Voluntary voting effectively gives people with a single-issue obsession more power than everyone else, because they show up to vote. In compulsory voting systems, the outliers are moderated by the median, whose concerns are typically less emotional (abortion, guns) and more economic (price of milk, mortgage rates).
Political parties are a concentrated form of voluntary voting.
One of the reasons the USA's primaries system is such a caricature factory is because it's a concentrated form of a concentrated form of voluntary voting.
There are many people who propose models like these and don't think through the end game. The end game is that any party where elected representatives have their votes directly controlled by party members is a party that will be instantly stacked by well-organised single-issue whackjobs.
You like crypto? Too bad, the terrorists use it, vote it down. You're OK with gay marriage? Too bad, Jesus is agin it, vote it down.
Techno-utopianism doesn't solve for the fundamental constraint, which is that people will always disagree. No system can create smooth consensus. What is left is to design a safe, functioning system. Direct democracy's historical performance in this respect is abysmal, which is why we have representative democracy instead.
There are a few groups trying to promote liquid democracy utilising a blockchain. I'm really looking forward to see which one will be in the right place and in the right time to grab that Network Effect.
Nice proposal, looking forward what will come of it.
> Direct democracy's historical performance in this respect is abysmal
Is that true? It certainly has its critics, but in classical Greece it more than held its own in a highly competitive ecosystem for ~180 years. I'm sure at least that we need more experiments with different institutions.
180 years is not much, other kind of republics fared better (the roman republic lasted 500 years, and the venetian republic more than 1000).
Also, the direct democracy in, e.g. Athens actually encompassed a very limited number of people (adult males owners of land) so it's not 100% comparable with a modern version.
Owning land was not required. In Pericles's time they did add a requirement that both parents be Athenians, not just the father. I agree that the details and context matter, and there are a lot of details beyond "all the citizens can vote". (Here are some that HN readers ought to find cool: http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/deadMedia/agoraMuseum.ht...)
Classical Greece was a cultural diaspora of politically distinct city-states, which experienced very turbulent politics, swinging between systems of oligarchy, tyranny and democracy.
In fact, the Greek example that is often pointed to as an example of how not to do it. Even by the Greeks, who watched the dynamics up close. See, for example, Plato's fondness for tyranny of him and his buddies over democracy.
The Greeks had turbulent politics both before and after the democratic period. I'm kind of impressed by the resilience of Athenian democracy.
Plato's a great example of how much better antidemocratic views seem to have survived subsequent transmission. Whenever we read historical judgments instead of facts we need to keep in mind we're seeing what managed to keep getting copied over almost two millennia until the printing press, almost all of the time under ideologies where the prince's word was law.
Classical Greece is arguably a poor example for reasons outlined elsewhere in this thread.
My argument against is this: professional politicians and bureaucrats often have a hard time governing a nation, what makes anyone believe the aggregate decisions of the crowd would do any better. Admittedly it'd often be hard to do any worse, but make no mistake we are as, and probably more so, fallible and as easily influenced as any politian.
At least with representative democracy we, the crowd, have someone to blame / prosecute / shame / hang. And we probably secretively want that.
I guess I just don't believe that salvation from our own follies can be found in one political system or another. Politics is a shitty abstraction built on top of shitty people like me, what with my unconscious biases, prejudices, and personal preferences. I don't know what's best for other people, he'll I don't even know what's best for me. I mean, I have trouble deciding what to have for dinner let alone what is good economic or environmental policy for the next x period of time.
"Direct democracy's historical performance in this respect is abysmal, which is why we have representative democracy instead." <~ I think there have been reasons other than that, which led you to representative democracy. Can you present evidence of the abysmal performance of direct democracy? Well, may be Scandinavian tings do not scale for nations size of the US, but look, Switzerland has direct democracy since 1291, being formalized in the 19th century system of referendums and that works just fine.
Swiss direct democracy is rather more constrained than Athens and most of it originates from elected representatives, with an option for citizen-initiated referenda.
California has ballot initiatives, several of which have removed the legislature's powers in some taxes and some spending. Possibly to the detriment of the state, especially since it has dramatically narrowed the tax base.
