As the title goes - I think it’s a good solution for some of the Western World’s problems, like politicians not following their campaign promises. On the other hand, conflicting politics are a big possibility, which would create further problems. Any ideas?
Won’t work. Too many people don’t care about politics enough to even go to the voting every few years. How can you expect a significant amount of the population to involve in everyday politics, enough not to let control slip into the few hands paid for doing this for their masters?
a problem with direct democracy is that it still only ends up measuring the plurality rather than the majority. Now, I’d be curious to see a system tested that counts the silence so that a vocal minority can’t always act with impunity as if all the people who WEREN’T heard simply don’t exist, whether they chose to abstain or were otherwise prevented from participating through systemic phenomena (or just being overwhelmed with life).
I don’t think we can rely on there being some sort of compulsory system that forces participation, but rather one that keeps in mind the rate of participation so that if only 10% of the population votes one way and 9% votes another way, that measly 10% doesn’t get to act as though they have some kind of mandate.
Rather I’d have liked some kind of non-crypto-sludge ledger system where your votes are pseudonymous–only YOU can be certain of the identity of your vote but you can SEE where it is in the system and you have the ability to CHANGE it if your understanding of the stakes evolves–such that realtime polling approaching any given decision’s deadline can actually be tracked and campaigns can have a better idea of what their blindspots are in terms of who they’re reaching and what information is actually having a measurable impact.
Authenticating the veracity of this information and ensuring some system that actually manages to serve as a functional fairness doctrine is a separate problem that also needs to be solved.
AFAIK, most countries that have elements of direct democracy do exactly that. It’s called a quorum.
I actually thought about including that (counting abstaining as voting for no party/leader) in the post, but the problem would be people voting for the Greater Evil, because they don’t really want to vote. But it would, indeed, lower the amount of people who don’t vote.
compulsory voting that attempts to actively single out and punish people for not participating, for instance, I believe WOULD result in them voting, out of spite, for the worst possible option. But if it’s more like, any plurality “victory” has a big asterisk showing how they were vastly outnumbered by the people who didn’t choose to pick a side, and that their momentum should be slowed proportional to how many weren’t motivated to agree with them as a check/balance, might have a cooling effect on the proverbial “hot temper” of their technical marginal win. That, yes, they can proceed with the planning and legislation but a sword of damocles in the form of an instant referendum if those who didn’t vote suddenly make a decision in light of which way the wind is about to blow finally decide to weigh in.
Sort of like how many people after Kamala lost were like “wait whats a tariff?” “wait what’s this project 2025 thing??” “wait obamacare IS the affordable care act???” - it might not work out for major elections but for all the more local ones where policies are more immediately going to affect people’s lives, it would be prudent. Also, even if an election is no longer actively running, changing your own position on the ledger would be a clear communication of loss in the confidence of an administration… the visibility of which, alone, would be good for prosecuting forcible removals from office for individuals who prove themselves unfit. Like that so-called alleged “George” “Anthony” “Devolder” “Santos” If That Even Ever WAS His Real Name.
It’s too easy to whip up hate against minorities, especially against marginalized minorities (I’m sure the rich would still find a way to profit, despite being a minority themselves). When our western political systems were still working somewhat, minority protections was one of the major arguments for them.
e.g. Brexit was decided via direct democracy.
Seems to work for Switzerland, though Switzerland isn’t exactly a utopia of progressive politics (could be worse, but e.g. AFAIK being poor sucks a lot in CH).
So, do those minority protections have to be implemented in the Constitution of the country itself?
I assume that’s supposed to be how it works, but constitutions have limited effect when we get the kinds of politicians who ignore the courts. I’d assume that direct democracies have very similar issues (see the 2024 UK race riots - those were fully illegal and yet they happened anyway).
I think we need to change our societies on a deeper level. Changing the constitution could be a start for that, but in the current political climate it probably wouldn’t really.
We need to rid our society of greed, jealousy, and hate. But that is also in our genetics, so it will take a lot of effort.
People, at least Americans, today aren’t capable of it for multiple reasons, most of them systemic and intentional.
Decades of cuts to education and the social fabric have rendered most of the populace too ignorant about everything for giving them a say being a good idea.
