[Arainach]

It's impossible for people to know about every topic. That was true in Plato's day and is dramatically more true now. People defer to what someone on TV or Tiktok told them and have no time to look into facts or primary sources.

Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work. That or gridlock where you can't get 50% to agree on anything.

If you ask people "do you want A, B, C, or D" a majority may well say to do each. If you only have budget for one, getting them to come to consensus is impossible at the scale of direct democracy.

[somenameforme]

People don't bother looking into stuff because they know their opinion, and their vote, doesn't really matter. Treat people like children and they start acting like children.

For some contrast Switzerland has a sort of defacto direct democracy in that citizens that obtain a relatively small number of votes can bring any issue they desire up for vote. And they have indeed brought issues like Basic Income with the suggested proposal of every single Swiss adult getting around $1700/month. That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it, but it would likely pass by an overwhelming margin in the current state of the United States. But in Switzerland where people actually do have real power, and responsibility, to determine the future of their country, it was rejected by 77%.

Instead, back in the states we can look forward to our true political power of getting to choose between Dumbo and Dingbat for our completely unrepresentative representatives.

[Timwi]

> That's something that would likely destroy any country that passed it

What makes you say that?

[somenameforme]

Work deterrence, inflation, and the tremendous cost would devalue your own currency.

In general most people work jobs solely and exclusively for the $$$. If they didn't need that $$$ they'd have much greater power to negotiate wages. That sounds amazing in theory, but in reality - how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets when you could otherwise sit and home and live a comfortable life with your family? Probably quite a lot to say the least. Or for a single young guy, how much would you need to pay him to work instead of him being able to play video games and chase tail all day, every day, if he wanted to? And if we're being honest - you can probably remove young as an adjective.

I did add "likely" because I used to be a huge advocate for basic income, but my view shifted on it overtime as I gained a greater appreciation for how economies, and even societies in general, function. Or that the large number of billionaires we have are largely due to accounting and speculation (read: total on-paper capitalization of stock market vastly exceeding the amount of money in existence), rather than them actually just making obscene amounts of money.

[wizzwizz4]

> how much money would it take for you to go scrub toilets

If my needs were otherwise met, and there were clear instructions allowing me to do this in confidence that I wasn't inconveniencing any users of the toilet, I'd do it free. (Cleaning a toilet is less messy than changing a baby, and that's not hard either.) Given proper PPE, I'd do even more "disgusting" jobs, if they were jobs that needed doing: I draw my line at cleaning up sharps, but that's only because I'm not trained.

Maintaining communal infrastructure is not a thankless task: you can know that everyone who uses the infrastructure until next maintenance time benefits from your work, which is more than most people can say about their jobs. There are people who take pride in their work, even if you consider that work low-status, and beneath you. Do different work, then!

Do you really think most people would live lives of idleness, if not compelled to behave otherwise? If you saw something that needed doing, and you had the means to do it, would you just… walk by? If I may, that says more about you than it does about anyone else.

[somenameforme]

Quite the strawman there. Not wanting to work [at times literally] shit jobs without excessive compensation, is not the same as everybody being idle. I can list thousands of things I'd rather do than clean public toilets, and I don't even do thousands of things! Though yes - I do think a huge chunk of the population would be generally idle, if possible, in terms of commercial productivity, and I see nothing wrong with that, besides the fact it would crash any economy where it was possible.

[wizzwizz4]

You not wanting to work "shit jobs" (without compensation you would consider excessive) doesn't mean that everybody doesn't want to work them (or even that everybody considers them to be "shit jobs").

I agree with your point about commercial productivity. I don't agree that it would crash the economy: it would crash GDP (by eliminating large classes of exploitative and abusive behaviour which currently prop GDP up), but we already know that GDP is a flawed metric. I don't see how this would interfere with food getting to our tables, buildings being built, or communal infrastructure being maintained, except that monied folk would be less able to demand that things be done "or else", so we might have to reorganise society somewhat (such as by providing better working conditions for "shit jobs").

