Democracy I like

[andrewducker]

I'm not a fan of Democracy, but short of spending all of my time running the world personally I'm not sure there's a better way of doing things.

A nice suggestion is Liquid Democracy, whereby you have a form of proxied direct democracy - assigning your vote to various proxies depending on how you feel about that particular issue, or even voting directly yourself.

So, for instance, you could assign your "business" votes to Labour, your "Law" votes to the "Legalise Everything Movement" and your "Ecology" votes to the "Destroy the Earth Alliance", keeping everything else to yourself on a case by case basis.

Not a perfect system, but I think it's a step better than what we have at the moment.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

I fear direct democracy because I don't trust most people to have a sufficient clue about issues. However, until we develop hyper-intelligent AI Minds, this options looks quite reasonable. It also looks like something useful to rip off for an SF setting :) You'll likely see it featured in something written by me eventually. Thank you.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

I fear direct democracy because I don't trust most people to have a sufficient clue about issues.

Yeah, that's partly my concern, too. One of the things I elect representatives for is to inform themselves on the issues they work on before they vote, because I can't be sufficiently well-informed about everything. So, I pick people who I believe to be smart and honest and committed, and share my basic principles, and trust them to do that job.

Still, it probably would be better if I didn't have to trade off good basic principles on one thing (say, the environment) against some dodgy ideas on another thing (say, ending up voting for someone who was a social protectionist). So the Liquid Democracy thing sounds quite good, if a bit labour-intensive.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

So, I pick people who I believe to be smart and honest and committed, and share my basic principles, and trust them to do that job.

Of course, finding such people can be quite difficult, especially since (in the US at least) most national-level politicians serve only their own interests and the interests of the very wealthy. IMHO, anything that destroys the current 2-party system is a very good thing indeed.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it would have similar issues to proportional representation or other such 'intelligent' voting systems.

While in theory this gives everyone more feedom and power, in practise it leads to hung parliaments and adminstrations that can't actualy do anything through a lack of majority or internal fighting within the bastard coalitions they have to form to gain office.

I've long held that I'd much rather have a strong capable leader from a party opposed to me, than a weak or ineffectual leader I agree with. Which is why despite being a three times conservative voter and general critic of New Labour, I'd still rather see Tony in the hot seat than IDS or Charles whatever his name is.

[andrewducker]

Well, the system wouldn't have a parliament, per se, necessarily.

Why would you need one when you're voting directly, via a proxy?

You might need various ministerial jobs, and committees to investigate and report, but you wouldn't have MPs and parties as such.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

Thats what I mean. I'm a great beleiver in the single strong leader being more effective than desicion by commitee.

Commitee's are great for lots of things, but very often in life you need someone to stand up and make a call, decide upon a strategy and carry the can if it goes horribly wrong.

I guess I favour a combination of democracy and the benevolent dictator approach :o)

On the more specific case here, you can't just de-couple all the various things a government wants to do. At heart you have to balance tax against expenditure, then balance the various demands on expenditure. If each deprtment is fighting its own corner with now overriding control, nothing will get done as compromise will be impossible. Or else tax will spiral madly out of control. Balancing the books and working out what to spend money is usual a vastly bigger deal than actual policy. Deciding on a plan is simple, having the money to implement it is something else.