Like term limits. How many people would vote for term limits without doing any research to find out they basically always make things worse because they keep out the people that want to spend their lives in faithful public service while there are no shortage of stooges corporations can push through.
So, you have the third of the country that voted for fascism. Pretty bad…
But then you have the other third that’s convinced voting for Democrats that spent 50 years empowering fascism will save them.
Then you have the third that’s completely disengaged because they don’t care.
Direct democracy can’t work as long as people believe capitalism serves anything other than the ruling class.
Yeah, the main issue about direct democracy is that real nationwide policies require specialized knowledge and education. It’s not possible for one person to know everything let alone a large nation.
Exceeding true which ends up meaning either technocratic democracy or representative Republic.
The techno route basically requires the best possible reddit where subject matter experts can weigh in and formulate options that are explained and then people can read the synopsis and vote. Idealistic but within the realm of doable.
Representative Republic would require wages comfortable enough to not compel corruption. I’d say no public trading but the stock market and all it entails are one of the largest sources of corruption. Market makers and every kind of derivative would have to go. The only thing that should be allowed is buying stock your support or selling stock you no longer want to own. Everything else is a haven for crime and theft against the working class.
But most of the problem with most solutions is that the bad guys have all the money and the masses are stupid and easily misled…
Yeah in a nation the size of the USA direct democracy gets messy. You need a smaller space with a more consistent culture for it to work well IMO.
Basically get something like reddit/lemmy as a social forum. You use it for business reviews, running for office, looking for jobs, raising issues and crowd sourcing solutions. Make it block chain with each state hosting a node. Make every user verified and use it for voting. It’s absolutely a solvable problem it’s just that all the money and power is actively working against progress.
I’ve been wondering if something like the United Countries of North America type of EU but that still leaves all kinds of questions about the military and how much blood the road from here will take.
Lol, no it isn’t a solvable problem, and let me be crystal clear here, techbros will never be able to solve this precisely because they think they can solve it.
I think you misunderstand. I don’t see that as the fix. A system like that would only work with an educated populace that understands more than the bare minimum to get by, if that.
The only real fix is a populace that can think critically and is informed, but even that’s not easily attained at this point as there’s so much money to be made with institutionalization.
Then yes I did misunderstand. I believe that democracy through the blockchain while a novel idea seems a bad idea to attempt IRL given who fills the cryptosphere.
Yes, it’s technically technologically tryable but not practically politically possible.
We (the people) desperately need to find a balanced solution, one that slowly makes people realize that capitalism hurts them, and that the only way is to make the richest people max. 3 times richer than the very poorest. And there should be a point where money is not a thing, anymore. However, that conclusion will only happen in decades, if not centuries.
It’s difficult. A large amount of people don’t even vote once every few years, so they won’t be involved in the first place. More people don’t have time to get into the details. And I mean how would you even know what do do in details about the economy, impact of laws and complicated consequences? Which decisions about the infrastructure like the electricity grid are neccessary now to yield the proper result in 5-10 years time? Do you even have the time and motivation to study all of this? And the masses can be influenced easily. We can see that even with the Swiss. So it’s questionable whether it even yields better results than the indirect approach. It’s certainly more democratic. But not necessarily better even if done properly.
Yeah. I guess the most important thing is to educate people, something that politicians haven’t done, because they know that people wouldn’t vote in them, if they were educated.
Right. They need education to make judgements. They need independent and neutral media to stay informed about the facts. They need a minimum amount of intelligence in order not to fall prey to populists and the next pied piper / con man who has some “simple truths” for them. And they need the time to occupy themselves with the details, i.e. not an 70h workweek to make ends meet.
I like the idea! I feel like there are a ton of policies that have been really popular for a long time (legal weed, single payer healthcare, abortion protections) that elected officials have failed to sufficiently act on. I’m also pissed about politicians getting elected and suddenly changing their politics (looking at you, Fetterman). Don’t get me started on the electoral college or gerrymandering.
Folks in this thread seem to complain that the average voters is too disengaged / ignorant for this to work, but I don’t see how representative democracy is any better with that. I cannot imagine any form of democracy that can do better than garbage in, garbage out.