Losing faith in democracy

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I don't believe the form of democracy the majority of America believes in exists - it's all an illusion. Chomsky: http://home.nvg.org/~skars/ni/ni-c01-s01.html (a bit of reading for the curious)

I know that I'm still a newbie and probably shouldn't just jump into a political debate thread, but politics is sort of my thing...

Really, the problems with democracy are threefold:

1) "True" democracy is extraordinarily difficult, probably impossible, on a national scale. As a population gets larger, it becomes less feasible for large numbers of people to have input on a decision. Not only is it technologically difficult, but people generally have limited areas of knowledge which restrict their ability to make informed decisions. This leads to the representative/electoral democracies we know today. This opens us up to...

2) Lobbying and the problems that result from it. Corporate and other special interests are generally better able to put a point forward than the people as a whole. Also, most of this goes on behind the scenes, so people can't see how serious of a problem it is.

The biggest problem though, is:

3) Democracy is about the will of the idealized average person. The average person is an idiot. This is the one thing that I would call a fundamental ideological flaw in democracy itself. Most people really just don't have the ability to comprehend the full breadth or context of an issue, usually just boiling it down to platitudes and empty rhetoric. I'm hopeful that the collective intelligence of the human race can be raised, but sometimes I really wonder. Note that I'm NOT talking about people with real mental challenges; I'm talking about the vast majority who refuse to educate themselves.

Really though I shouldn't be talking, as I don't have a specific alternative to propose. Generally I lean towards a vaguely socialistic technocracy.

Hey, I was a noob about a month ago. All of us were noobs at some point. Don't be hesitant to jump in any time you have an opinion, that's how you become known and less of a noob lol.



Gotta respectfully disagree with you here. IT is my thing, and the technology is there. I envision a system where anyone can log in to a voting website and vote on whatever issues are on the table for the day. Anonymity and security can both be maintained through a one-way hash encryption (undecryptable by design) that ties your vote to your account in such a way that you can always log in later to make sure it hasn't been changed (not that governments would ever commit vote fraud *cough*), but at the same time no one but you can pull up your account to see how you voted. All the public or admins get to see is the vote totals, which can't be changed without changing your individual vote, which you would then know and could raise hell about. It's really not that difficult technologically, and would eliminate hanging chads and other vote fraud issues forever.

As for the average voter being an average uninformed idiot, I can't argue with you there, but I have some ideas to compensate for that as well. For each item that comes up for a vote, each side of the debate can present informative material on why they think you should or should not vote for it. They would be required to present who they are, and who funds them (for example, a bill to make smoking illegal would certainly be supported by the insurance industry, and opposed by the tobacco industry). Since ppl don't like to read, short video presentations could be made from the data presented. The "Next" button that goes to the actual vote submission form would not be enabled until they had viewed both the "pro" and "con" videos in their entirety. Links to more detailed info on both sides would also be available. They would also have the entire text of the bill available to read, and would be required to do so (you'd be surprised how few members of Congress actually do this). This would have the added bonus that no bill that was too large or complex to be easily read would pass, so you'd get laws that the average Joe could understand, far less need for lawyers, litigation would go down, AND most importantly, no more stealth legislation (those hidden "easter eggs" within laws that are often very nasty, and put in there for plausible deniability - if and when the sh** hits the fan over them the politicians always say "I didn't know that was in there" -- you'd be amazed how many of our rights and freedoms have been stolen that way), and no more pork barrel earmarks.

Sure, not everyone has internet or computers, but there could easily be polling centers established (kind of like happens twice every 2 years or so with primaries and general elections) where ppl could come in and vote.

You can still make the argument that letting the masses vote for their own laws might end in chaos, but you would have a hard time convincing me that chaos would be any worse than the mass-scale corruption we have now. I can't imagine the general populace, simple minded as they are on the whole, doing any worse than the idiots (and crooks) currently "representing" them.

I'm completely up for firing Congress myself, and reducing the President's role to master of ceremonies and foreign diplomat. The Commander N Chief of our military would be a separate person, who would be chosen by the military, most logically the most experienced general or admiral from among the branches - that way we'd be assured (s)he knew what the f*** (s)he was doing. And still subject to the will of the people via the direct democratic process. War could only ever be declared by the people with a super-duper majority vote.

