this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Australian Politics
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An action to make society more democratic is one I can get behind. Few countries can really call themselves democratic.
Direct democracy is the only real democracy.
“But but you’ll get tyranny of the majority, which clearly doesn’t happen when the majority elect a tyrannical representative”
Are the lobbyists going to bribe us all to vote for their corporate interests over our own? You can buy out a “mate” you can’t buy out 26 million individuals.
What we will get is not having to pick a pollie who only aligns with 2 out of 2000 of our views. We won’t have politicians afraid to take action because they fear losing voters.
I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I genuinely think Thor Prohaska—a recurring independent candidate for Dickson (Peter Dutton's seat) and Kurwongbah (the state seat around the same area)—might have the right idea. He has an extremely detailed explanation for how it would work, but the short of his plan is that your MP would vote on any particular issue precisely how a majority of residents vote on the issue. But local residents could nominate some other local resident to be their proxy either overall, or for specific issues, alleviating the need for every voter to keep up-to-date and educated on every single issue, if there's someone else they trust who can do that for them—while still being able to pull away that trust at literally any moment, or to simply vote directly for an issue that they are particularly passionate about, or if there's one issue where they disagree with their chosen proxy.
Or we could cut out the middle man and just vote or not vote ourselves on issues as we see fit?
That's how you get an America-like situation where the goal isn't to come up with policies the most people agree with, but to find ways to get the people who already agree with you to turn out to vote, and to dissuade people who disagree with you from voting.
It's a brilliant way to empower NIMBYs even more than they already are.
Okay so make it mandatory with a “no opinion” option for those who are not concerned on issues.
We don’t actually need to have an individual opinion on every topic, nor would everyone care about everything. Let’s empower people to make their own choices for once.
There are an average of two divisions every single day Parliament sits. And that's without counting votes that are determined on the voices. Or issues at the state and local council levels. Federally, there are about 200 Bills introduced every single year. There's not necessarily anything wrong with enabling people to vote on all of them if they want to, but making it mandatory is a ludicrous proposition. Enabling people to choose a proxy is not just a good idea, it's a necessity to do large-scale direct democracy.
Cool, so don’t make it mandatory. I don’t really care.
What I care about is that people have a direct say in what they want to vote for. Not have to hope a representative actually represents them.
That's how Thor's idea works. You choose your proxy. You don't elect them without the option to change until the next election. You can switch proxies or take over directly at literally any time.
I don’t want to choose a proxy, I want a direct say. The only person I want representing me, is me.
Anything less is simply lipstick on a pig.
Ok then? Do that. But why should your preference to do it that way dictate how everyone must do it?
No different to the potential for the same problem today in representative elections.
While I agree that direct democracy is the only real democracy, history has shown that direct democracy can only really be achieved in small communities, otherwise you run into various problems.
Referendums are notable examples of a direct democracy in action, however they can only really work with simple yes or no questions as more complex questions usually don't work (as voter turn out becomes abysmal).
There are ways it could get close to working, but it really becomes more like continuous representative democracy.
For example, you could set things up so that instead of having a fixed size parliament, you have a virtual parliament that can have participation by every voter if they like to vote on the bills. Then, you allow people to revocably grant and revoke delegations of their vote to someone else. You have some laws around delegations - you can't coerce people to give you their delegation, and as a recipient of a delegation, you only get to know how many people delegated to you, not who. People get to choose whether they will accept incoming delegations - but if they accept them, their vote on issues is public (otherwise secret). People accepting delegations also need to declare minor conflicts of interest, and avoid major ones entirely. You can't accept money for a delegation - although if you get enough the government will pay you for having enough delegations and actively exercising those delegations. Unlike voting, people can revoke their delegation at any time, and either vote on issues themselves, or re-delegate. Missing too many issues votes without having appointed a delegate could lead to a warning and eventually a fine.
The biggest issue then becomes how to avoid spamming too many bills in a potentially huge virtual parliament - either because it is a fringe issue, or as a filibuster. This could be worked around by having a maximum number of bills per day to vote on (potentially voted on regularly to set), and letting voters optionally rank one or more bills they'd like to progress - which run against each other in proportional voting to select the slate of bills to go to a vote. Voters would not need to read every possible bill, and could discuss outside the voting system to encourage each other to support a particular bill making it to the agenda. A similar mechanism could limit amendment proposals to bills to be voted on.
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract (1762)
There is always these guys.
Lol. They've been dead for a while now
Representative democracy is a form of democracy. Direct democracy is another form. There's no "true" form.
I mean it's possible to have more representative representatives. It's not an inherent thing in representative democracy that the representatives are wealthier.
16 years olds are pretty impressionable. I know I was. Wouldn't this kind of change make them more vulnerable to election manipulation?
So are 20,30,40,50,60,70,80,90,100 year olds
Yeah I guess so
lol, have you ever asked a 16 year old how they're feeling? then waited 30 minutes and asked them again?