Loomio
Tue 16 Dec 2014 10:38PM

The process.

J Joum Public Seen by 97

This TED talk describes a method of introducing direct democracy, (via the internet?) into an existing representative, democratically elected, government.

How do you see the system working?

J

Joum Tue 16 Dec 2014 10:39PM

From the original discussion.

  1. An internet based voting platform used by a population to make decisions/choices.

  2. The decisions and choices made using the internet tool are be the same as that of the parliament.

  3. An elected person in a parliament chooses to vote according to the decisions made in the internet platform - thus connecting the population directly into the parliamentary process.

D

DirectAdmin Tue 16 Dec 2014 10:51PM

personally, i dislike the use of representative democracy. i stand by the concept of removing this and moving to autonomous communities, each one producing its own power, water food and jobs. decentralising as much as possible, delivering social services on a local level rather than by large bureaucracies. local direct democracy for local issues, and co joined "global" direct democracy for anything more. groups of real people, joined together to resolve issues via direct access rather than special interests and lobbyists

its hard to explain the nuances and details of how this might work in this small forum, but as long as i have to give my power to someone else to vote on my behalf (representative) then its not really direct democracy.

i believe the ted talk and others talking about this representative based DD, are a good place to transition through since just throwing a true direct democracy at people would be a fatal mistake.

there is alot to be reworked in this kind of model, but there is more wrong with our system than just the way we vote, and i think we should use the opportunity of governance change to discuss this and come up with alternative suggestions.

GC

Greg Cassel Tue 16 Dec 2014 11:20PM

Hi guys,
I'm new here, thanks to @lbjoum 's gracious invitation (thanks!) I'm super interested in participatory democracy.

I want to let everyone know that I don't generally support political/ policy decisions by simple majority ("50% plus one") voting-- but, if that's what this group works towards, I certainly won't stand in the way of it. :)

I do absolutely love that TED talk; one of my favorites ever. I think that Pia has exactly the right ideas in many ways. I just favor a general orientation towards supermajority process, plus (naturally) protections for human rights and minority rights.

D

DirectAdmin Tue 16 Dec 2014 11:27PM

protections are the key to any system, constitutional/bill of rights something to ensure the people cannot be steamrolled by the powers in charge.or by a majority that dislikes somethign about them.

i to am against bare majority. im a fan of a bout a 67% for decision making

but i too am open to discussions and group decisions on this modelling

BDS

Berge Der Sarkissian Wed 17 Dec 2014 12:17PM

Thanks for the pointer

PR

Pete Radic Wed 17 Dec 2014 11:28PM

Pia has elucidated the mission well...
Autonomy? Apathy? What is the motivation that voters will/will not engage? Should we let computer algorithms decide what the best choice is on any one issue and execute these?
Just some questions I was thinking about when reading through these comments.

RT

rory tb Fri 19 Dec 2014 3:01AM

@gregorycassel @directadmin what do you believe is a better alternative to majority decision making?

Also, just as a side note, a majority can actually be substancially lower than 50.00001% so long as there are more than two options.

The more options in play the lower the possible % for a majority.

GC

Greg Cassel Fri 19 Dec 2014 3:33PM

@rorytb , thanks for the question. Let me explain what I meant above by "... I don’t generally support political/ policy decisions by simple majority..."

I was referring to decisions which coerce people to follow new (or significantly changed) rules, in order to avoid potential punishments. For instance, if a government decides that it's illegal for citizens to use marijuana, the citizens are being coerced. They're losing freedom. But it's also coercion for a government to decide that a citizen needs a business license in order to sell stuff, and to set rules on how the business license is acquired. Government often involves coercion and control.

It was within that context that I stated my disagreement with simple majority decisions. To be clear, I do not have any problem with electing government officials by simple majority-- or, better yet, a single transferrable vote (STV) for choosing between more than two candidates.

I support consensus-oriented political process which creates supermajority support. This is a basic philosophical view of mine. I think that political issues can be re-framed in ways which reflect 'general interests', or the common good, instead of the divisive partisan framings that we often get.

RH

Rob Hayward Fri 19 Dec 2014 10:42PM

Hi all, very excited to see this type of group emerging on Loomio. The potential of the internet to revolutionise the way that we govern ourselves has been an area of great interest for me for some time now.
Allow me to share some thoughts.
There are many decisions that need to be made that are not subjective in nature. Majority opinion should not necessarily be weighed more highly than quantifiable and qualifiable facts. For these decisions I am a fan of an "evidence based democracy". Online tools such as wikis could be used to facilitate the decentralised collaboration of experts and knowledgable persons to create policy and plans for things like infrastructure, energy production etc.
For anyone interested in this area
I highly recommend:
Beth Simone Noveck
Wiki Government: How Technology Can Make Government Better, Democracy Stronger, and Citizens More Powerful

Whilst she doesn't take the idea quite as far as I would, Beth Noveck makes a very good case for the potential of wikis as part of the picture for Internet based governance.
Loomio could still be a valuable tool for this process, however, the decisions made could feed into a wiki that would act as a living document for the evolution of policy and legislation.
For more subjective decisions I am absolutely a fan of direct democracy, although I believe that it would need to be run through the filter of a strong moral constitution (eg. just imagine what immigration policy could look like in the UK if left to majority rule, given the heavy influence of Right Wing media narratives)!

R

Roslyn Mon 22 Dec 2014 4:01PM

I'm for option 1, although I think we will have to start off with option 3 to get there. Once you have option 3 off the ground, representatives start to look pretty redundant. But just achieving option 3 will, I believe, be no easy matter.

As far as human nature is concerned: call me a burning optimist, but I would point out that all of the evidence we have for the ills of the majority are predicated on a mass media that relentlessly pounds false facts into people's heads and then takes "surveys" of public opinion that are not conducted on any kind of scientific basis. I think that in the future, if people could speak to each other directly over platforms like Loomio, this would have a mitigating impact on what is essentially a corporate-controlled version of reality.

Still, when contemplating mass use, I think we would need to institute some precautions that prevent trolling/fake accounts, etc. Truly disruptive elements are often a tiny, tiny minority, but they can do major damage if you let them.

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