I'd reluctantly keep the Supreme Court around, but they would be popularly elected for limited terms, and they would only get the President's current veto power for laws they decide are unconstitutional. Vetoes can be overridden with a high enough majority super majority re-vote and after that the people's will would be final, unless the people voted to change it later. Thus a small group of unelected, untouchable judges-for-life would no longer be able to irrevocably throw out laws they didn't agree with, legislate from the bench, or rewrite the Constitution as they see fit through creative interpretation ("living document" my arse!)

OK, let the hole-punching begin! lol
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A small group of trained monkeys could do better than our current lot.

Here's what I think on this topic - the whole political struggle is one that unfortunately has to happen, just like anger has to happen, just like a lot of things in this world are inevitable and of course the people who don't stand up for themselves get acted on. In short it just isn't a good world and there's no possibility of making it a utopia - we can make it either a little bit better or a lot worse than it is now, that's about it.

Some people have mentioned that our being a bi-cameral system is a problem. It may provide for a lack of diversity but you could think of both major parties, Democrat and Republican in the U.S. at least, being many smaller parties but taking the pole that seems like its the least of the two evils. We cling to that two-party ideology because our laws are built on majority rule and if we think Congress is horrible now as far as getting things done - wait till we have 3 or 4 almost equally sized parties; I think the Texas Border Patrol jokes wouldn't even compare to what we'd have on capital hill.

I agree, straight democracy is bad and its why its better that we have electoral votes as well as elected officials just in the sense that the world, the world's affairs, the truths of what is really going on around us - it almost needs to be a full time job to be accurately informed (or at least something close to it), most people are very much preoccupied with their own little bubbles in life, and I've seen it time and time again that a party could sell absolutely nothing, be worthless, and a citizen voter would pick them either on one issue which is personally beneficial to them or possibly just because they've been raised to think one way or another. Both parties also fight like mad internally, you have Republicans who are as different as night and day from each other as you have Democrats as different as night and day from each other - that in and of itself though is a bit of a good thing just because it makes the party lock-step less a matter of survival and keeps people remembering that those two terms really are just umbrella and little else.

I don't follow.

Only Christians who are obsessed with the usefulness of Israel toward their own ends are indirect anti-semites. Lots of people believe in the rapture without buying into that.

I don't think I'm complaining about democracy. I am full of grief over my own thoughts. I think I made it quite clear that I didn't want to lose faith in democracy.

How do accusations of anti-semitism in themselves make a person undemocratic?

Oh, sure. Just because every other utopian experiment throughout history has failed means mine will too, huh? But how many of the others were meticulously planned out by an Aspie? One who makes his living as a computer programmer no less (anticipating and eliminating potential bugs is second nature)?

It still needs some debugging, but it could work. You're right about one thing; due to the general apathy and ignorance of the populace, not a whole lot of laws would get passed. But that is precisely why it would work. As our Founding Fathers taught us (and the past couple of generations have woefully forgotten), when it comes to government, less is more.

I DON'T KNOW.

That's my problem. Sometimes I am too willing to question my own ideals.



(PS: I would establish an absolute dictatorship with myself at the helm, just like everyone else would. Human nature)

I disagree. Democracy, by its nature is a problem. It is a fact that the average person is not as well-informed about the issues as they could be. It is another fact that biases will tend to twist the average person's views against what they should ideally be. The two party system may have some issues with it, however, I think that if we implemented a system with more freedom of choice, we would simply get more bad choices.


Absolutely agree.


True, an issue with these power structures is mechanism design. Power is natural, and differences in power is also natural. But how do we manipulate power differentials to create a stable system that is efficient and allows liberty to exist.


That is very true. Most people choose not to educate themselves but still have opinions on various issues. For example, you promote a vaguely socialistic technocracy, but how much economics have you studied? The reason I ask is because a socialistic technocracy seems very different than the opinions of most academic economists on what works most effectively. It is entirely possible that you are an expert on economic matters and deviate strongly from the norm, but I bring up the question because you could very easily be proving your own point on why democracy sucks.


Well, the issue is that people are not going to be persuaded by information. They have opinions on the issues built into their brain by either evolutionary defect or cultural bias, and these opinions will override many attempts to view data and separate votes from the true purposes of those votes(promoting welfare and such). Not only that, but how do you force people to read the entire text of a bill? How do you prevent bribery from happening in this system through people exploiting the system to bribe off voters who have little at stake or do not know what they actually do have at stake. Really, the big threat to freedom is hardly earmarks which are not the largest percent of our government's spending, instead, they are the programs which the majority wants, and would gleefully vote for while at the same time complaining about taxes.

