So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy.
Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects.
If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass.
Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc.
Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups.
That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone?
I can't muster the enthusiasm to debate this. There are centuries of literature on this topic involving people smarter and more eloquent than me. The following wikipedia entry has examples you may find more persuasive than mine:
If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well?
You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup.
But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority.
I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly.
There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation.
Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress.
If that is the Direct Democracy you had in mind, than we have no disagreement.
What I originally commented on was this:
So do you believe in democracy or not?
I take issue with the implication that it's all or nothing. If we characterize anything less than a direct vote on every issue as anti-democratic, then the only people left standing will be kooks.
I hope you will agree that the overall goal is maximizing freedom and autonomy, that is allowing every person or group to pursue happiness the way they want make mistakes or good choices and bear the consequences.
The representative democracy has a problem with delegates not faithfully representing the people they are supposed to represent. It allows politician to be elected by campaigning for issue X which is popular with majority, then do Y and Z that almost no one wants, and then campaign again on other party undoing X, leaving people no way to communicate that they want X and not Y Z.
Social media have greatly increased the impact of this instability, the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting, and yet many people vehemently argue against that. Meanwhile there is a much more interesting discussion: how to make cooperation between people more efficient using the new technologies that we have.
No one in this thread have suggested to completely replace everything with direct voting
I take the original comment to imply exactly that, since it positions someone taking issue with any direct vote as being against Democracy wholesale. If I missed something, @terminalshort can reply to clarify.
the only way to improve situation is adding some elements of direct voting that would improve efficiency of communication between people and the government.
There are two issues:
1) What are a good set of rules for the system.
2) If the existing system can no longer self-correct, how can one implement a good set of rules.
'Direct vote' might address the second issue. It's not the only way, but it's better than a violent revolution.
I'm not opposed to all direct voting, but it does have inherent problems. The most obvious is that the world is far too complicated for a majority of citizens to research all the issues that affect them. In a well-functioning representative democracy, a politician would have the resources and time to understand the issues. Granted, that seldom is the case in reality.
That is the same argument proponents of planned economy use. It doesn't work in reality because no one knows what other people need and no one cares. Representatives care about being reelected, but they have a very hard time figuring out what people want of them because vote ones in 4 years, or angry people on social media is too unreliable channel of communication.
The monetary system under capitalism is not the same as direct democracy.
A planned economy under direct democracy would be at least as bad as a planned economy under a representative democracy because the average voter has even less knowledge about economics and business than a government planner.
The best thing about direct democracy is that, unlike representative democracy, we don't have it and therefore cannot instantly think of its flaws.
The average person reads under a sixth grade level, cannot perform long division, and quite possibly couldn't tell you how many years have passed since Jesus was born.
Whether a direct vote is appropriate for an issue depends on which is a greater danger: the corruption of a politician, or the ignorance and flakiness of the average voter.
Well it kinda is the same, in any transaction today two people vote to transfer goods and the rest of the people in the country vote to take a percentage of that as tax.
We only need to make sure that decisions affect the smallest number of people possible and only those who make decision bear its good or bad consequences.
Same can work with other issues, like do we want to build a road or stadium, how do we want to deal with homeless in our part of the city etc.
Online, open voting, with possibility to trade votes, and requirement to reach almost 100% accept vote for decisions, can work much better than systems we have now.
As for average person being not smart, average buyer poorly understands biology, and ends up buying things that are harmful to eat or eats to much, but we do not have representative doctors who will decide who eats how much in restaurants. The important thing is to create an arrangement where poor choices of a person do not affect others.
