
What Would Democracy Look Like if it Were Invented Today? - nick007
http://elidourado.com/blog/democracy-invented-today/
======
jacques_chester
This again. It's a bad idea. It will always be a bad idea.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2936365>

The reason we have representative democracy is not because of scaling factors.

It's because direct, voluntary democracy usually leads to utter failure. Our
ancestors, who studied a tedious problem-domain subject called "History",
could examine the case studies and draw this conclusion with some confidence.

There are better places to direct your attention if you don't like the outcome
of the current system.

For example, should the power to create the laws and the power to appropriate
funds be vested in the same body? Hayek wrote an interesting hypothetical
Constitution based on this simple question.

My pet peeves are all around voting systems. For instance, voting in most
countries is voluntary. That has well-understood failure modes.

And the UK and the USA have first-past-the-post voting. Which is ... just
dreadful, actually. Arrow's Theorem shows that there is no "perfect" voting
system possible, but some are definitely better than others. FPTP is not high
on such lists.

Special footnote for the UK and other Parliamentary democracies -- winner-
takes-all electorates are a feature, not a bug, because of the fused
executive. Somebody has to govern, in Westminster systems, that somebody is
the majority party in Parliament. Proportional Representation is terrible at
forming stable governments that can get any time to focus on the purely
administrative side. Ask the Kiwis.

~~~
chad_oliver
Ask the Kiwis? I admit that I'm a kiwi and so I don't have a clear
perspective, but I've never considered our Parliament to be be particularly
unstable. Certainly there's a bit of horse-trading around election time, but
not much. The advantage is that parties like the Greens have a much fairer
slice of the influence.

~~~
twelvechairs
I agree. MMP as in Germany and NZ looks pretty good to me (I'm in Australia,
with preferential winner-takes-all as the grandparent post would seem to
advocate as better). I have never seen any evidence for the 'impossible to
govern' line, which seems to be pulled out by big parties with a big desire to
retain the status quo (In the UK they even pulled out this argument to much
effect against preferential/alternative/instant-runoff voting, which seems
crazy from Australia)...

I'd agree that compulsory voting is good though. In Australia we also tend to
vote on the weekend, which I think is also important and probably overlooked.

~~~
jacques_chester
I like the Australian approach. We almost always form a government quickly
with the Senate acting as a reasonable check on legislative adventurism. The
poms have it better with the House of Lords, but I don't think a similar
institution can be engineered ab initio, it's an evolved body. The Canadians
tried, I understand they don't regard it highly.

I'd fiddle with the Senate formula to allow more minority parties into the mix
(for the past few decades it's settled into a stable tripartite pattern, 2
majors and a minor).

~~~
noarchy
Speaking as a Canadian, the Senate is little more than a retirement program
for friends of the party (which party is of little consequence). The party
that currently holds power spent years talking about Senate reform, only to
revert to the status quo once they got into power. Thus, the Senate rubber-
stamps legislation, but no one seriously discusses what goes on in that body,
because I think that it is generally understood that it doesn't make a
difference.

------
corwinstephen
I think the biggest problem with an "always on" system like this is that
without well-defined election periods, people's tendency to be fickle would
surface and wreak havoc on progress.

Imagine people vote to construct a bridge, and the vote passes by a narrow
margin. Then, 3 months later when people first get hit with the tax that pays
for it, many of them decide that's it's more money than they want to be
spending, and they change their position on the matter. Now we have a
partially constructed bridge that sits because the people who voted for it
changed their mind.

Part of the reason that periodic voting works for us is that it allows a block
of time for the new policies and projects to be executed without interruption.
If voting happened continuously, no one would ever be able to develop a flow,
and the system would feel a lot like an old man driving a car. _jerk forward,
stop, jerk forward, stop, jerk forward...._

~~~
cjg
You don't generally need a new law to pay for a bridge, just vote on the
legislature.

~~~
corwinstephen
Of course, but I was working under the assumption that this guy's theory was
to replace ALL democratic votes, whether on laws or legislature, would take
place asynchronously and through the internet.

Either way, the point stands.

------
salmonellaeater
This is a terrible idea, because it allows voters to be coerced. Any voting
system that exposes who voted for what has this problem, even if vote-buying
is technically illegal. It happens on a small scale with absentee ballots,
where dependents can be coerced by their spouses, parents, or children. It
could happen on a much larger scale if the voting records were public. Think
of the social implications from people's churches, their friends, or their
employers if voting records were public.