Yeah you're sort of out of the loop. The majority of the community believes that "a manual override is necessary every now and then on the path to building autonomous robots"
It's a platform in development, and it's made huge strides in security and governance since the hack.
Italian citizen here.
The experiment was interesting, but it's implementation is quite sub-optimal: when you have to govern, you recognize that matters are quite more complicated and you need to compromise.
This is not necessarily wrong, if you have the intellectual honesty to admit that the utopian purity that you assumed as the main differentiator between you and the "old, dirty politics" is, well, an utopic oversimplification.
Online voting was used a few times (election candidates, electoral law, presidential candidate), but for some cases the options were pre-decided (i.e. which party should be chosen as an ally in the european parliament, only 3 options) and in some cases decisions were dropped from "above" (i.e. the current party "Directorate").
And mostly, it has not been used at all.
One now-deceased party founder had a strong vision of internet-based democracy, but it hasn't really materialized _yet_ .
Trying to end corruption in the US, I'm starting to think, is what has brought American politics to its current low state. I think the worst political decision of the past few decades was the move to ban earmarks. Whatever negative things you can say about them, earmarks gave congresspeople a way to please their constituency without reference to some particular ideological test. They could always say: "Well sure, I didn't vote to ban abortion, but we did get a new agricultural research center." Without the ability to drive federal dollars to their districts in return for 'selling out' their parties ideology, a lot of congressmen have lost the ability to vote for anything at all. It's wrecked the committee systems, the budget process, everything.
Same deal with banning unlimited donations to candidates while allowing it to superpacs that technically aren't allowed to coordinate with the candidates. You haven't made candidates less beholden to big donors, you've just put the big donors totally in charge of the campaign, because their spending dwarfs the spending of the candidates themselves.
That's actually a fascinating argument I've never heard before. It's similar to the more pragmatic argument against drug prohibition. When you prohibit something people want, they find other ways to do it or get it and in the end you've just created a lot of perverse incentives and new opportunities for corruption.
I'm not totally sold on your position, but I definitely agree that ideology has become a huge problem in politics. It's totally driven out the "git r done" types of real problem solvers in favor of deluded ideologues unwilling to compromise and therefore unable to do anything other than posture for their constituents. Meanwhile all the real wheeling and dealing is driven to the margins and into the dark.
I wonder if another symptom of what you describe is stuff being railroaded through with trade deals instead of domestic laws.
Just going to have to disagree... I think earmarks are exactly the thing that caused congresspeople to lose all of their power.
> you've just put the big donors totally in charge of the campaign, because their spending dwarfs the spending of the candidates themselves.
When the donors are the corporations, and earmarks result in higher profits for the corporations, a dangerous positive feedback loop occurs where you basically end up with corporations controlling the government instead of the elected politicians.
As far as the worst political decision of the past few decades, watch this video if you have an hour to spare. It lays out the case where adding transparency in congressional voting is really the root cause of Congress being so screwed up. It might change your mind... https://youtu.be/1gEz__sMVaY
Not sure about earmarks but for your second point, you're ignoring the possibility of the third alternative, which is really the alternative because superpacs are unlimited donations effectively. The alternative is really no unlimited donations.
What a marvelously ignorant idea. Why is it so hard to understand that there will be no magic machine that will allow you to live happily ever after without need to think.
Why is it so hard to understand that there will be no magic machine that will fly into space and put satellites that will relay our messages to one another...oh wait...
This is an interesting thought but it does not get into the motivations for why a real political party might make the choice to operate this way -- there likely needs to be some perceived comparative advantage to the potential users of such a model for them to use it, or else why take the risk and venture into the unknown?
I think it's possible that a DAO could be part of a system that does provide such an advantage -- it may even be the case that it alone confers one! But I don't know what it is and want to see one articulated.
This topic is of current interest to me, as I've been reading summaries of the history of political and philosophical trends lately[1]. The interplay of different power groups with economic, technological, and other factors to form novel systems for controlling their environment is very complex, and fun to speculate about, especially the internet's role in possibly allowing new power structures to exist that may lead to new systems.
1. In particular, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which has been a surprising lot of fun.
I'm not convinced this particular model would help, but in principle, I think a party could gain advantage by a system that gave it better collective intelligence...choosing better candidates, deploying better strategies, organizing volunteers more effectively, etc.
