Direct Democracy

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This is mainly directed toward those in the U.S., but could apply to anybody.

What are your thoughts on direct democracy? Should Congress and the electoral college be dissolved, and all issues decided directly by the people themselves, rather than going through Congress/Parliament/(insert name of legislature here).

I think that's a popular notion for both the right and the left. But the fact of the matter is, no civil right legislation would have ever been initiated, as such defense of minority rights has never been popular with the majority. On top of that, mobs can be whipped up by demagogues in which the few - or the one - in the end holds all the power, and people are bound to get hurt.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

i think a hybrid would be possible with modern technology, using quantum encryption for an example.

though there would need to be a regulatory body with a ruleset akin to the various constitutions in the world.

still it would require an already well founded legal background to base this very first ruleset on and the initial "law set" would probably take a decade of voting.

in the end i think there would need to be a representative of some sort ot a group or negotiations would make forums look civil.


not to mention one would have to have an incredible well rounded education system to even have a chance in the long run.

A country of 300,000,000 souls over half of them adult. Direct democracy is a practical impossibility. It is sort of like herding cats or squirrels. It is totally unmanageable.

ruveyn

Direct democracy (a la Switzerland) has frequently been proposed by the conservative, classical liberal and libertarian factions in the UK. At the moment, proper direct democracy has a few supporting MPs in the Conservative Party but they are seen as outliers and outcasts by the leadership. UKIP support direct democracy too.

It works for Switzerland. Power is dissolved to the lowest level there and it works through cantons rather than the central government. In Switzerland, the national parliament is very limited in its functions, mainly because the people control the money - and they're an extremely suspicious people.

I praise the Swiss for this.

Switzerland is more culturally homogeneous than the United States. Americans are less inclined to work together. Americans, regardless of their politics, are individualistic. Much more so than the Swiss. As Carl Sandburg wrote: good fences make good neighbors. Direct Democracy will not work in the U.S. If it is seriously tried and implemented with technology that put every person in contact with every other person, it would soon degenerate into a kind of mob rule. Besides, Democracy is not a good form of government. It is just less worse than the other forms. The best government is no government.

Americans simply do not think or feel like Europeans. And Americans do not give much of a damn for anything outside their personal domain. We do not have a social contract in America. Thank God!

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 16 Jul 2011, 9:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

But the main thing is though is that they respect democracy. If, say, a tax cut vote goes through, the people on the other side aren't happy but they all agree that people have spoken. If they don't want minarets being built, they can say so. And the politicians must abide by the wishes of the people. It doesn't work like that in the UK - the politicians openly don't care about the people. With few exceptions, all they care about is 'power' and being elected.

Mob Rule Swiss Style. In Switzerland, toothless gnomes will gum you to death.

ruveyn

It comes down to -

do you want decisions made for you by electable people the media and other bigwigs manipulated you to elect,

OR

do you want to make yourself the decisions that the media and other bigwigs manipulate you into voting for?

Forget about having the media and other bigwigs cut out the midleman and rule directly. That went out when they realized that people who blame their rulers can turn nasty.

Direct democracy is intuitively appealing, but it demonstrates its shortcomings very quickly.

Consider Proposition 8. Here, the rights of a small segment of a state's population have been foreclosed by a slim majority of the state's voters. People who will not be a party to two other peoples' relationship are taking it upon themselves to decide whether or not those two people should be entitled to marry. This is not democracy, it is bullying. Legitimized bullying, but bullying nonetheless.

Or consider the infamous Proposition 13. This particular gem has hamstrung a state government for decades.

And everyone's favourite model, the Swiss. Leaving aside the question of whether the Swiss truly have a direct democracy, I think we can all recognize that the state running roughshod over freedom of religion presents a questionable use of the tool.

Voters in my province are currently engaged in a fiasco of a refendum over our sales tax. It's an utterly foolish question, badly put, and committed by a government which only too late recognized its folly in presuming upon the electoral mandate it had received.

