While he right in his criticisms, he is at the same time incorrect on saying this is a part of representative democracy. Most of what he criticizes are products of money in politics, trustee view of representation, fptp elections, and a class system, not of representative democracy itself. While I would argue against representative democracy, these are not the criticisms that I would give, because these are not criticisms of representative democracy. While his points are all fair, he's targeting the wrong thing here. Many of these problems could be changed by greater public participation, proportional representation, and public financing. He obviously isn't a socialist, so I wouldn't expect him to also consider the elimination of the class character of representation, but that would also contribute massively. By no means does any of the fixes for this problem come out of eliminating representative democracy, although participatory democracy would help under certain conditions.
This video quickly jumps from actually talking about the differences and effects of different forms of democracy and devolves into dumb conspiracy. Also, he never qualifies his statement that "representative democracy is not democratic." He merely states it. But I'll comment on some specifics.
"Direct or participatory democracy allows the voice of the public to be heard, unhindered in its purest form."
That's the whole problem with direct democracy. The "voice of the public" is a dumb, judgmental one that will quickly shout down minority groups and blatantly shit on peoples' rights. Have you ever heard of Proposition 8 or the "Three-Strikes" laws in California? Those were the "voice of the public" at work. Read the Federalist Papers to learn more. Hamilton and Madison explain this in detail. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." It's all about finding a balance of control and freedom, and representative democracies offer the best version of this.
He also talks about how money runs politics and how our votes are meaningless somehow. He fails to understand that citizens still have to actually vote for the politicians to win. So you can say that the money is actually buying people and not politicians. It's education that can stop money from being a factor in politics more than anything. If you actually know the positions of a candidate, they can spend a trillion dollars on commercials and other ads and it won't amount to anything.
And you don't have to keep posting this guy's videos.
Feels kinda funny watching House of Cards right now, which is pretty much exactly this. Democracy definitely have its issues, but I can't really think of any better way to handle it right now either. There simply isn't any great solution, only decent.
Observe the nature of the politics and parties in your country. It does not matter where you live.
Look beyond the newspapers and what is said on TV. What do you see?
This begs the question - how do we take money out of politics?
His "direct democracy" goes straight out to say that representatives are greedy bloodsuckers and the new kings.
Eh. Very diverse view there. /sarcasm
In any case, I believe representative democracy and direct democracy would lead to many of the same results. What are the differences when there's one idiot leading a country, or a country full of idiots leading it themselves?
Perhaps one difference would be the satifsfaction people get from their decisions in a truly direct one, good or bad. They can only blame themselves though when a decision was wrong, and that could possibly lead to certain groups being blamed for it and and singled out.
Also, idiots are easier to remove from their seat to be replaced by someone else when they've shown to do bad. Replacing a country's population though, is not possible.
One day someone will make a bitcoin like voting system, except your passport is your wallet and it will give people direct access to decision making without any representatives.
What's with you posting all the really old (2009) libertarian zeitgeist-like conspiracy videos recently
I wouldn't call it zeitgeist-like but I don't know... maybe I've been watching them and thought I'd share to see what others think just like how pretty much all other videos on this subforum get shared
Oh, look. Someone whose trying to use the United States, which has a Byzantine system to begin with, as an argument that [B]everything is wrong.[/B]
I don't care if it isn't "real democracy", direct democracy is crap, and allows tyranny of the majority to flourish at its worst.
Democracy is not synonymous with good, this is something a lot of people forget.
I'm still waiting for the next government type to come along to make changes, I think democracy will leave a legacy at the least anyway and hope to continue using it in the form of votekick/voteban when playing online videogames as I feel democracy isn't working properly if people aren't voting irl + I don't see a point in voting in this country because all the parties are probably going to backstab us and I'd rather not feel guilty for making a bad vote decision.
Sortition mixed in with direct democracy would be the best alternative.
It would guaranty that no more power hungry people could control key administrative positions.
So kinda like a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarchy"]demarchy[/URL]?
[QUOTE=Katla;44299126]Observe the nature of the politics and parties in your country. It does not matter where you live.
Look beyond the newspapers and what is said on TV. What do you see?[/QUOTE]the Illuminati of course
Our system allows for minority rights and majority rule. If everyone had to get their voice in it'd be god awful.
I like how his main criticism of representative democracy is financing of candidates for office, and the lobbying of elected representatives. Imagine this: somehow today, the United States changes from representative democracy to direct democracy. A major, international corporation that is based in the United States doesn't want to have to give so much to the tax man, like most other corporations don't want to either. So this corporation bands together with other, incredibly wealthy corporations and introduces a new campaign. It proposes legislation that would reduce company tax from whatever it is now (30%) down to 5%. And how does it get the support of the people? The corporations promise to give $50 vouchers, or even just $50 cold hard cash, to each and every voter who supports their legislation. Given that because of the distribution of wealth, most people live with a median income significantly lower than the mean income. To them, $50 is a lot of money, maybe even life changing in a way. What do you think that those people will do with regards to that legislation?