[int_19h]

I don't see why having to pay significantly more to people cleaning the toilets is a downside. It's a shit job, the pay should reflect that. Of course when people are forced into the treadmill just to get fed, they will take it for pennies, but that doesn't mean that it's the right way to do things.

[somenameforme]

Ideally I absolutely agree with you - I think everybody would. The problem is reality. Companies that make/sell real things, and not software, have almost shockingly low profit margins, with labor costs generally being their greatest expense by far. WalMart's net profit margin, for instance, is less than 3%. And as they have an absolutely massive number of employees (they're the third largest employer in the world in fact), their profit per employee is quite low - somewhere around $7,000.

Software and tech companies don't treat their employees better because they care more about their employees, but because they're drowning in money owing to ridiculous profit margins. Apple's net profit margin is > 24% with a greater than $2 million profit per employee!! [1] They could buy every single employee a new Ferrari every single year and still have [literally] more money than they know what to do with.

So you have this imbalance in the economy that employees working jobs that pay stupidly high wages are the ones where the companies could generally afford to pay them even more, dramatically more, but instead just hoard all the money. Whereas low wage jobs are the ones where companies themselves are also just 'barely getting by', but at a large enough scale - that can translate to billions of dollars, even if it's not much per employee.

[1] - https://appleworld.today/2024/10/apple-generates-2-3-million...

[thaumasiotes]

> Direct democracy would get you solutions that sound emotionally appealing but do not work.

We have those now.

[fc417fc802]

Direct democracy would replace politicians being vaguely influenced by social media driven trends with government policies decided directly by the social media outrage cycle. I've got no end of complaints about the current system but that doesn't incline me to go for a swim in a manure pit.

[aesh2Xa1]

Representative systems vest political power into concentrated points of influence. The reps are often as uninformed as the citizens. The US just had some infamous legislation pass that representatives didn't even read, and publicly stated so.

The system also makes reps uniquely vulnerable to targeted lobbying, corruption, regulatory capture, and threats. I find much to be faulty with opaque dealings with a few key individuals.

Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.

[Arainach]

>Direct democracy mitigates these issues. Influence must be exerted through broad, public persuasion. This forces special interests to operate in the open, creating a higher and more transparent barrier to subverting the public will.

Have you paid attention to any US or global election since 2016? The special interests stay hidden and their influence works wonders.

If direct democracy could have ever worked, that opportunity died the moment social media became popular.

[aesh2Xa1]

You are correct that mass manipulation is a critical issue. However, this vulnerability is shared by any system reliant on voters, including the representative one. It is not a unique flaw of direct democracy.

So there are three issues we're talking about in this context:

1. Reps are also uninformed.

2. Social media manipulation of the populace (or, generally, propaganda).

3. Concentrated influence on a handful of legislators.

Direct democracy eliminates the third vector.

Furthermore, the stakes and incentives for corruption are vastly different. A lobbyist gains far more from corrupting one senator who decides for millions than from swaying individual voters. The return on investment for corrupting concentrated power is orders of magnitude higher.

Even if propaganda shapes opinion, the resulting decisions still represent the people's will at that moment. Representatives can betray even that will for personal gain, adding another layer of distortion between what people want and what they get.

[terminalshort]

How does direct democracy mitigate the issue that the representative is uninformed and not even reading what they voted for?

[aesh2Xa1]

I think my argument was written in a way that could allow this misinterpretation, sorry. I wasn't claiming direct democracy makes people more informed, but I was saying it removes the additional corruption layer.

Direct democracy doesn't cure ignorance, but it eliminates the corrupted/coerced middleman. An uninformed public voting directly is still more aligned with public interest than uninformed representatives voting for whoever influenced them most.

[terminalshort]

I'm not at all convinced of the existence of this corruption (other than small scale one offs). I just think the voters want stupid and impossible things and vote for the politicians who promise them.