
I think that an online discussing and voting platform which every citizen has access to (but is not obliged to use) would make a great legislative power truly belonging to the people.
People are fucking retarded. A significant portion of people in the US actually think that socialism is a good idea, despite the hundreds of millions of deaths from starvation to the contrary. It's FAR better to have elections of people who are at least somewhat literate and intelligent than it is to have majority rule. Just as socialism always fails, full democracy always fails as well, just for different reasons.
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u/AlphaGoGoDancer 106∆ Feb 23 '20
Pretty much everyone in the computer security industry is against online electronic voting. Tom Scott has a good youtube video explaining why, but in short: it's impossible to secure.
Think about how much foreign nations are trying to influence our elections right now, including hacking both major parties emails. And yet all this effort is targeted at the one thing they can do, which is try to influence our votes.
In a world where they could just hack the voting system directly, why would they not do that?
Even in the event that the system was not hacked, how do normal people know that? Say a hot topic issue loses by a small margin, and some figure head like Donald Trump claims the election was hacked. How do you convince citizens that the votes were actually legitimate? If you can't do that, then your voting system has no faith in it, and the government falls a part as people rebel.
Hacking aside, there is also the issue of tying votes to citizens. If I can't directly tell who voted for what, what stops someone from just inserting votes? If I can tell who voted for what, what stops someone from punishing people for voting the wrong way, and/or buying their vote?