[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.