Comment on Half-a-million members sign up to new left-wing party founded in Britain
Blackmist@feddit.uk 4 days agoDemocracy is fine. We don’t have it.
Representative Democracy (where you just pick somebody who belongs to a party you more or less align with, although invariably not on everything) is bad. It’s barely democracy at all.
Direct democracy is better. That way we could be pro-Ukraine, pro-Palestine, pro-NHS, pro-privacy and pro-nuclear. We wouldn’t have to pick which one to sacrifice.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I like it in theory but there have been no real world examples of it actually working. There are only supplementary implementations which exist next to representative democracy. One of the most cited reasons that it could not work is the mental and decision load expected of an average elected representative. They make many decisions each day, big and small. When agreeing on a Bill, they might read tens of thousands of words, negotiate with hundreds of other representatives, and make dozens of various deals to achieve their preferred outcome. In a direct democracy system, either those bills would be split into 10,000 constituent parts, and each would be voted on by the public; or there would be 10,000 ombibus bills proposed by citizens, each with subtle variations, and the public would be expected to vote on them. Or both of those scenarios, at the same time.
The outcome seems painfully clear to me: in both of those scenarios, 98% of the public would check out. That’s far too many words to read, far too many meetings to hold, far too much information to process and on which to provide reasonable judgement. The legislature would be controlled by a hyper connected and independently wealthy 2% who would lobby for their preferred bill using their fortunes and connections.