Even easier to policy launder with direct democracy, since most people voting will vote for the headline purpose of the law or treaty without reading the text. Or worse still, you get Brexit-style direct democracy where the referendum settles only a broad objective and yet all criticisms of details of policy implementation are dismissed as defying the "will of the people".
Policy detail was not put to the vote, and not agreed in advance of the vote, and to pretend otherwise for the sake of advocating a particular approach to withdrawal and post-EU settlement is simply dishonest.
Agreed, but things like that attempted Lords amendment to legally require the govt to guarantee the rights of UK expats living in Europe - something not within the govt's power, and therefore sending them to a gunfight with a wooden spoon at the negotiating table - was equally dishonest. I hope you won't dispute that some attempts genuinely are trying to overturn the vote, and often say so quite openly.
Oh sure, there are plenty of people that are openly genuinely trying to overturn the vote.
But arguments that the referendum vote for the five words "Leave the European Union" obliges the Lords to reject a policy of prioritising British citizens' rights in the EU post-withdrawal as a negotiation objective could be used as a defining example of laundering policies omitted from the actually voted upon text. Parliamentary bodies imposing conditions on the negotiation process is entirely compatible with the referendum vote and the standard democratic decision making process in the UK, and representatives' votes on them should be determined by whether they think the conditions are reasonable, not by any attempt to infer additional meaning from the five words of the prevailing referendum option.
That's fair. I suspect we're both nutpicking at this point, facilitated by the abundance of nuts on both sides.
I do think it's a little disingenuous to try to limit the mandate to just those four words. If both sides of the referendum campaign made it clear that a Leave win would entail X (e.g. leaving the Customs Union) then it's tough to deny that the result constituted a mandate for X. In the same way, a government that breaks its manifesto promises can't just turn around and say, "Well, we didn't write that promise on the ballot paper itself, so what are you complaining about?"
An abundance of nuttiness around symbolic issues is certainly another argument for why referenda in general make policy laundering easy!
There's a big difference between a manifesto mandate for a government to try to do X, which the Opposition are expected and encouraged to try to revise and thwart, and an assumption that something as little-discussed and likely irrelevant to most people's voting intent as whether to retain a Customs Union is a non-severable, non-contestable facet of public assent to leave the EU. That would have been the case even if a simple, practical customs border solution had been proposed at any time. As it is, we get "look, we can square this circle with the unilateral free trade we've been advocating for years, and to hell with the people who actually voted Leave because they wanted more protectionism not less..."
>>'Or worse still, you get Brexit-style direct democracy where the referendum settles only a broad objective and yet all criticisms of details of policy implementation are dismissed as defying the "will of the people".'
Is it not always the case? We vote for a goal a leave the experts to implement it.
The point of democracy is that we accept the decision of our con-citizens even if we deeply disagree.
Maybe Brexit was the wrong decision, but the idea of not asking because we could get a result that we don't like is totally antidemocratic and hypocritical. Why to bother with the democratic 'appearance' then? Just go with an oligarchy.
Anyway, I have the feeling that part of the Brexit result is because, people, already have the feeling of being in an oligarchy and wanted to use the opportunity to express their discomfort.
> Is it not always the case? We vote for a goal a leave the experts to implement it.
No, lawmaking in a representative democracy consists of the wording of a bill being amended as many times as necessary to secure agreement from a majority of representatives - all able to propose amendments themselves - and then being put to the vote before becoming law. This is also the case for some policies put to referenda: the AV referendum was one where the referendum was on a previously agreed text to become law, with no further legislative change implied.
And what is being objected to here is not the government attempting to implement the result, it is the government proposing a raft of policy objectives loosely related to some interpretations of the result and trying to curtail further debate and votes over them.
If, as you say, part of the result is because people wished to express their discomfort with the feeling of being in an oligarchy, it is even less attractive a method of decision making to assume that the executive's interpretation of the vote must prevail and that criticisms of it from those who voted the other way lack any legitimacy.
