Viability of a "True" Democracy

[Sionnach Glic]

Pretty much, yeah. Early democracy isn't as good as people make it sound. Sure, you could vote on everything and have direct control of the government, but only if you're a very privilaged member of a certain race and (depending on where you look at) social class.
Mostly it's glorified only by those who don't know much about it, or who are a member of what would be the privilaged elite (ie, those loony libertarians you get in the US).

[Tsukiyumi]

There's almost no reason at all it couldn't work if the nationwide "average" were geniuses. And if laws were written in plain language. And we all had access to vote from home, mobile devices, etc.

It would take a number of factors to change drastically, and I never said it could happen in our lifetimes, but to say "it only works in small communities", or "it can't possibly work on a national level" is ridiculous. Has it ever been tried on a large scale? If not, you can't say with certainty that it couldn't work.

"It probably won't work" is a much better way of phrasing it, if that's what you believe.

[Tyyr]

Do you know the volume of things that are gone over and considered on a daily basis? Congressmen have staffs to keep track of things and do research and even then they are barely informed about what they're voting on. There's no way that your average citizen can even begin to stay on top of a tenth of what they'd need to for a true direct democracy to work.

[Tsukiyumi]

Do you know the volume of things that are gone over and considered on a daily basis? Congressmen have staffs to keep track of things and do research and even then they are barely informed about what they're voting on. There's no way that your average citizen can even begin to stay on top of a tenth of what they'd need to for a true direct democracy to work.

That's why I said "laws written in plain language". No more 300-page bill to fund schools in Minnesota. No more triple-redundant forms to requisition more toilet paper; no more "committee to determine whether we get the red or green wallpaper in office #302502".

Have a group of people write up laws for consideration (supplemented with laws people come up with and get a certain number of signatures to support), and you'd have an additional page on your Blackberry startup screen, or homepage on the internet. Want to vote? Look through the laws; look through the decisions being made today. Don't want to vote? Fine.

As to "elite groups" as the only people with the power to vote? That's what we have anyways.

[Mikey]

No more 300-page bill to fund schools in Minnesota. No more triple-redundant forms to requisition more toilet paper; no more "committee to determine whether we get the red or green wallpaper in office #302502".

But those are all decisions that still have to be made.

Have a group of people write up laws for consideration

There's the thing; presumably, that group would be elected or somehow chosen from the populace. Now, we're back to a representative republic. As I said, it could be made closer to a true ancient democracy, but not identical.

Sorry - "most probably" not identical.

[Tsukiyumi]

No more 300-page bill to fund schools in Minnesota. No more triple-redundant forms to requisition more toilet paper; no more "committee to determine whether we get the red or green wallpaper in office #302502".

But those are all decisions that still have to be made.

Not really. A ten-page list of requirements, and current funding instead of a 300-page one full of legal doublespeak and irrelevant tacked-on BS.

The toilet paper is automatically ordered at certain intervals. If a certain office needs a little more one month, they call and some is sent over.

The wallpaper is always beige, so no such committee is needed.

See?

Have a group of people write up laws for consideration

There's the thing; presumably, that group would be elected or somehow chosen from the populace. Now, we're back to a representative republic. As I said, it could be made closer to a true ancient democracy, but not identical.

Sorry - "most probably" not identical.

People would still be able to vote directly on issues if they wanted to. The elected positions would be secondary.

[Tyyr]

I still don't think you're grasping the complexity of a country's government. It's not, "Do we fund the schools?" It's how much do we fund them, where do we get the money from. How much do we spend on education vs. defense or whatever. Do we fund X or Y style of schooling? Well which is best? Do you have the time to research it and make an informed vote?

There are people right now who's only full time job is to do this. They can't keep up and have staffs to help them out with it. Even those staffs are so overwhelmed they work ridiculous hours and still can't keep up. There is no way individual citizens could sit down at night. Spend a few minutes, even a few hours, on a direct democracy government and keep up. When you're trying to govern a nation of over 300 million people direct pure democracy doesn't work.