I've heard this statement from several libertarians, as well as socially conservative Tea Party activists who claim to be libertarian and Republican politicians who adopt libertarian talking points to try to win the favor of the Tea Party. But it always baffles me when people say it. Perhaps you can explain it to me. Are you really suggesting that anarchy is preferable to any other form of government?

Whenever these "shrink the government" ideologues make their case, about how much the government interferes in people's personal lives, by legislating to them, and taxing them-- what they don't explain is, how exactly is a society supposed to function and thrive without those laws and taxes? Please help me understand here, because I'm genuinely perplexed by your statement. Are you suggesting we'd be better off without the roads, the sewers, the mass transit systems, the police, the fire departments, the national defense, the schools, the libraries, the national parks, and the public healthcare that the government provides us? Are you suggesting these things could, or should, all be privatized? Are you suggesting there should be no one regulating the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe?

I'm not saying the US government over the past several decades has not been responsible for some egregious abuses of the public trust. But when neocons and libertarians trot out this "self-reliance" rhetoric and talk about what we can do to weaken the government, it strikes me as really short-sighted and inconsiderate of all of the things the government has given us, which we all take for granted everyday.

Being practical we need some government. At the very least we need the shire reeves to beat the bounds and peace officers to bring the noisy drunkards into the local jail to sleep it off.

No government at all is not a practical option but the least government consistent with peace, quiet and an orderly ambiance for honest folks to go about their business would be ideal. How do we get there? I have not the foggiest idea.

ruveyn

The thing about past democracies is that they did not have separation of powers. In the United States, if Congress makes a law the President doesn't think is just, he can veto it. If Congress overrides his veto, the Judiciary can examine the law to see if it is constitutional. Even when the public was not in support of the civil rights movement, the Supreme Court often sided with the minority's side in dealing with issues of discrimination, such as in the case of the Jim Crow laws and poll taxes. After Prop 8 PASSED by popular vote in California, the California supreme court ruled it unconstitutional.

The problem now is that our representatives don't do a very good job of representing the public's interest. 74% of the country thinks that the rich should be taxed more (in spite of what the Tea Party says), and most of the country thinks that the War on Drugs is futile and a waste of taxpayer dollars, that our education system needs reform, yet the ideologues in our government refuse to change their policies either because they are too zealous in their beliefs or they don't want to upset their campaign financiers. I don't know if having a truly direct democracy is the solution, though I think the public should have more of a say in public policy. Wouldn't it make since for the public to vote on a law AFTER it goes through the House and the Senate but before it goes to the President? Do you think we would have anymore unnecessary wars if the public did not desire them?

I'm sorry, TheSnarkKnight. I agree with you in principle, but... I'm going to have to be the devil's advocate for pragmatism here.

I agree with you about the public having a greater voice in policy. The big issue I see with your suggestion is its practicality. Particularly with a large nation like the US, holding nationwide referenda for every single bill that gets passed in the legislature is both undesirable and unfeasible. Thousands of bills get passed in the span of a single Congressional term-- I think the normal average is close to 2,000 a year. For what you suggest to have any chance of working, it would have to be a selective process.



Call me a cynic, but yeah, I do. Public opinion is certainly in favor of shutting down our operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Libya now, but you have to remember that none of these conflicts is actually really a "war", in the way the Constitution defines it. None of these operations went through Congress for a formal declaration; hence, there'd be no legislative referendum to bring before the public. And even if the public could have a say-- what would it look like, to have our war strategies dictated by the people? What effects might that have on the President's ability to be an effective Commander in Chief? Once we're at war in a place like Afghanistan, it's not exactly realistic to expect to be able to leave whenever public morale gets low.