> Anyway, I have the feeling that part of the Brexit result is because, people, already have the feeling of being in an oligarchy and wanted to use the opportunity to express their discomfort.
I think that's the problem people see on it, not that "people were asked, oh no!". That, and populists.
>Even easier to policy launder with direct democracy, since most people voting will vote for the headline purpose of the law
Only if the direct democracy is set up to behave that way.
Any directly democratic system could in principle let people raise objections (e.g. "this law is susceptible to the cobra effect") and have those objections viewed by the people voting on the law.
Sure, anybody can publicise any objection to any law in any system. Ensuring such an argument is actually paid attention to and that revisions are actually made is a different matter entirely.
Relatively easy for a representative to make a case for a particular amendment to a particular piece of proposed legislation by addressing the need to rewrite Clause 17b to a group of elected legislators whose full time job is scrutinising that legislation, and then proposing the amendment is voted on there and then, with the proponents of the legislation having a pretty good idea of whether making the change will be necessary to carry the vote. Much more difficult to convince a significant percentage of the public who enthusiastically support the intent of a bill that they should take the time to read objections to Clause 17b and then vote against the whole thing because of Clause 17b. Not least because even members of the public informed and concerned about 17b are aware that the reason for their vote isn't tallied, and voting against a law they want because of unhappiness with one specific provision will torpedo the whole thing.
>Sure, anybody can publicise any objection to any law in any system. Ensuring such an argument is actually paid attention to and that revisions are actually made is a different matter entirely.
It's not a "different" matter. It's just a matter of how a directly democratic system is designed. If I were designing such a system, a "reddit style" forum attached to the vote that lets objections or arguments in favor float to the top would be a given - at the bare minimum.
>Relatively easy for a representative to make a case for a particular amendment to a particular piece of proposed legislation by addressing the need to rewrite Clause 17b to a group of elected legislators whose full time job is scrutinising that legislation, and then proposing the amendment is voted on there and then, with the proponents of the legislation having a pretty good idea of whether making the change will be necessary to carry the vote.
And it's relatively easy for a rich lobby group with a think tank attached to jam their views in to this relatively "unscrutinized" clause by making donations to the politician's campaign. This is the danger inherent with "professional" politicians and "policy experts" of any kind (economists are particularly susceptible to this phenomenon too).
And, it usually requires a grass roots movement to bring attention to "17b" issues before the corporation stops getting its way. Instead of marching in front of Congress with placards wouldn't it be easier if we could just click a button to register our displeasure?
>Much more difficult to convince a significant percentage of the public who enthusiastically support the intent of a bill that they should take the time to read objections to Clause 17b
You could make a directly democratic system that didn't attach a forum to facilitate deliberation, but in my opinion, that would be a massive oversight.
Equally I think it would be an oversight to not implement voluntary vote delegation. I don't see why just because I don't want to delegate my vote to a sleazy professional "full time" politician I shouldn't delegate some of my votes to my retired mother or some other person I personally trust with time on their hands.
The average voter isn't going to read the bill text for most legislation, never mind thousands of pages of internet arguments with those best at brigading or astroturfing (often well-funded lobbyist concerns) at the top.
The draft text is going to be written by the same politician speaking to the same lobbyists adopting the same strategy of tying it to something really desirable like preventing crime or promoting financial freedom, it's just that members of the public supporting crime prevention or financial freedom don't have the opportunity to broker an alternative wording, and once they've voted for it any objections to its provisions is going to be met with the full rhetorical force of accusations of defying "the will of the people". And people not in the pocket of the lobbyists who support parts of the policy for other reasons aren't going to muddy the waters and risk a public defeat for their ideals by arguing to fix the dodgy earmark if it's a big public vote rather than a series of rapid votes on amendments. It might work for vetoing stuff the public really didn't expect and really do care a lot about like tax rises, but in practice, referenda significantly lower the tone of debate, increase partisanship and decrease the effect policy detail has on the outcome of the decision.