[stitch626]

Unfortunately, the amount of votes that go through each day in every level of government is so large that we wouldn't have time for anything else (slight exaggeration).

At last count, the number of things voted on in the city of Beacon each day (not counting holidays and weekends) was 12 (average).
Beacon has a reletivly small population.
The number of thing is a city the size of New York could easily be in the hundreds.
Then there's state issues, and federal issues.

By the time a person is done voting, they've wasted half their day. If they spend the other half working and sleeping, there goes time for DITL.


Edit: What Tyyr said too.

[Lazar]

I have to agree with Stitch and Tyyr. Not only would we have to deal with federal issues, but we'd also have to deal with state and local issues - the equivalent of three jobs in one.

[Tsukiyumi]

I still don't think you're grasping the complexity of a country's government.

I grasp the fact that it's purposely overcomplicated. yes. Does it have to be that way? I say no.

It's not, "Do we fund the schools?" It's how much do we fund them, where do we get the money from. How much do we spend on education vs. defense or whatever. Do we fund X or Y style of schooling? Well which is best? Do you have the time to research it and make an informed vote?

If we have a budget of X, and the people have decided that 1/3 of X goes to defense, and 1/10 goes to schools, that 1/10 would be broken down by population. Then those local individuals could vote on how to spend the funding, along standardized guidelines.

There are people right now who's only full time job is to do this. They can't keep up and have staffs to help them out with it. Even those staffs are so overwhelmed they work ridiculous hours and still can't keep up.

This is because it is currently overcomplicated on purpose.

There is no way individual citizens could sit down at night. Spend a few minutes, even a few hours, on a direct democracy government and keep up. When you're trying to govern a nation of over 300 million people direct pure democracy doesn't work.

Intelligent people could vote on national issues, and then on local or state issues within a few minutes. How many new laws, or non-logistical decisions need to be made daily on a local or state level?

Stitch - that's my point. What are those votes about? My guess is they're irrelevant BS, for the most part.

[Tyyr]

I grasp the fact that it's purposely overcomplicated. yes. Does it have to be that way? I say no.

You're stuck on over complication. It's not over complication. Yeah, that's a bit of it, but I'm talking the shear volume of decisions that have to be made. Even distilled down to their basics do you really think the average person has enough time in the day to research and consider the issues? Trade tariffs, national defense appropriations, foreign relations, confirmations of appointed individuals. It's volume, pure volume.

If we have a budget of X, and the people have decided that 1/3 of X goes to defense, and 1/10 goes to schools, that 1/10 would be broken down by population. Then those local individuals could vote on how to spend the funding, along standardized guidelines.

What about the Military? Who standardizes the guidelines? What about non-local spending? Even after it's broken down the burden is not off the voter as now they have to vote on the local appropriation of the money.

This is because it is currently overcomplicated on purpose.

There's over complication, lots of legalese bullshit, but a lot of it does serve a purpose. In a nation governed by laws you have to spell things out. "Well it means," or "you shouldn't" don't cut it. Things have to be spelled out in black and white. Even then, it comes down to a simple matter of volume.

Intelligent people could vote on national issues, and then on local or state issues within a few minutes. How many new laws, or non-logistical decisions need to be made daily on a local or state level?

Hundreds. Just because the decision isn't of the weight of "Do we go to war or not," doesn't mean they don't need to be made.

Besides, forget that. It's not even about the time required to go click Yay or Nay. It's about the time and research you'd need to be putting into these votes. If you're going to take direct control of the power you need to know what the hell you're doing. Clicking "Yes" on increasing school funding just because you like education isn't responsible governance. It's reckless insanity. You have to understand the issues, their ramifications, and give it real consideration before you decide to click yes or no. A few minutes? Are you out of your mind?

