Direct Democracy- Please discuss technical difficulties

I've spent years pondering this question. Ultimately the greatest hurdle and limiting factor to a functional direct democracy is verbal or written language.

In order for a person's suggestion to have Merrit, its critical for others to know much about their experience, interests and value of their ideas as rated by others.

There is no way to convey this amount of data about millions of individuals using written language.

I've come up with a new visual language based on biology which is innate to the human species. It transcends language and culture and would represent the interests, experience, and native intelligence of an individual using iconic images from biological systems that grow over time as a function of a persons interaction with others.

Imagine an avatar that conveys eight or nine variables about a person at a glance. Are they an engineer or an artist? How active are they in any particular field? How has their problem solving skills been judged by their peers in any given field?

Lacking that depth of information about a peer is why we have a representational system.

Undoubtedly congressmen consider the weight of their peer's opinions every time they vote.

How many people here look at a user's WATS score or join date before they read their posts?

If anybody is intrigued and particularly has any programming skill, please message me. I spoke to an MIT professor specializing in AI at length and she said "The idea is groundbreaking and I should devote my life to the idea."

Problem is my background is in bio not computer programming or AI. She also made me promise not to share with DARPA, her other employer.

That was two years ago. I firmly believe the solution to all the world's problems requires networking our collective intelligence. Bridging the limitations of language is the key.

There is no such thing as direct democracy. If direct democracy existed then our economy would collapse and the entire country would explode into turmoil. No country could survive under such an unstable government.

originally posted by: lordcomac
Wikipedia

Direct democracy (also known as pure democracy)[1] is a form of democracy in which people decide (e.g. vote on, form consensus on) policy initiatives directly.

So this has been bothering me for basically my whole life.

We have, in front of us, a way where each individual (as stupid as they may be) to vote on an issue they care about. And yet, we continue to elect people to go and do it for us- even though those people consistently turn around and do whatever they want once elected. It seems most of the time, the general public is not even made aware of what's being voted on by our officials.

Now there are a lot of hurdles involved here, and I'd like a nice civil discussion about ways it can go wrong- and ways it could go nicely. What I would like to determine is if this would be better than our existing system or not.
IMO, having a monkey play whack-a-mole with what passes and what doesnt would probably be better- but I digress.




Let me get the ball rolling.


First.
Yes, there are the super scary "hackers"- yes, an internet based voting system could theoretically be tampered with by black-hat internet thugs.
On the flip side, these days, US Citizens handle everything from credit cards to mortgages to stocks and bonds on the internet- and there are plenty of security methods that exist (getting better all the time) to make sure things don't go awry. Also, please note that the existing system is also being thoroughly corrupted anyway- not only by money buying politicians, but also just straight up voting fraud.

Second.
Yes- this would effectively require us to find a way to directly link votes to citizens. Yes, this violates pretty much every rule in the book on voter ID laws. Yes, this creates the problem of a central database of who votes for what, making lots of potential issues with over-powerful governments.
On the flip side.... well. This is where I get stuck. I personally don't want the government knowing exactly what I as an individual vote for- but I don't see any other way for my vote to actually count.

Third.
This basically makes voter apathy the biggest hurdle in getting things done. Only the people who feel strongly about something would bother to vote on a particular issue- this leads to all sorts of strange, super specific rules and regulations.
On the flip side, right now its not much different- only votes are effectively purchased by corporations who stand to make the most money off of a ruling going one way or another. Apathetic voters, or greedy corporations? Neither choice is great.

a reply to: mcChoodles

Or just relate voting "strength" to taxes paid. Say minimum $10K/year to vote, another vote for next $50k, and a third vote for the next $50k--so that someone who paid $110K taxes gets 3 votes for that year. Once someone has paid $500K lifetime taxes, they get 3 votes for Federal elections every year. Pretty much automatically takes care of brains, effort, and contribution to society--wouldn't need an avatar, except maybe "3V"

Many exceedingly rich people pay no taxes. This method would be a bit of a punishment for them.

a reply to: lordcomac

Mob rule is not liberty.

I will not accept the tyranny of a majority anymore than I will accept outright dictatorship.

A quick review of the responses shows that people FOR this idea and people AGAINST this idea are roughly equal, with a slight disposition for against.
Many of the posts I could not classify as either/or.


A few good points raised- specifically the fact that mob rule isn't a good thing.

One argument I don't quite understand is that someone seems to think that minorities should have more say in how things are run than majorities.
...eh?

if most of the people think that voting against a particular bill (say, something that gives the government full legal rights to archive every phone call we ever make) then the minority is the group of people against that bill.