Allowing votes to be explicitly sold would be even worse. It would lead to
much more control by special interests and the powerful. For someone who is
poor, selling their votes as a package deal for a chunk of change in the short
term would seem like a great deal. In the long term, they've probably just
made their future even worse. Who knows what the end-game would be in this
system, but it's almost guaranteed to be miserable for almost everyone.

~~~
vacri
Well-picked, I missed that altogether. Publicly-visible voting is very bad for
a fair system. On a re-read, I notice another fundamental flaw: "voting on
every issue is too onerous, so voters will assign their votes to someone, a
'politician' to vote for them" -> "a single bad vote will scupper that
politician's support". If the voters don't have the time to inform themselves
and vote on every issue, then how on earth are they going to have the time to
analyse each of their selected politician's choices? There's no real offload
here.

------
mtgx
There's a scale between 100% direct democracy and 100%
dictatorship/plutocracy. I think most of the current republics are
significantly closer to the latter than the first, as besides voting once
every 4 years in most countries, there isn't much the population can do to
help shape political decisions (other than protests and media scandals, but
those don't really have much to do with direct democracy).

So the specifics can be discussed, but I think in principle we need to get a
lot closer to the direct democracy spectrum (while still preserving
representatives and allowing them to have the final word, legally, to maintain
the idea of the republic - but have a much more democratic republic).

I also think that campaign donations are basically an alternative "voting
system", and it's currently extremely skewed towards the people with a lot of
money. We have the "equal vote" system, but the "money voting" system is not
equal at all, and I think it should be, to equalize the influence one person
can have on a certain politician. Therefore donations should be limited to say
$100 per person, and only people can donate. Companies can not.

I don't buy the idea that a company needs free speech. When a company uses its
wealth to buy elections, it's not really the idea of all the people working in
that company - only of its bosses. But besides, only people should vote - not
entities. This should be a fundamental principle in any democracy. If most
people in the company would actually agree with their boss - then they should
just donate their $100, and vote for that politician. There's no reason to
have people as a group or as an entity vote directly, or vote indirectly
through money.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _There's a scale between 100% direct democracy and 100%
> dictatorship/plutocracy. I think most of the current republics are
> significantly closer to the latter than the first, as besides voting once
> every 4 years in most countries, there isn't much the population can do to
> help shape political decisions (other than protests and media scandals, but
> those don't really have much to do with direct democracy)._

This is by design. Bodies politic which begin as "100% direct democracy" tend
to transform themselves into "100% dictatorship" with alarming regularity.

That this is a common historical pattern was already old hat in Plato's time.

~~~
vacri
Direct democracy is also more plausible in an age where you only have 10k
voters (we exclude the women, the poor, foreigners, slaves, the unsound, etc)
and the issues of the day are pretty simple to understand and become informed
about. The classical Athenians didn't have to worry about smog, so they didn't
need chemical, industrial, or environmental specialists that deal with these
things to come up with potential plans. It's not to say they didn't have
issues, just that the scope is much, much broader now.

------
zby
That sounds like liquid democracy:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy>

There is an implementation of it: <http://liquidfeedback.org/> and it is used
by many Pirate Parties (mostly informally but - I've heard the Italian Pirate
Party uses it as the sole governing body).

------
femto
_Conditional on the premise that the majority should govern in the first
place, I think this sounds like a reasonably attractive system._

Not necessarily the case. The problem even has a name: "Tyranny of the
majority" [1].

I'd argue that decisions in government should be made by a majority vote,
_with each person's vote being weighted by the impact the decision will have
on them_. Currently, we have the idea that everyone should have an equal vote.
Yes, determining the weightings verges on the impossible, but is there someway
the Internet might make it possible?

Note that such a scheme would make the concept of "nation" and other levels of
government irrelevant. Local decisions would automatically be make by a local
cluster of people, whilst decisions with a global impact would be determined
by a larger group.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_I'd argue that decisions in government should be made by a majority vote,
with each person's vote being weighted by the impact the decision will have on
them._

Proposal: the government should take $1 from every person and give to me.

Determining the weightings is straightforward: I get 300 million votes, each
individual besides me gets 1 vote (since the impact on me is 300 million x
greater than the impact on them).