[Mikey]

If we have a budget of X, and the people have decided that 1/3 of X goes to defense, and 1/10 goes to schools, that 1/10 would be broken down by population. Then those local individuals could vote on how to spend the funding, along standardized guidelines.

If only. OK, we've decided to spend X amount on Y program. Now, is that money coming from borrowing, standing funds (ha!,) bonding, T-bills, spec, or tax revenue?

OK, we've devided that Y's particular money is coming from bond issuance. Now, what secures the bonds? Do we issue AAA bonds, junk bonds (yes, there ARE practical reasons for junk bonds,) CMO's, etc., etc.? Are we going to make them income-bearing bonds, zero-coupon bonds, guaranteed-income fund shares, or what?

Never mind, that's too complicated. Let's fund Y via tax revenue. What taxes? Vice taxes, or income taxes, or property taxes? (I'm blurring federal, state, and local lines here for the sake of the example.) If it's for an educational program in a community with a large population of senior citizens, there'll be hell to pay if those fogies have to foot a property tax increase for a program for a school in which they have no kids (true story, happened in my parents' town.) If it's a tobacco tax, there'll be an outcry to obtain the money through litigation against big tobacco rather than punish the "victims."

Never mind, that's too complicated. Let's get the money through T-bills. OK, Nobody's buying T-bills because they pay about 0.5%. Let's raise the rate! Oh, wait, who decides on that? We have no Reserve president or Treasury secretary because we're no longer a federal republic. So we consense to raise the rate to 2.5% to sell some T-bills. But wait! Now the prime rate just went up 2 points! Rampant inflation ensues as the rate change drives saving - and completely demolishes consumer spending. Massive unemployment occurs because of the sharp drop in the need for production; the complete screeching halt of the housing market, and therefore the ancillary industries.

Never mind, that's too complicated...

I'm really not trying to be sarcastic with you Tsu - I really wish it could work the way you describe it. I just don't think it could.

[Tsukiyumi]

...Are you out of your mind?

Yes, but I fail to see how that's relevant here.

Basically, I believe that it would work under certain conditions. Namely:

A) the "average" person has an IQ over 150

B) Laws are written in English, rather than legalese (I'd wager most here have almost certainly never tried to read any legal texts. They aren't in English), and instead of " Vote on appropriations of funding for public transit in Chicago" we get "Transit needs more money. This is how much we have. How much do they get?"

C) Elected officials would still be there. People would be able to add their say, or override the official vote. No one votes on Bill 12397-B? The officials are still there to do that.

D) Logistics don't need to be legislated beyond overall budget. Office A has 12 employees? They get X amount of toilet paper per month.

E) Largely Socalized society. No plethora of tax options. Simple bracketed income tax, period.

Yes, there is a lot of volume. I'm already informed about a lot of what the government votes on, and it would be a matter of Yes/No for me on hundreds of issues.

If the average (150 IQ) person was even 80% as informed as I am, we could vote on almost all issues. Or not. People don't have to vote.

[Sionnach Glic]

There's almost no reason at all it couldn't work if the nationwide "average" were geniuses. And if laws were written in plain language. And we all had access to vote from home, mobile devices, etc.

And Communism would work great if the human mind worked differently.
In both cases, you're requiring human nature to change drasticaly. That simply isn't going to happen in any reasonable timeframe.

It would take a number of factors to change drastically, and I never said it could happen in our lifetimes, but to say "it only works in small communities", or "it can't possibly work on a national level" is ridiculous. Has it ever been tried on a large scale? If not, you can't say with certainty that it couldn't work.

Yes, we can. We can tell from simple obsevation of human nature that people simply aren't going to vote on a bill per day, let alone spend time reading through it, researching how it'll effect them, how it will affect their local economy, whether it's a good idea, how it'll affect the nation as a whole, etc.

"It probably won't work" is a much better way of phrasing it, if that's what you believe.

No, it won't work unless you litteraly change how humans think and prioritise things, and give them a shitload of extra free time to look this stuff up.