>The average voter isn't going to read the bill text for most legislation, never mind thousands of pages of internet arguments
That's exactly why I described how you could build a system that accounts for that.
>thousands of pages of internet arguments with those best at brigading or astroturfing
Brigading on a platform for direct democracy is a feature, not a bug. Astroturfing and most other forms of uncivil discourse can be pretty much eliminated by tying your account to your identity and with a few fairly basic moderation rules.
You can raise awareness to clause 17b, even in the form of pull requests. Moreover if it turns to be toxic we can immediately revert it with a new law.
With indirect democracy, none of our objections are binding. They'll just spit on them like they do every time.
> Moreover if it turns to be toxic we can immediately revert it with a new law.
I take it you don't have referenda on major issues in your country?
Much easier to campaign against a dubious clause of marginal relevance - before and especially after - when political figures have to justify a series of specific votes on specific amendments, and not just pick sides in extended public campaigns based on the headline intent of bills. Especially because of the absolute outrage that follows when anyone suggests any revisions after "the people have spoken."
>Especially because of the absolute outrage that follows when anyone suggests any revisions after "the people have spoken."
If you're referring to Brexit, this "absolute outrage" is mostly generated from the not-very-democratic billionaire owned media that probably would be reined in by a more directly democratic system.
I don't see any lack of outrage in grassroots blogs either. What it reveals is that (i) the public is very willing to believe in politicians' mendacity, and thus [depending on electoral system] the threat to politicians for repeatedly refusing to ratify amendments in the public interest is not nonexistent and (ii) turning a process of legislative change into a stage of a campaign for public assent makes politicians supporting it less accountable for its dubious implications and less willing to compromise on the detail.
And they did pass it, largely without reading or understanding, because of how voluminous it was. IMO bills over 20 pages long should be broken up and passed piecemeal.
You linked a nine-second video and didn't even quote the entire thing. "But we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy"
What she was saying, which becomes more clear in the context of the full quote that you declined to provide, was that there was a lot of controversy and misinformation regarding the contents of the ACA; you may recall the term "Death Panels" being thrown around, for example. Trying to discuss the actual contents of the ACA had become impossible as a result of the density of misinformation and controversy, and Pelosi's point was that the only way to really find out what was in the bill, what effects the bill would have, was to pass it and then look at the actual effects on people.
If you want to talk about bills which were passed largely without reading or understanding, there are better options in more recent history that don't involve misleading paraphrases.
The main complaint of GP was that people would vote by headlines. Which is exactly what our congresspeople do. WaPo estimates ACA to be 10k pages in total: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/how-m.... If you want to tell me that even the majority of the people who voted for it gave it anything more than a cursory, headline level look, I have some fine Florida swampland I’d like to sell.
I think it does support it though. It’s a rare moment of lucidity and honesty from a congressperson. That’s how things really work when there’s a lot of effort required: just skip the effort and “may god bless the US” after it passes. Otherwise how do you explain that _affordable_ care act has nearly nothing in it about affordability? I have what looks to me like a plausible explanation: the only people who have actually read the whole thing are the lobbyists who wrote it.
Except Pelosi wasn't saying that she personally hadn't read the bill; she was saying that discussion of the bill had become impossible because discourse had degraded so badly, and as a result the only way to get meaningful information about what it contained, to be sure that you weren't getting fed lies by one party or the other, was to wait for it to pass and see what effects it had.
If you want to talk about bills which were voted on without being read, I recall a number of articles about the tax reform bill pushed by the Republicans; it was getting dropped on people's desks mere hours before the vote, with whole sections crossed out and notes written in margins. If you search, I'm sure you can find quotes from that time period about how it was impossible for people to read the complete bill and form an opinion on it before they were required to vote. You can also find quotes on the negative effects the rushed passage had, with loopholes and mistakes and unintended side effects that need to be addressed.
Considering that you've tried to misrepresent Pelosi's quote multiple times in this conversation instead of bringing up an easy example where the thing you're allegedly mad about actually happened, I'm not sure I believe you.
