I believe that we can do better than representative democracy
proposal by Steve Phillips / @elimisteve Closed Thu 1 May 2014 7:08AM
This is not a proposal regarding what we should replace representative democracy with (e.g., direct democracy, anarchism, dictatorship, whatever), merely the idea that the status quo is unacceptable largely due to representative democracy... and we can do better!
Results
| Results | Option | Votes | % of votes cast | % of eligible voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Abstain | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Disagree | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Block | 0 | 0 | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 2 | 100 | |
0 of 2 votes cast (0% participation)
Steve Phillips / @elimisteve ·Fri 11 Apr 2014 2:31AM
If We The People can make decisions ourselves, and coordinate large-scale initiatives on our own, do we need politicians?
I don't think so. Wouldn't we just need a few lawyers to help us craft new laws, that we can then all vote upon?
Imagine a world where you pull up an app on your smartphone, or visit a mobile-optimized website, and see one-paragraph summaries of laws that our fellow citizens have proposed. Interspersed with these summaries could be...
(1) links to the full versions of each bill,
(2) stats showing what percentage of your friends voted for each bill (actually I think that'd be illegal in the US, so maybe not :-), and
(3) commentary and recommendations from 3rd-party groups you trust (e.g., ACLU, NY Times, Fox News, Democracy Now!, EFF, etc)
I personally think this could work rather well. I just don't know how to get there from here.
Ideas?