This techno-utopianism "solution" fails to understand that the basic goal of a political party is to get people elected into office, full stop. Even if your radical decentralised crowdfunded party makes you feel good, if you're not getting people into legislative and executive positions, you are doing it wrong.
Further, all of these theoretical goals break down when the theories collide with reality. All systems can be gamed, and the way to reduce the effects of it is not to embark on quixotic quest to create a completely transparent party where everybody has perfect information of all things at all time. Rather, focus on incentivising whistleblowers and removing corruption when it meets the light of day.
> the basic goal of a political party is to get people elected into office, full stop
You'd be surprised how many people think that parties exist to promote a certain ideology and bring it into power -- not necessarily by getting elected.
The next revolutionary system will be adaptive algorithms, created for fairness, implemented by system engineers, with strong feedback mechanisms for improvements.
I think sharing control of funds is a weakness. Not just when it comes to smart contracts that will inevitably have bugs, but for organizations in general. Instead, we can create organizations without boundaries and govern them the same way we govern genres of art—if you do something that aligns with the brand, your action is part of the organization.
That's why I built Benefactory, a platform for decentralized nonprofits. We can weave individual efforts into an organization with a strong brand so it's easier to attract recognition and further contributions.
Got your idea? Great, now you need write it up and tell everyone about it so you can find your teammates and supporters
Reads to me as: got an idea? Form a political party.
I predict internal politics will destroy this idea because any group that believes it is immune to politics is already infected but in denial.
We can't escape politics. It's what we do. It's the fundamental fractured structure of the human experience.
We need politics because it's the best and least harmless place to put those criminals we call politicians.
Also, amusing the domain is .camp. The word camp shares the same origins as the German word kamf which means to struggle. Yep, politics sure is a struggle.
36 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 95.3 ms ] threadPolitical parties are a concentrated form of voluntary voting. One of the reasons the USA's primaries system is such a caricature factory is because it's a concentrated form of a concentrated form of voluntary voting.
There are many people who propose models like these and don't think through the end game. The end game is that any party where elected representatives have their votes directly controlled by party members is a party that will be instantly stacked by well-organised single-issue whackjobs.
You like crypto? Too bad, the terrorists use it, vote it down. You're OK with gay marriage? Too bad, Jesus is agin it, vote it down.
Techno-utopianism doesn't solve for the fundamental constraint, which is that people will always disagree. No system can create smooth consensus. What is left is to design a safe, functioning system. Direct democracy's historical performance in this respect is abysmal, which is why we have representative democracy instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8
Nice proposal, looking forward what will come of it.
Sure, for the purposes of argument, you could draw a distinction.
The dynamics will look like direct democracy. With all the troubles there attending.
I imagine it would last until someone helpfully circulated a copy of Burke's Speech to the Electors of Bristol.
Could you explain why that leads to trouble? I'm not familiar with that speech.
This is representative democracy, isn't it? I'm confused.
> I'm not familiar with that speech.
It's a short speech and worth reading as one of the clearest explanations of a representative's role: http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s7.h...
Is that true? It certainly has its critics, but in classical Greece it more than held its own in a highly competitive ecosystem for ~180 years. I'm sure at least that we need more experiments with different institutions.
Also, the direct democracy in, e.g. Athens actually encompassed a very limited number of people (adult males owners of land) so it's not 100% comparable with a modern version.
I do agree we should try more things though.
In fact, the Greek example that is often pointed to as an example of how not to do it. Even by the Greeks, who watched the dynamics up close. See, for example, Plato's fondness for tyranny of him and his buddies over democracy.
Plato's a great example of how much better antidemocratic views seem to have survived subsequent transmission. Whenever we read historical judgments instead of facts we need to keep in mind we're seeing what managed to keep getting copied over almost two millennia until the printing press, almost all of the time under ideologies where the prince's word was law.
My argument against is this: professional politicians and bureaucrats often have a hard time governing a nation, what makes anyone believe the aggregate decisions of the crowd would do any better. Admittedly it'd often be hard to do any worse, but make no mistake we are as, and probably more so, fallible and as easily influenced as any politian.
