Comment on What is it called when you believe the U.S. political parties shouldn’t exist?
Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 1 day agoThere was a very interesting tool/game someone made in Finland. You got shown the same problems the actualy Ministers of Parliament have to vote on, and all attachments that are available for public.
The idea was that it shows that direct democracy can work just fine.
I spent an evening trying to make my mind on whether I want to support expanding a ski centre in Lapland or not. Both sides had very good arguments! In the end I ended up thinking “Damn, this is a huge amount of work! If there was a system like this in place in Finland, I’d definitely want to outsource my part. I’d find someone that thinks more or less the same way as I do and I’d pay them to do the research and use my vote. It would make sense that people would sell that service to several citizens at once, bringing down the cost per person. I would not want to spend several hours each day researching something like ski centres 800 km away from my home – yet if only few do and vote, then the result is really random. So, I would definitely want someone to represent me.”
And then I figured that “damn, this is actually the system we have right now!”
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Not quite. Liquid democracy lets you delegate your vote to someone who either has the same love of skiing as you do, or same preference to give as much cash as dividend to citizens (UBI/freedom dividend) and a bias to reject frivolous spending without a ROI for your future dividend.
You can change your delegation after disappointment with vote on an issue, and can choose to not delegate your vote on a mandatory military draft proposal.
There is no concept of a parliament majority leader being able to block a proposal from being voted on.
None of those are close to what we have right now.
Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
I didn’t get what this is referring to. Is it some Canadian or US-American concept? I’d be happy if you could elaborate a bit!
I am already able to change my delegation after disappointment. Luckily I’ve never had to exercise that right. Also, another thing that flew far over my head: why is an exception specifically regarding mandatory military drafting important?
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 17 hours ago
Liquid democracy is crypto voting from phone or computer. There is no majority winning parliamentary representatitves. You directly choose your own representative, if you want to. That representative has as many votes as the number that were delegated to them. No necessary parliament means no parliamentary restrictions (based on limiting volume of bills to manageable amount)
Liquid democracy lets you change it every day. Even if you live in a system where recall elections are possible, it is a lengthy process that requires significant cooperation and agreement.
You could directly vote against being sent to die. You might not care about a ski hill funding request.
Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz 9 hours ago
Uh, people choose when they are 18 whether they want to go to civil service or army. If they choose army, they will obviously be drafted if the Russia ever attacks. To make a decision on how many soldiers we’ll need to defend is actually an extremely good example of what kind of decisions absolutely cannot be made by a broad public vote. You need a military person relaying secret strategical information to the Ministers of Parliament. It cannot be relayed to all 5.6 million people without compromising the information. If such an amount of people knows about our military strategy, so does the Russia.
So, at least for that kind of decisions something else must be at place. Maybe there could be a restricted set of representatives that are allowed to vote in case we are attacked and you could then choose which one of those will handle your vote in this precise case – before they have talked with the military specialists.