defaultusername@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 hours ago
Representative democracy was specifically designed to have oligarchs be in charge of society and it should be abolished in favor of smaller, direct democracies.
Nah, the general public doesn’t have the time or patience to properly research this stuff or consult the experts. They’ll just vote on vibes and we’ll just be trading one kind of bad for another.
Keep representatives, just don’t elect them. Sortition is the best of both worlds; you still get a sample of the population, but with people who take the responsibility seriously and actually have the time to do the research/due diligence.
I watched a video on sortition a while ago. It’s definitely better than the existing system, but it is still ultimately possible to outright rig the process via bribery, rigging the election process directly, etc. and for power-seekers/oligarchs to gain power. It’s just much more difficult to do so.
You are actually correct on that point. I’m not in favour of start disbanding societies left and righ but I am fully in favour of dismantling the “democratic system” as it exists today and reshape it to make democracies… Democratic.
Nope
Do you know how to run a military? Do you know what environmental regulations should be needed for chemical plants?
I can go on for a while but you get the point
You’re in charge of healthcare? Then at the very least you must be a doctor
You’re the minister of justice? At least be a lawyer, or better yet, a judge.
Do you know how to run a military?
Does the president know how to run a military? A president (in the US) can legally go to war with any country they’d like for up to 60 days without any congressional approval. Every war the US has entered post-WWII has been disasterous, both for the countries we went to war with, and for the US domestically.
environmental regulations
I’m not saying we should abolish regulatory agencies. We should still have them, and instead of having their leadership be appointed, have them be elected.
in charge of healthcare
What does that even mean? Healthcare should be considered a human right. Public institutions, such as universities or publically funded pharma research institutes would still develop new medicines, and doctors will be able to perscribe whatever the patient needs without mafia insurance corporations getting in the way and without private pharma corporations pushing drugs to be perscribed.
I don’t disagree with the point about a person in control of, say environmental regulation should be qualified in the subject matter. I wouldn’t mind making it a requirement to at the very least have a degree from a university in that subject matter in order to run for the position, so long as higher education is provided to everyone free of charge for anyone who chooses to go down that route and so long as the people who design the cirriculum do not have ulterior motives.
Also, you mentioned requiring ministers actually implement what they promise. How would that be enforced? Would it not be more feasible to just have the ability to vote them out and replace them with someone who would actually do the job they promise, if, that is, the position even needs to exist to begin with and cannot be replaced with a direct, democratic vote.
US is a very flawed democracy, it’s a bad example. Unlike most European countries you can’t just vote both out so if both parties agree on something the public opinion doesn’t matter.
There are oligarchic elements in all democracies but the purpose of a rep democracy is that you can elect the most qualified person to do the job of sorting all the governing out full time.
To further illustrate the point, most votes for the presidency of the US just flat out don’t matter. You can’t even vote for your preferred candidate since there’s no runoff/ranked choice election in either primaries or presidential election and each state is a winner takes all so republicans in New York don’t get a say nor do Dems in Alabama.
All representative democracies are flawed by nature since they all allow for an elite class to exist and likewise allow for corruption to exist. I just use the US as an example since I am the most familiar with US politics, but the US spread its ideas about representative democracy to the entire western world.
The most “qualified” person is not always the right person for the job. Some people take qualified to mean experienced, for instance, which is what many neoliberals in the US touted in their campaigns, but they were experienced in maintaining a corrupt system and serving their donors. The Republicans are experienced in also serving their donors while pushing the needle further right.
Say there was ranked choice or some other system that allowed for more than two parties. As we see in EU countries for example, the elite are still allowed to rule there, and corruption still exists. Denmark isn’t pushing for Chat Control for fun.
floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 hours ago
And it is especially true in the digital age. States made some sense centuries ago when direct democracy was limited by the speed of communication, but why should we be following those same models of government that were made when you could only communicate as far as you could shout or a horse could take you now that I am talking to you, random human somewhere?