[higherpurpose]

> This law was voted by 30 delegates. From a total of 577

This is how democracy dies. Now the 95% other members of the National Assembly will say "that it's not their fault, because they didn't even vote for it!", if some major abuses happen due to this in the future. Despicable.

[easytiger]

> This is how democracy dies.

We need a system of government that allows scientists and thinkers to have a weighted power balancing politicians. POliticians cannot be trusted by definition

[cm2187]

No, you need direct democracy. With modern communications, there is no reason to organize frequent elections on key issues, like in Switzerland.

[harperlee]

Direct democracy only works if most of the voters have: 1) sufficient general education; 2) sufficient domain education; 3) time to read the law; 4) time to reflect on the law; 5) peers to discuss at length and with depth the law; etc.

It's more efficient to have delegation systems. The problem is that both politicians and the press are corrupted delegation systems.

[joeyspn]

Well, you can have delegates that are not actual politicians. Agora Voting [0] (a secure direct democracy platform) allows this kind of political systems... Seriously, there's soft out there that can solve this problem. Thing is nobody gives a shit about these issues and people is brainwashed in such massive scale that horrendous laws are passed w/o proper public scrutiny...

[0] https://agoravoting.com/

https://github.com/agoravoting

[harperlee]

I'm optimistic on this, but we need to have these new systems tested on a small scale - villages, small regions and countries - first. A big country won't push for it... and I think that most of the problems of it might be less relevant on small groups. Think diversity of origin, opinions, detachment from the end result, who pays for it... these are problems for a big country that don't exist in, say, a condominium!

[yellowapple]

Do you happen to have a link to an overview on how Agora Voting actually works? Their homepage is way too vague for me to actually get any useful information out of it, and I'm not sure where exactly to look in the GitHub org/repos.

[flurdy]

So true. But..

"It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." - Winston Churchill.

[easytiger]

Why is why we are proposing a new one

[thirdsun]

I agree. Important decisions shouldn't be left to easily manipulated masses. It shouldn't be left to politicians either. Most of these issues are so complicated that it should be handled by actual experts in that field. I'm always baffled to see politicians take offices/positions throughout their career that couldn't be more different - from agriculture to technology to foreign affairs. Are you telling me they can do it all? And even if so, wouldn't we be better off with actual experts?

[javajosh]

I wish I could delegate my vote to a committee of my choosing, composed of people I respect, trust, and admire for their intelligence, integrity, and values. I would expect such a group to debate issues openly, and invite commentary from the voters. Something like a jury, but for a parliament.

[Zigurd]

Alternatives like direct democracy and demarchy only have to work better, not perfectly, to be preferable.

[dandelion_lover]

There is no reason to go from one extreme to the other. People, who wants, can have direct democracy and the rest can choose anyone to represent them. Do you see any weak points in such organization?

[r00fus]

I'm not even sure elected politicians have all that. They're paid plants, might as well get rid of the middle-men here.

[Aissen]

Not a silver bullet. With this we'd still have the death penalty; or voted for populists measures like banning minarets.

[donkeyd]

Completely agree, pseudoscience and fear mongering will rule the world if this happens...

[fennecfoxen]

Ooh, what a delightfully aristocratic objection. We can't give the lesser peoples self-rule, they'd rule themselves wrong!!

Have you considered any noblesse oblige-style colonization and rule of third-world nations? Sounds like a good match.

[CamperBob2]

You can be as snarky as you want, but the fact is, I don't want the average dumbass on the street to have that much power over my life, and neither, I suspect, do you.

There has to be something resembling meritocracy in any functioning organization, and that includes a government.

[rjaco31]

The hard part is finding incentives not to get corrupted once you're in place.

[Aissen]

I'm aware of the ethical implications, and I haven't made my mind on the matter (probably never will). I just said that it's not a silver bullet, and presented cases where it could go wrong.

[jodrellblank]

That looks like the author is not saying "they'd rule themselves wrong", they're saying "they'd rule me against my wishes by voting conservative reactionary and ineffective laws into my life"

[fennecfoxen]

The feeling is probably mutual, for what that's worth -- as evidenced by the first amendment and a wave of religious-freedom restoration acts.

