

A Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Idea: Disrupt US Politics - sinak
http://sina.is/disrupt-us-politics/

======
Figs
If all you've got is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail...

The problem with US politics isn't that we need some magical way for assholes
on the internet to bicker more efficiently; it's that political culture is
just _broken_. It's Us vs. Them mentality, the news and blame game, and the
fact that nobody has any fucking idea how the economy actually works, in spite
of having very strong opinions about it.

~~~
mcv
This is why it's important to oust both parties. Even if you think only one of
them is the real problem while the other isn't so bad, if one of them remains,
most people and media will remain stuck in the old Us vs Them culture. The
system and everybody in it is toxic. They all need to go.

~~~
greyfade
But doing that will require the obscene political step of a vote of no
confidence, a recall election, and a complete reform of campaign finance
laws.... for which we need the help of politicians.

------
mittsh
I like a lot the idea of a proxy agent inside the parliament voting for online
citizens. It seems like the only viable path to direct democracy. A few times
ago I imagined a similar platform where people would vote using gov-issued
credentials. But now I don't believe that is the right solution, I don't see
my grandma vote about startups taxation and I don't see myself voting about
agriculture problems. Then using friends or "online parties" seems a nice
solution, though it will undoubtedly create lobbies, fishing, hacking, any new
kind of piracy to get people set you as their proxy.

 _Anyone can suggest a new bill, and if there is a quorum of voters who
approve the bill, it is voted on by the full membership, with a simple
majority deciding the result._ There is a similar initiative in the EU, it's
called Citizen's Initiative, if at least 1 million people support a bill
(total of EU Citizens being over 500 millions), then it goes to discussion at
the European Parliament: [http://ec.europa.eu/citizens-
initiative/public/welcome](http://ec.europa.eu/citizens-
initiative/public/welcome)

Anyways, that's a sweet dream, and a very challenging startup idea.

------
forktheif
I'm not a fan of direct democracy at all. The majority of people's knowledge
of important statistics on subjects such as crime, employment, taxation, etc,
has been severely twisted by media sensationalism. Putting people who have a
shaky grasp on reality in charge of a country is a recipe for disaster.

Though Liquidfeedback doesn't seem to be quite as direct as that. Whether it
would work in reality would depend on how these proxies get their information.
From reliable sources, or newspaper headlines and angry blogs.

------
voyou
If you want to persuade people of the benefits of direct democracy, you
probably don't want to bring up the California initiative system as an
example. Ballot initiative's in California are part of the reason the state's
government is so disfunctional, and they've ended up that way because they're
such a bad version of direct democracy. Ballot initiatives just involve an up-
or-down vote on specific issues in isolation, without involving the population
directly in the responsibilities of day-to-day governing, so, as in
California, you get an incoherent patchwork of spending commitments and limits
on tax increases. A better example of direct democracy might be something like
participatory budgeting. I see there's a plan to test this out in San
Francisco [1], although the SF plan doesn't seem to involve the public
deliberation that participatory budgeting in Brazil involved, which may make
it exhibit the same problems as ballot initiatives.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/san-francisco-to-test-
onlin...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/san-francisco-to-test-online-
participatory-budgeting/)

------
zarify
I was thinking about this a while back when a comic on convictions was posted
here and one of the comments asked if we should trust someone in politics who
holds strong convictions or someone who bends with the wind.

If a politician holds to their convictions they are derided for being
inflexible, if they change their mind they are accused of just being in it for
the votes.

Can't we just let machine learning take over and train a bunch of digital
politicians about the stuff we want to happen? Or are we so used to being told
what to think by charismatic leaders that we couldn't live in a data driven
political system?

(Only somewhat tongue in cheek.)

------
prawn
Equivalent in Australia:
[http://www.senatoronline.org.au/](http://www.senatoronline.org.au/)

Going by this page, they received all of 209 votes in this year's election:
[http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/results/par...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-
election-2013/results/party-totals/)

------
gadders
I think we need to find a way to stop people voting for unaffordable policies
that benefit them.

------
thinkcomp
When I started PlainSite ([http://ww.plainsite.org](http://ww.plainsite.org)),
my friends and I talked about how cool it would be--given the country's
current state of affairs where money trumps all else--to allow people to
donate small amounts toward a specific cause, and then allocate funding to
politicians based on their willingness to forward the cause, as a kind of
uber-lobbyist responsive to the people.

Unfortunately, that would constitute money transmission. So I kept working on
the parts of PlainSite that didn't involve that. But maybe one day when the
money transmission situation gets resolved (and it's been 593 or so days of
waiting so far on one federal judge), that will be possible.

Generally, it's worth noting that the problems in American politics are mostly
not technological in nature. They're a lot deeper, and this is precisely the
kind of argument where Evgeny Morozov is correct: technology cannot solve all
problems. It still can solve some, but at the end of the day, the simple fact
is that we have extremists in Congress running the country.