Well, the populace is dumber than the people representing them. The people representing them have to represent issues for interests above the common populist, while the average person does not have this burden. Frankly, I can easily see chaos be a result of letting the masses vote because the masses generally are in favor of bigger government but do not necessarily understand how all these things go together, and thus chaos is possible. I would argue that the fact that our representatives do not represent us perfectly is a saving grace for our system. After all, a dislike for foreign trade has existed in the populace for decades, but this has not transferred perfectly into policy, and in a more direct democratic system, this failure to transfer seems unlikely.



Psst.... anarchy. That answer silences most useful inquiry, and all useless rebuttals to the idea can be drowned out with the ardent cry "BECAUSE I BELIEVE IN FREEDOM, YOU FASCIST <insert insulting word here>! !!"

Haha. On this we agree.

Direct democracy has reduced Switzerland neither to chaos nor to destitution, and has resulted in relatively low taxes.

I wish I could offer some reassurance, but the fact is that I have just as little faith in American democracy as you do. Considering how many jerrymandered districts there are out there, it's nigh impossible for anyone to have a hope of election except the established party, and I'm not at all sure it would help much even if the other party did get a foothold. The Republicans are right wing extremists as far as I'm concerned, and the Democrats have run so far toward the middle of the road in an attempt to pick up swing voters that they're essentially right-wing too. I laugh at the thought of people like Hilary Clinton being called Liberals... here in Europe, she'd be an arch conservative.

I don't mean to bash right wing politics. A little conservatism can be a very good thing. But in America these days, there isn't really any other choice. I tend to vote liberal myself and was getting very flustered while I lived in the US, because there never was a candidate who represented what I stood for and had any chance of getting into office. It's part of the reason I moved to Britain. With more parties, more voices have a chance of being heard.

Exactly! When you let the people decide (and give them true freedom of choice), they will decide in their own best interest. The same arguments for libertarianism and laissez faire also apply to direct democracy. Given the chance to make the decision themselves, most people don't consider what is happening in another country, no matter how atrocious, worth sacrificing their own lives or their children's lives over. Hence Switzerland's long history of neutrality. Far from being "isolationist", they are a global center of diplomacy. Geneva Convention, anyone?

The other great thing about official neutrality, besides the preservation of human life and national reputation, is no huge national debt for the people to have to pay for for generations. So in spite of some socialist programs, such as perhaps the best national health care plan in the world, they don't require huge taxes because they aren't still paying interest on old debts for wars their great grandparents fought in.

That's not to say they would roll over when threatened though. In WWII, Hitler threatened to invade Switzerland if they didn't concede to his demands. He threatened to send in one million German soldiers (the population of Switzerland was only 500,000 or so then). The Swiss government replied, "Go ahead, every Swiss will fire twice." Hitler backed off.

They are anything but slackers when it comes to national defense, but they understand that it is just that. Not offense. Their 500 year history of stability is unarguable proof that it is better to leave football strategies ("best defense is a good offense") out of foreign policy decisions.

And my pre-emptive strike against the right wingers who will bring up the war on terror... ever heard of Al Qaeda hijacking a Swiss plane? Blowing up a Swiss building? A Swiss car bomb? No! Hmmm, I thought they hated us because we are rich and free. The Swiss are richer and freer than we are. You'd think they'd be Al Qaeda target numero uno. Doesn't add up, does it?

I want to move to Switzerland now.

Well, that may be the case there, however, without further background on Switzerland, I have difficulty determining how much of that success is based upon the institution, and how much is based upon various cultural factors. It is true that Switzerland seems to have a lower voting rate than the US, which could be a cultural factor promoting better government under the view I am promoting due to self-selection.



No, they do not. Democracy on any area based level(rather than association based level) has a tension with both libertarianism and laissez faire, so the arguments MUST be different. After all, it is one thing to say that people should be free to do whatever they want so long as they don't harm others and another to say that people get to all get together to force certain others to follow their rules.

The similar argument is that people acting in their own self interests is better for the whole of society than forcing them to go along with the dictates of a few. Whether this few is a monarchy, oligarchy, or supposed "representatives" is irrelevant.

What you all are missing is that the US was never meant to be a democracy. It is supposed to be a constitutional republic. There are inalienable rights that even the majority cannot take away.