Comment on UK households face tax rise of £3,500 a year by next election, finds IFS

• Blake@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  No, it doesn’t, that’s a very narrow perspective - I’m guessing that you’re quite young and you’re not familiar with alternative systems of organising society.

  There are many alternatives, but I like the idea of consensus based decision-making. It’s a little bit like direct democracy - instead of voting for people to represent you, instead you directly get to support or block decisions made about the society you live in.

  For example, currently, we elect politicians to represent us, and we try to elect a politician who would solve climate change. But that doesn’t seem to work. Imagine if, instead, we could all directly vote on an idea - whether or not we should end fossil fuel subsidies, for example? That’s direct democracy, but it gets rid of electoral politics. For full context, I don’t support that kind of direct democracy, but there are countless alternatives to representative democracy, I just wanted to share one which was simple and easy to explain.

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  • Syldon@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I’m guessing that you’re quite young

    This made me smile. It infers naivety is present when clearly it is not.

    Now that you have gave it a name I know exactly what you mean. Switzerland are the most prominent that I knew who use direct democracy. Full list here.

    I think we need to agree to disagree on that one. I am not in favour of direct democracy because it relies on the people being educated on all issues. Brexit showing just how bad an issue can go.

    I don’t know enough about the different STV systems to favour one over the other. Wales has adopted STV. Mark Drakeford speaks highly of it, but I do not understand if it is fully protected against manipulation as FPTP is. I favour a PR voting system, while keeping an open mind on STV. I dread that Labour may look at STV over PR. Simply because you will not know just how corruptible it is until someone does it.

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    • Blake@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I literally just said I’m not talking about direct democracy. It was just an example of an alternative, and one that I specifically said I didn’t support.

      All cards on the table, since you’re trying to understand my position, I’m a libertarian socialist. I support the abolition of money, the police, prisons, social classes, states and all unjustified hierarchies. I believe that power ultimately corrupts anyone who wields it and the only solution is to abolish all forms of power as far as is possible.

      I think a good way to structure society would be groups of approximately 50-150 people (but absolutely no more than 200) represented by someone in their community in a council of delegates where decisions are made. The representative would not make decisions on behalf of their community but rather would act as a liaison between the community and the larger council. Proposals made at meetings of the council would be brought back to the communities to be discussed and for consensus to be built and a decision to be reached (or for a request for more information / clarification) and then that feedback would be brought to the council, where the delegates would share the feedback/decisions made by their community and they would make amends to the proposal to make it work. The barrier for approval for a proposal to be accepted would be high - something like 90% but certainly no lower than 75% - meaning that true consensus has to be reached, rather than a tyranny of the majority.

      This is the model used by some cool groups such as workers/housing co-operatives, and I think it would work well for larger societies. Maybe it’s been used by large societies, I honestly don’t know.

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