At least with representative democracy we, the crowd, have someone to blame / prosecute / shame / hang. And we probably secretively want that.
I guess I just don't believe that salvation from our own follies can be found in one political system or another. Politics is a shitty abstraction built on top of shitty people like me, what with my unconscious biases, prejudices, and personal preferences. I don't know what's best for other people, he'll I don't even know what's best for me. I mean, I have trouble deciding what to have for dinner let alone what is good economic or environmental policy for the next x period of time.
California has ballot initiatives, several of which have removed the legislature's powers in some taxes and some spending. Possibly to the detriment of the state, especially since it has dramatically narrowed the tax base.
It's a platform in development, and it's made huge strides in security and governance since the hack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Star_Movement#Ideology
Online voting was used a few times (election candidates, electoral law, presidential candidate), but for some cases the options were pre-decided (i.e. which party should be chosen as an ally in the european parliament, only 3 options) and in some cases decisions were dropped from "above" (i.e. the current party "Directorate").
And mostly, it has not been used at all.
One now-deceased party founder had a strong vision of internet-based democracy, but it hasn't really materialized _yet_ .
Same deal with banning unlimited donations to candidates while allowing it to superpacs that technically aren't allowed to coordinate with the candidates. You haven't made candidates less beholden to big donors, you've just put the big donors totally in charge of the campaign, because their spending dwarfs the spending of the candidates themselves.
I'm not totally sold on your position, but I definitely agree that ideology has become a huge problem in politics. It's totally driven out the "git r done" types of real problem solvers in favor of deluded ideologues unwilling to compromise and therefore unable to do anything other than posture for their constituents. Meanwhile all the real wheeling and dealing is driven to the margins and into the dark.
I wonder if another symptom of what you describe is stuff being railroaded through with trade deals instead of domestic laws.
> you've just put the big donors totally in charge of the campaign, because their spending dwarfs the spending of the candidates themselves.
When the donors are the corporations, and earmarks result in higher profits for the corporations, a dangerous positive feedback loop occurs where you basically end up with corporations controlling the government instead of the elected politicians.
As far as the worst political decision of the past few decades, watch this video if you have an hour to spare. It lays out the case where adding transparency in congressional voting is really the root cause of Congress being so screwed up. It might change your mind... https://youtu.be/1gEz__sMVaY
I think it's possible that a DAO could be part of a system that does provide such an advantage -- it may even be the case that it alone confers one! But I don't know what it is and want to see one articulated.
This topic is of current interest to me, as I've been reading summaries of the history of political and philosophical trends lately[1]. The interplay of different power groups with economic, technological, and other factors to form novel systems for controlling their environment is very complex, and fun to speculate about, especially the internet's role in possibly allowing new power structures to exist that may lead to new systems.
1. In particular, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, which has been a surprising lot of fun.
Further, all of these theoretical goals break down when the theories collide with reality. All systems can be gamed, and the way to reduce the effects of it is not to embark on quixotic quest to create a completely transparent party where everybody has perfect information of all things at all time. Rather, focus on incentivising whistleblowers and removing corruption when it meets the light of day.
You'd be surprised how many people think that parties exist to promote a certain ideology and bring it into power -- not necessarily by getting elected.
The next revolutionary system will be adaptive algorithms, created for fairness, implemented by system engineers, with strong feedback mechanisms for improvements.
That's why I built Benefactory, a platform for decentralized nonprofits. We can weave individual efforts into an organization with a strong brand so it's easier to attract recognition and further contributions.
Here's an organization dedicated to making Ethereum easier to use and build on top of: https://media.consensys.net/2016/09/07/introducing-the-commo...
Join our Slack and help us build a commonwealth for every genre of public benefit. http://slack.benefactory.cc/
Reads to me as: got an idea? Form a political party.
I predict internal politics will destroy this idea because any group that believes it is immune to politics is already infected but in denial.
We can't escape politics. It's what we do. It's the fundamental fractured structure of the human experience.
We need politics because it's the best and least harmless place to put those criminals we call politicians.
Also, amusing the domain is .camp. The word camp shares the same origins as the German word kamf which means to struggle. Yep, politics sure is a struggle.