zlacker

The idea about presentations is very good, but it alone won't fix the problem. We need to be able to vote for individual decisions instead of people, and we on hn are best positioned to fix the democracy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23377423

>>chr1+(OP)
It's interesting how the idea of some form of direct democracy never even comes up in conversation. Of course I wouldn't expect any current or former politician to suggest the idea, but even in conversation on HN or in the general public, I'm not sure if I've ever encountered it before.

Of course, there will be no shortage of overly enthusiastic (and absolutely confident) defeatism "We 'can't' do it because x, y, z" (complexities with security, ensuring the person casting the vote is indeed the actual person, excess amount of uninformed populism, etc.) So how about this: for the first <x> years, make it non-binding and simply observe the results. If the votes have no power, so much for the disingenuous claims that "we don't dare try it, and it won't work anyways", because it completely derisks the situation.

So then, when you have people still guaranteeing doom, I reckon there's a pretty good chance that would make a good shortlist of people who should no longer be allowed anywhere near the political process.

I would love to know why people are adamantly opposed to having a honest, transparent, and fact-checked public conversation on the idea.

>>chr1+(OP)
> We need to be able to vote for individual decisions instead of people

What about this: for most decisions, people elect their representative, and don't directly participate. The representative votes on decisions in gov't, but their vote is weighted by the number of people they represent (let's call this V).

However, if there is an issue that a person deems important to participate in, then that person gets to directly vote for said issue. Then, the elected representative's vote _for that issue_ drops by 1, and thus their vote only weights V-1.

Hence, by this method, most people who don't give a shit can continue not to, and allow their electoral representative to make decisions on their behalf. But direct democracy is available for those who care enough.

>>chr1+(OP)
This is a terrible idea. I don't want policy decided by which proposed law has the most "feel good points" or "best intentions" or best marketing campaign to get people to vote for it.

Popular vote is a tool for demagogues and populists and will quickly lead to tyranny of the majority type situations.

Whenever I vote in local elections there are some ballot initiatives, and it's ALWAYS feelgood shit like "give elderly widows whos' husbands worked as a teacher a 25% property tax cut". I vote no for everything out of principle.

>>chii+Rq
Exactly, i had tried to describe this in the linked submission by saying "you can put your vote to follow someone else" and you described that better. The fact that many people come to the same idea independently means that time is ripe for that idea to become reality.

>>mister+vi
Unfortunately most people do not really believe in ability of other people to make rational decisions, even though they say that they support democracy. There is zero hope that any politician at power to suggest an idea that would remove all of his power, but a few days ago i have realized that we do not need to implement this on government level from the start, a group of parties who do not have a chance to be elected can implement this on a party level and increase their chance of being elected.

>>trypto+pw
Now we pick politicians based on feelgood promises they make, which they do not intend to keep. This way we avoid "tyranny of the majority" only by lying to the majority of people which cannot lead to a stable situation. If you believe the majority of the people are stupid and will vote for policies harming everyone, then we need some other mechanisms to allow different people to experiment with laws, find compromises, or give different weights to votes of different people. The current mechanism of pretending everyone has equal vote, and not allowing that vote to be heard by making voting artificially hard, will not work forever.

>>chr1+(OP)
This is what gets you Brexit. The entire future of a country changed on a 50-49 vote that 6 months later, would probably go at least 52-47 the other way.

>>secabe+UD5
I disagree, this will save us from situations like Brexit, because if referendum is not an expensive and slow process, you can hold it multiple times, until the vote stabilizes, you can require significant difference for decisions changing status quo, and most importantly you won't have to vote on a huge number of issues as one thing, people would be able to vote on small issues they care about, and use vote trading as described in the link to find a better compromise.

Now it is easy to spend lots of money to mislead many people right before the big and expensive referendum, but if a new referendum can happen any day, spending lots of money on campaigns would become unviable.