1042
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
1042 points (81.0% liked)
Memes
45739 readers
507 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
as a group grows, the issues at hand become more complex, and then the standard citizen no longer has the time to both work and inform himself on the issues of the day to also participate in day-to-day politics in any meaningful way. Just like anything else, over a certain size specialization is required.
In a future with real democracy, the day to day applications of democracy are very much rooted in your local community.
What problems are there? Is the way your work is run inefficient or needs changes? Should your town start or stop doing x?
Things would be much more local focused for the most part. Your decisions would be “person x in charge of y is not doing a good job/ they aren’t doing what they said they would, they should be replaced” etc
Not like we’d really be voting directly on how big the grain quota for the year should be
Moving as many things to the city, and even community level is great. On the other hand natonal level consideration like the planning and construction of new trade routes (e.g. the panama canal, transcontinental railway) of the future (e.g. astroid mining operations) will always stay in the national and even international level.
The idea is that with true democratic accountability, people would only need to intervene if the people they elected to do those jobs are doing a bad job. It’s an incredibly robust and layered system that heavily favors the people who choose, not the people who are chosen
you suggest a system where citizens could vote for no confidence in the gov at any time , so to dismantle it.
Today's systems allow a vote of no confidence only to the elected represenetives. a national refarandum is usually required by law for some decisions (e.g. appoint some positions in the US) or to assure stable governence (e.g. brexit). a vote of no confidence does not hold to these critiria. In today's democratic systems the closest parallel to what you are talking about is instsblity forcing the gov to go to early elections, or cause defectors in the parlament coallition to vote for no confidence. Both are cqused duo to public pressure, but not by the direct vote of the people.
let's assume now we create such a system. something must trigger a vote, what is it? is there a monthly vote? can a patition like system allow for a vote if enough people request one? what are the logistics of the votr process? it should be at least as secure as the elections. That costs a lot of money, and adds a whole lot of overhead. The vote should also be as fair as elections, most countries, unlike thr US, consider election days as national holidays and close most buissneses. That takes a toll on the economy if done too many times.
Now consider you live in a highly polorized vountry where public opinion swings radically from side to side. a system suh as this will surely distablise the gov, which will change on a bi-monthly rate. This can cause the gov to cease functioning all together, imcluding military budgeting. With a weakened army the country may fall to out side forces, or worse fall to a military coup, which may be dictatorial in nature - destroying democracy in tje process.
tl;dr: Gov sytems are hard to create
My comment was 2 sentences long, did you think it was a comprehensive description of an entire political system? Really silly friend
Go read some books about communist or post communist governance lmao
A term you might look for is Democratic Centralism, but theres also council communism and dozens of formulations of anarchist organization
But that is not a true democracy anymore then ...
sauce: https://collegiuminstitute.org/blog/rousseau-and-democracy