Someone had also mentioned unanimous votes being the only way to pass something- neat idea, but you'll never get more than 80% of people to agree on anything, IMO. However, requiring 80% to agree on a change would keep lots of frivolous BS changes, like the ones we have. We'd need to start with a clean slate for that to work.


voting based on SSN was my first thought too. I'm perfectly OK with this, myself- buy I've heard and read about lots of people who are really upset about the thought of needing to identify themselves to vote. As a tax payer... hello? Is this thing on? I pay for this government, my voice should count.

Having said that, someone who pays more to the government SHOULD NOT HAVE more say. That just encourages rich people banding together to sway the direction of the world for the benefit of the rich.
I say screw the taxes, make the government voluntary and/or mandatory. There shouldn't be any such thing as a career in politics.


edit:
I'm by no means interested in having a majority rule, since I feel like the majority are idiots...
running something like this instead of the corrupt system we've got would just encourage mass brainwashing more than closed door bribery- and mass brainwashing is obviously already a problem.

a reply to: Tusks
As there is tax on almost everything, can you provide an example of a non tax paying adult?
Also what would the definition of a head of household be?

The mob rule issue has already been mentioned but another problem with direct democracy is that people are rarely experts on the subject they're voting on. A representative gets the benefit of having advisers and coming up with a plan. The average person does not know, understand, or care to learn the intricacies of education, finance, international relations, network communications, law enforcement, or anything else.

originally posted by: Tusks
a reply to: mcChoodles

Or just relate voting "strength" to taxes paid. Say minimum $10K/year to vote, another vote for next $50k, and a third vote for the next $50k--so that someone who paid $110K taxes gets 3 votes for that year. Once someone has paid $500K lifetime taxes, they get 3 votes for Federal elections every year. Pretty much automatically takes care of brains, effort, and contribution to society--wouldn't need an avatar, except maybe "3V"

Many exceedingly rich people pay no taxes. This method would be a bit of a punishment for them.

They pay virtually no taxes by percentage of income, they pay many billions in taxes by actual dollars collected. This is also essentially saying that those who are poor, working the low wage jobs get no say in their governance. Their vote would only be worth 1/3%.

Remember what happened when we made blacks who at the time worked the low (no) wage, no skill jobs and considered them as worth 3/5's a person for voting purposes?

a reply to: lordcomac

what your arguing for is unlikely to work because its going to the other extreme. what has a better chance of success is in demanding more and more referendums and no electronic counting of votes.

If we worked towards more and more referendums the people would start to feel empowered and the politicians and political parties would start to feel less important which is the way it should be. Thing of the government as the servant government, not there to rule but to serve.

We the people should make all the state or national executive decisions not some political party elected to power. The role of the government is work up options for we the people to decide on.

The servant government should be made to set up webpages soliciting the people views on a particular topic where the people can post ideas on the subject matter. The role of the government would then be draw up several proposals from which the people can select a final option via a referendum. The government would then obliged to implement it.

This way, TPTB and the lobbyists will be sidelined and the people will be in control. Consider the experience in Switzerland recently where the government is no required to hold a referendum on gold purchases and they are not obligated to hold the referendum and abide by the decision.

This is a much more practical and feasible way to go.

a reply to: Dimithae

Do you think it would work any differently under a direct democracy? Remember it's the ultra rich who control the media outlets and tell us what to like and dislike. All they have to do is sway 50% of the voters to think like them. Take a look at the average voter, do you think that is hard?

We have a winner-
the voters are stupid, and they would still screw it up...

However, I think if the governments job was to propose rules and not pass them, it wouldn't be AS bad.

For starters, protesters would no longer be protesting against the government- they'd be protesting against... other people- who have just as much a say in the way things are as the protesters do.

I think that this direct voting system should at least exist- if nothing else to show the difference in what people would choose vs what our 'elected' officials choose for us.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

That could very well be,but it would be THEIR choice to do it. As it stands now they don't even get that choice really with the messed up system we have going.

I will say I'd feel better with the idiot masses driving us to our doom than with the closed door evil powers doing it...

At least then, your average person would be part of the problem.

Keep in mind the horribly low turn out we have on local elections. Now imagine asking those same people to vote on every little thing, from important issues like Marijuana legalization, to issues like "How much money should we give NASA this year ?" Or something like the tax rate on small businesses.

Again I turn to low voter turnout for elections that happen only bi annually. Most people don't want to deal with little stuff, that's why we ultimately elect representatives.