An exaggerated example to be sure, but your proposal will drastically increase
the power of special interests.

~~~
femto
Yep. Chances are my proposal would just shift the bun fight from deciding the
decision to deciding the weightings. I'd contend that the weightings shouldn't
be based on $, but I'm sure those with lots of $ would disagree. I'm just
fantasisng that the net might be able to produce some measure of the impact of
decisions, similar to the way that social graphs can be traced and
relationships/influence calculated.

------
iuguy
I'm sure many people in this comment thread would say that this is a terrible
idea. But lets say we had a different type of structure in the UK and someone
drew up the current system for the UK - no doubt it would look like a terrible
idea.

Democracy appears to be the least worst system we have, with varying
implementations of it (as with Communism, varying implementations existed or
exist each with their pros and cons).

If a system looks great on paper, chances are we've missed something.

------
CptMauli
It is nearly a description of "Liquid Democracy"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy>

<http://globalfree.wordpress.com/2011/11/06/liquiddemocracy/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiquidFeedback>

------
EGreg
I'm pretty sure that a lot of the government can be decentralized and
automated with technology. Instead of lines and offices, people could do
things online. Instead of publication requirements in newspapers, or requests
for data by mail, things could be published online.

So what do we need government of cities, etc. to really do?

I guess I'm going to suggest more of a minarchist vision with government
playing the role of fulfilling the minimum expectations of the people.

Suppose the entire population really needs something (clean water, education,
medical insurance, housing etc.)

Then the government should be able to pay for the basic amount of it (primary
education, basic nationalized health insurance, etc.) through a single payer
system. By using their collective bargaining power, the country's consumers
could form a monopsony to achieve really affordable prices for these basic
goods and services for everyone.

But, this would only be subsidized up to a point. For example, the first $10k
per year of education per child would HAVE to be bought by the government. If
you wanted more, you could simply buy it on the private market.

In a sense, this is the basic welfare state which leverages the power of
collective bargaining through a single payer. But everything is out in the
open, including the budgets. Everything we value as a society would be openly
budgeted and justified on the internet.

The other part of what government does is regulations. Here we have a question
of whether they need to force businesses to not do something. For example, if
a building is not built up to code, should the government just condemn it and
not allow anyone to use it, or should it simply require the building to
advertise its shortcomings and let people decide whether to use it anyway? If
a workplace has unsafe conditions, should the government force a shutdown or
force advertising of the unsafe conditions?

Any system we where we give power to the government to expand its powers on
our behalf, use could be hijacked by swaying the majority of voters little by
little -- which is different from the majority of the people, because not
everyone votes. The problem for example if very few people vote to close a
particular program, or are even aware of its existence, but many people can
motivate the expansion of a program by giving it new things to do.

In a sense, it becomes more and more costly to operate a democratic government
over time, and we don't have effective systems to scale it back.

~~~
jacques_chester
> _By using their collective bargaining power, the country's consumers could
> form a monopsony to achieve really affordable prices for these basic goods
> and services for everyone._

Australia has managed to get a monopsony for many pharmaceuticals via the
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. It costs the taxpayer an enormous amount of
money, but it's cheaper in terms of percentage of GDP spent on
pharmaceuticals.

~~~
EGreg
Can you elaborate? When you say it costs the taxpayer and enormous amount of
money, are you saying that something about the monopsony caused the taxpayers
to pay more than they would have otherwise? Or are you talking about some
hidden costs?

~~~
jacques_chester
I'm saying that the PBS literally costs a lot of money to the taxpayer because
the subsidised medicine is funded out of the Commonwealth's taxes.

But if you look at pharmaceuticals as a percentage of GDP, it's cheaper for
Australians to pay for the PBS through tax than for pharmaceuticals to be
bought directly. That's because the Commonwealth has enormous purchasing
power. It can and does alter the bottom line of multinationals by tens or
hundreds of millions of dollars by including or excluding drugs from the
scheme.

------
thangalin
This is almost exactly the project I have started:

[https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-
politics/wiki/Interests%...](https://bitbucket.org/djarvis/world-
politics/wiki/Interests%20Page)

Feel free to contribute your ideas to the wiki.