That's why I said "laws written in plain language". No more 300-page bill to fund schools in Minnesota. No more triple-redundant forms to requisition more toilet paper; no more "committee to determine whether we get the red or green wallpaper in office #302502".

You do realise that bills are often dozens of pages long because they need to be, yes?

Have a group of people write up laws for consideration (supplemented with laws people come up with and get a certain number of signatures to support), and you'd have an additional page on your Blackberry startup screen, or homepage on the internet. Want to vote? Look through the laws; look through the decisions being made today. Don't want to vote? Fine.

Then you very quickly get 90% of the population ignoring that feature on their Blackberry. There lies the problem.

As to "elite groups" as the only people with the power to vote? That's what we have anyways.

No, we have representatives that we elect who then decide what's in our best interests. If we don't like how they're doing, we don't elect them the next time.
It's not a perfect system, but it's the best possible one as of now.

Not really. A ten-page list of requirements, and current funding instead of a 300-page one full of legal doublespeak and irrelevant tacked-on BS.

Except that stuff is not irrelevant. It's there because it's required. You need to have all that tedious legal crap in their to avoid massive loopholes or inconsistancies cropping up.

I grasp the fact that it's purposely overcomplicated. yes. Does it have to be that way? I say no.

No, it's not purposefuly overcomplicated. Yes, there can be some crap in there that adds a couple of unnecessary pages, but even if you cut the form down to its bare bones, you'd still be looking at half a dozen pages. At least.

If we have a budget of X, and the people have decided that 1/3 of X goes to defense, and 1/10 goes to schools, that 1/10 would be broken down by population. Then those local individuals could vote on how to spend the funding, along standardized guidelines.

Simply deciding how much funding a school gets based on how many attend is a terrible way to do things. What about a small school in a sub-standard location with poorly educated kids that need extra tuition and better materials? By your criteria, they'd get less funding than the large sub-urban school full of privilaged and well-educated kids.

This is exactly the same sort of short-sighted thinking that led to the "No Child Left Behind" idiocy. There simply is not one factor you can base a school's funding on.

This is because it is currently overcomplicated on purpose.

No, it isn't. It needs to be dozens of pages long to show how it interacts with existing laws and to ensure there are no loopholes.

Intelligent people could vote on national issues, and then on local or state issues within a few minutes. How many new laws, or non-logistical decisions need to be made daily on a local or state level?

You're joking, right?
This week my local council voted on 4 matters. There were two on the subjects of road maintanence, one proposal to replace old and failing lights on a certain street, and a vote on raising the height election posters must be placed at on telephone poles due to a man with poor eyesight injuring himself when his head hit one.
Now, I don't think any of those can really be called frivolous. The last one perhaps, but even then it's a matter of public safety, so I'd be loathe to call that needless.
So, if I were to have to vote directly on all of this stuff, I'd have to research the specifics of all of these proposals and find out whether they're good ideas or bad.

So, for just one of the road-repair proposals, I'd have to investigate the road in question, survey it to see how bad it is, talk with experts to get their opinions on how bad the road is, find out how much it would cost to repair it, find out how long it would take, decide if it's worth doing, read up on the proposed sollution, and then vote. Now, even if we assume that there's a guy paid to find out all that stuff for us and compile one big report on it we can all read, that's easily a dozen or so pages in length. And I have to read four of them and vote on those matters throughout the week! And that's assuming I don't take issue with what's written there, and decide to get second opinions from other experts on the subject.

And that's just for my area! Can you imagine if I had to do this for matters concerning the city as a whole? Or the county as a whole? Or the country as a whole? That simply isn't possible to do while having a job and a social life as well.

[Sionnach Glic]

If the average (150 IQ) person was even 80% as informed as I am, we could vote on almost all issues. Or not. People don't have to vote.

Oh, really? And just how informed are you, really?
What issues did your city vote on recently? What were their effects?
What issues did your state vote on recently? What were their effects?
What issues did your country vote on recently? What were their effects?