Not to mention that politics is a very serious field, and should certainly require the involved members to invest plenty of time in it. Time to research and debate legislation, time for committees to undertake studies with incredible detail, and so on. By giving the decision making power to these people, we are allowing them to invest their time in the consideration of legislation, much more time and in a much more informative way than if you give every voting man and woman, of which many already work full-time, the ability to vote directly for legislation with almost the bat of an eyelid. Also, as others have already outlined, you also get tyranny of the majority with no respect for minorities. Finally, much of his criticisms are valid, but valid to the United States only. Their are many other countries aside from the US that are much more democratic and yet use representative democracy systems.
Semi-direct is the way to go imo. You need to have elected representatives because there has to be some people working full-time at the government (at least at federal level), but ultimately the people should have the last word.
[QUOTE=Kljunas;44308701]Semi-direct is the way to go imo. You need to have elected representatives because there has to be some people working full-time at the government (at least at federal level), but ultimately the people should have the last word.[/QUOTE]
What do you mean by a semi-direct democracy? And arguably wouldn't the people have enough of a say in representative democracy, because they vote for someone to legislate on their behalf?
If by semi-direct you mean something like referendums for constitution amendments, then yeah I can agree with that because constitutions effectively outline the rights of people and limitations of government over the people.
[QUOTE=Joazzz;44304378]the Illuminati of course[/QUOTE]
Maybe, maybe not.
Let me refrase my question. If you take away all the political information that you recieve from various sources. Take away all those debates, the arguments, the parties and the politicians.
Imagine having all these things infront of you. What do you see when you take them all away?
[QUOTE=Katla;44308965]Maybe, maybe not.[/QUOTE]Real talk, the Illuminati is fake. Like 100% fake. As in "Made up by a pulp thriller fiction author in very recent history."
[QUOTE=Antdawg;44308891]What do you mean by a semi-direct democracy? And arguably wouldn't the people have enough of a say in representative democracy, because they vote for someone to legislate on their behalf?
If by semi-direct you mean something like referendums for constitution amendments, then yeah I can agree with that because constitutions effectively outline the rights of people and limitations of government over the people.[/QUOTE]
I mean having representative while still allowing the people to make initiatives and potentially override the representatives' decisions. Referendums for the constitution as well of course.
imo the people don't have enough of a say in representative democracy because there never is a candidate with whom you agree at 100% on everything. This problem is avoided if people can vote on individual issues.
There's also the problem of politicians being corrupt and/or dishonest towards the voters. If an elected representative loses popularity and fails to meet the voters' expectations, they often can't do shit about it and just have to wait until the next election.
[editline]21st March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Katla;44308965]Maybe, maybe not.
Let me refrase my question. If you take away all the political information that you recieve from various sources. Take away all those debates, the arguments, the parties and the politicians.
Imagine having all these things infront of you. What do you see when you take them all away?[/QUOTE]
I still don't understand what you're talking about.
[QUOTE=Kljunas;44309226]I mean having representative while still allowing the people to make initiatives and potentially override the representatives' decisions. Referendums for the constitution as well of course.
imo the people don't have enough of a say in representative democracy because there never is a candidate with whom you agree at 100% on everything. This problem is avoided if people can vote on individual issues.
There's also the problem of politicians being corrupt and/or dishonest towards the voters. If an elected representative loses popularity and fails to meet the voters' expectations, they often can't do shit about it and just have to wait until the next election.[/QUOTE]
Wouldn't the ability of the population to override bills passed by the legislature be a case of tyranny of the majority? Unless the role of the population at large was that of the executive function of government (I don't think that would be tyranny of the majority, as the executive can't enact what the legislative wont pass), or vice versa. But I don't think the latter (the vice versa one) would ever be the case considering the logistics required for the entire population to be an effective legislative body.
I agree that their will never be a candidate that any voter can 100% agree with. But the thing is that their really doesn't need to be. Almost every election will have a theme - for example, the last Australian federal election has been considered by many as a 'referendum on the carbon tax', so it's a case of where voters elect representatives and thus provide them a mandate to do a certain thing. Of course I'd like to elect a candidate I could fully agree with in every single matter, but then again that's impossible, and under direct democracy I don't have the time (nor do many others) to invest in directly being involved in the legislative processes, with its debates, committees, studies and all that.
And on your last point, a politician falling out of favour with their electorate isn't a problem with representative democracy, it's a problem with the single-member electorate system. An electorate system such as STV allows for multiple representatives for a single electorate, so it's less likely that a significant portion of the electorate would lose faith in their preferred representatives, due to a wider range of views being represented. If conservative voters lose faith in the conservative representative, it doesn't mean that the liberal voters automatically lose faith in the liberal candidate, or the green voters lose faith in the green candidate. Yes, in that case the conservative voters would be dissatisfied but the effect is dampened compared to a single-member electorate, while simultaneously allowing for the population to delegate legislative authority to those who can best invest their time in political matters.
I think that in summary of my posts in this thread, I don't trust the population at large as a body for everyday legislative processes. It's good that many members here on Facepunch are very interested in politics, I certainly am, but a large amount of people out there just don't share that passion, or even understand it. Some might have a moderate interest in the party platforms, but lack a comprehension of how much consideration needs to go from bill drafting, through every step towards being enacted by the executive.
[editline]22nd March 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Kljunas;44309226]I still don't understand what you're talking about.[/QUOTE]
I agree. Katla can you please re-word your posts better.
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