The biggest internal problem with our current government as pertains to war is that the war profiteers-- the companies who manufacture our equipment, provide mercenaries, and contract out construction projects to take advantage of newly acquired resources-- have their hooks in the politicians, to the point that they are able to ensure legislation that keeps their products in demand. If we left it up to the people to decide the issue, don't you think these companies would change their tactics to target the public as well? You see all the advertisements for medication that the drug companies put on American television? Well, give the American people the power to stop wars, and then you can expect to be bombarded with propoganda commercials informing us why we need to be fighting, and why we need to be afraid. Fear has already proven to be a useful tactic to ply the people into going along with war-- remember how we got pressured into Iraq in the first place?

Honestly, I don't expect the legitimization of public opinion to have much of an effect on any of our problems-- war, energy, environment, economy, education, healthcare-- so long as we still have an apparatus in place which gives corporations inordinate control over the framing and direction of policy debates. The only thing that will change is, instead of corporations seeding Washington to get what they want, we'll have corporations seeding the public to get what they want.

Democracy is a proven failure around the world. It's why I get so angry with the notion of "spreading democracy" when the US president spouts off such garbage.

The USA is a REPUBLIC. We have a democratic element, but we are not a DEMOCRACY.

The reason direct democracy would never work is the same reason I feel voting rights should be curtailed for most people....the average person is a moron. Honestly, talk to people about politics and you see it happen....normally intelligent and sharp minded people become blathering idiots spouting the party line. We got rid of exam requirements, gave voting rights to pretty much everyone, and you see people voting their immediate self-interest or perhaps even worse...voting PARTY LINE...no thought about the actual candidate...they vote what someone else tells them to.

About the only benefit from going direct democracy is that to pass a matter, a special interest group would have to convince many people to vote for it rather than a handful of representatives.

Certainly the US Congress is a mess, but most of that is federal power going well beyond what its scope and authority is in the Constitution. Most matters (90%+) should be done on the local and state level. Being in the Congress was supposed to be a part-time job at best, not the full-time operation it has become.

Still, there is another reason for not going directly to the people and having "politicians" make choices for us. Do you have any comprehension how complex some issues are? Do you really think the average person will bother to understand all the issues before deciding to vote for or against something? Do you not realize that many issues of law involve different interests coming together and working out something everyone can accept? None of that would likely happen with every person in America having a say at every step. Nothing would ever get passed, and if you make things too simple and broad, there can be ugly unintended consequences.

It's akin to doing your own will or paying a lawyer a reasonable fee to draft one for you. Certainly you can decide what you want to do with your stuff when you are gone, but a lawyer can spot problems you didn't think of and help you address them in your will. He can ensure the document is executed correctly so it won't be vulnerable to legal challenges when you are gone, and a good lawyer can help you plan your estate (give away stuff during life so it isn't part of your estate when you die...tax benefits, keep stuff out of the probate process, etc.). Do you really want the common person crafting laws (given the common person won't invest the time to comprehend all the issues involved, or would you rather have someone whose job is to understand what's going on and hammer out the details? An otherwise good and honest politician can do that better than you or I can.

As far as the electoral college, it is a bit antiquated, but it has a useful purpose.

The electoral college gives small states (with low populations) a stronger voice in the selection of the president. Without it, the election would focus on the major population centers. Win, LA, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Atlanta and Miami and you might have enough to win the office. Population centers tend to be liberal. Rural areas tend to be conservative. The electoral college forces you to win the whole state. That means Atlanta is balanced by all the rest of Georgia. You still get the "7 state strategy" (win 7 states with enough electoral votes and the rest become irrelevant), but the candidate must appeal to a broader base of people to win. Under the electoral college, a low-population state (like Wyoming) gets a decent say in who might be the next president. Likewise, as much as we complain about how many votes California gets, it's 50-something votes is not representative of their massive population. It's about balance.

Just as the House of Representatives has seats apportioned to each state based on population and the Senate gives each state 2 seats regardless of population, when the means to have effective vote counting came to pass, there was no real cause to abandon the Electoral College and push to change the Constitution accordingly.