Postscript. You'd think a little geographic diversity and a federal system would let people let each other live in peace but instead we have national culture wars.

[yellowapple]

> We can't give the lesser peoples self-rule, they'd rule themselves wrong!!

I'd normally take your side on this, but then there's the fact that the Southern United States still exists and is a major reason why U.S. law borders on jingoistic theocracy.

[easytiger]

So you are saying uninformed populist opinions should be made policy

[cm2187]

Then you don't really believe in democracy, and I have to disagree.

[koszik]

Please take a look at what happened in Athens a few thousand years ago. You'll see that even then people were susceptible to fear mongering and manipulation, so in effect the real power was in the hands of a few. People has always been stupid, there's no way around that, sorry.

[mauricemir]

The Melian dialogue is what the poster is referring to here for those that did not any classics at school

[mercurial]

No, you have to understand how human nature works. Unfortunately, it is much easier to get people worked up about populist issues than about something that matters. I think the record speaks for itself.

[CamperBob2]

I did for a while, but I have to admit the charm is wearing off.

[acron0]

Nope, and neither should you.

[Lawtonfogle]

You might as well put those who control the media in charge and just skip the middleman then. News runs story "Tor is how pedophiles get access to your children, here is a line of a dozen different 'experts' explaining how." Tor is then made illegal.

I dare say that with enough media backing, I could get dihydrogen monoxide banned. It does kill a lot of children. It has been shown to be very important to terrorist. Companies like to put it in food unregulated because it lets them add mass for cheap.

[rayiner]

Direct democracy is what gave us lovely things like California's three-strikes law that puts people in prison for life for their third non-violent felony (voted in by public referendum 72-28).

[yellowapple]

No, we just need to establish Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye as co-dictators of Earth. Democracy is overrated.

[vacri]

The bad effects of direct democracy can be seen in elected judges in the US.

[javert]

In the US, many scientists are government vassals. They are not to be trusted, either.

Probably true elsewhere, but I only know the US.

[benbou09]

Nobody dared to oppose because of the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks. The opposition had a deal with the government to let the law be passed.

[rtpg]

I didn't realize there wasn't a quorum rule

[eshowk]

In the constitution of the 5th republic, there is no quorum rule nor a "recall" referendum at mid-term nor a prohibition of multi tenures. That's why we need to change to basic rules of the institutions. We need rules to avoid such democratic thefts in the future, rules written by the people, not the politics professionals. This is what citizen groups like "Mouvement pour la 6eme République" advocates for (http://www.m6r.fr).

[talideon]

Even where there's no constitutional requirement to have a quorum for votes, it's still possible to have a rule of order requiring a quorum before a vote can take place.

Ireland is an example of this: for there to be a quorum in either house, at least twenty members have to be present. This means at least 1/3 of the Seanad (upper house, 60 seats) or 12% of the Dáil (lower house, 166 seats) must be present for either to form a quorum. That's not written in the constitution, but a standing order of the Oireachtas (parliament).

Even if France has no such requirement in its constitution, it's ridiculous that there isn't at least a parliamentary rule of order requiring it.

[deciplex]

How's the constitution for the 6th one coming along?

[eshowk]

Many ideas are gaining traction with these events : prohibiton of pultiple-tenure, quorum rule everywhere, "recall" referendum for every elected, a constition elected by non professional politics and prohibited to participate to any further election, etc...

The movement M6R's got ~85K signatures, and a grass-roots assembly with ~180 members, transparent auto-financing, but it still need to get much bigger in order to make the change of constitution the big main issue in the next presidential race in 2017. After 2017 I don't know, but changing the constitution, getting back democracy has to be in "every mouth" from now on.

[hmsln]

It's not. There is some talk of a Sixth Republic during the presidential campaigns, generally from far-right or far-left parties, but the two main moderate parties do not want to hear about it.

French political life is characterized by a complete lack of impetus for change.

[LandoCalrissian]

Typically in most systems, you need a quorum to hold a vote of any kind. I'm really not sure why you can only vote with 30 out of 577 in the French Assembly.

[talideon]

In the French system, a quorum has to be requested, but if it can't be assembled in 15mins, the vote goes ahead anyway: http://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/decouvrir-l-assemblee/rol...