------
cjg
The same idea is proposed here: <http://www.jadeleaf.co.uk/voting-is-bad>

------
phreeza
I wonder if a similar concept could be adopted to run a company.

~~~
arethuza
One company that fascinates me is the John Lewis Partnership - this is a large
(~40K employees, ~£3.5B turnover) upscale retailer in the UK that manages to
be both rather successful while being an employee owned "partnership" that
appears to allow employees a reasonable say in the running of the company
while still have a strong management team.

They even have an explicit constitution:

"The Constitution states that 'the happiness of its members' is the
Partnership's ultimate purpose, recognising that such happiness depends on
having a satisfying job in a successful business. It establishes a system of
'rights and responsibilities', which places on all Partners the obligation to
work for the improvement of our business in the knowledge that we share the
rewards of success."

[http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about/our-
constitution...](http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/about/our-
constitution.html)

[I particularly enjoy the irony of a retailer famed for being the favourite of
the upper middle class being a workers co-operative].

------
freshhawk
> An alternative would be for the state to pay a salary to every proxy in
> proportion to how many principal-votes he casts throughout the year

Seems pretty good, I'd be interested in ideas in how you could game this
system.

> An even more intriguing possibility would be to allow any and all side
> payments and let the market determine compensation. Citizens could pay
> politicians directly for their services, or politicians could pay citizens
> to be allowed to represent them. Proxies could have a policy of negotiating
> a price for their votes and then distributing the proceeds to their
> principals

This strikes me as a horrible idea, especially allowing politicians to pay
citizens to be allowed to represent them. Where do they get that money besides
lobbyists? It couldn't be from their proportional salary or the payment would
be too tiny for anyone to care. There are way too many people who would
happily sell their votes to whoever payed the most. This is unfortunate but
it's precisely the problem a republic is supposed to balance.

This is the same reason you wouldn't want citizens to pay politicians for
their "services". Too many people wouldn't care about anything but paying
nothing or as little as possible. A modern updated democracy should strive to
be about giving citizens equal democratic power with no bias towards class.

One issue not really addressed here is that you can't invent a system like
this as if all actors are rational and self interested. You have to assume
that a large percentage are completely apathetic, will act against their own
self interest and the interested and powerful use every manipulative and
dishonest tactic possible to game the system.

Another is how you would stop political parties from dominating the landscape,
which is likely closely tied to access to television airtime. You would need
some system of free airtime (and no privately paid political advertising
allowed) for politicians with a minimum percentage of public support (who else
is singing the Bulworth rap in their head now?).

You still probably wouldn't stop big political parties from emerging and using
a common brand to succeed, especially with apathetic voters.

And I'm fairly confident that too much proportional representation would
quickly result in a tragedy of the commons effect for a lot of things.
Taxation policy would get interesting really fast. Unpopular minority groups
would be in constant danger without a very strong court system. You're entire
society would be much much less stable.

Other than that the whole idea of using proxies to implement a republic where
citizens can directly vote on those issues they care about and let a
representative proxy vote for those they don't (or don't understand) is
fascinating.

Then again, I also find systems where you elect only a local representative
and those representatives elect the next level and those elect the next, etc.
to also be fascinating and that's nearly the opposite of a system like this.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
> Citizens could pay politicians directly for their services ... This strikes
> me as a horrible idea

It doesn't strike me as completely horrible. Lots of people all making small
contributions is basically the kickstarter model. Prospective politicians
could pitch thier platform on kickstarter or the like.

> Where do they get that money besides lobbyists?

But if politicians are perceived to be captured by lobbyists, they'll get
fewer votes delegated to them, and then will be of less interest to these
lobbyists. I don't see this as worse than the current, quite similar, lobbying
setup. Maybe not much better though.

> how you would stop political parties from dominating the landscape

Maybe, but that doesn't make this proposal worse than the current setup where
political parties dominate the landscape. Nor does it show that this is always
something to be avoided.

~~~
freshhawk
> It doesn't strike me as completely horrible. Lots of people all making small
> contributions is basically the kickstarter model. Prospective politicians
> could pitch thier platform on kickstarter or the like.

It would work for some, and kickstarter is good proof of that, but what about
all those who don't give a shit? _Everyone_ has to pick a proxy (or all those
who want to vote anyway) so the field will be dominated by the free options.
If there are no free options allowed then this is basically a poll tax and is
truly awful for a democracy.

> But if politicians are perceived to be captured by lobbyists, they'll get
> fewer votes delegated to them

Will they? Why would people act differently than they do now?. The results of
a large scale test called every democracy tried so far has shown that that's
not the case. You are assuming rational self interested actors participating
in this system rather than human beings.

> Nor does it show that this is always something to be avoided

True, I was taking that as a given in any new system since it's a well
discussed problem. A lot of the discussion around this idea assumes having a
lot of politician/proxies competing for votes, but the party system has been
shown to be the perfect method of keeping competition to a minimum, so I
assumed you would need to limit party power in some way in order to get
competition. But you are absolutely correct that it is not really related to
this post except tangentially.

------
barry-cotter
Switzerland

