National Discussion Forum – "discuss then vote" direct democracy using electronic signature

[Duda Jarek]

The World’s situation is far from being perfect and it doesn’t seem to have perspective to repair itself(?). So there are growing in strength on one side e.g.

- idealistic utopian visions, like Zeitgeist movement/Venus project expecting that the system will itself transform into resource-based, or

- rage movements on the other side, like occupy movements or Anonymous which doesn’t seem to have realistic alternatives to what they are against.

Let us think here about reasonable constructive possibilities which are both achievable in this moment and giving hope for the real improvement for our future.

 

The general feeling is that the main problem is that the power corrupts – not only the rich/politicians/lobbyists should decide about the future of our world, but the power should be somehow shifted toward the ones it directly applies to. On national level it is generally called direct democracy and is already included in constitution of many countries. However, in only a few of them it has some real influence, like in Switzerland or e.g. recent writing constitution of Iceland by its citizens .

Fortunately we have Internet now, which could make direct democracy quite realistic.

There remain conjugated questions: how should it look like and how to make it accepted on national/world level?

Many countries accept electronic signatures as the real ones, making such signature perfect tool of direct democracy - to sign below initiatives and then use constitutional direct democracy. The problem is to organize these hundreds of thousands of willing people – create the place to gather them and find initiatives people would indeed agree to. The best would be if they could identify with it … believe in it – if they could take a part in its carving …

Very promising example is recent initiative of creating Free Internet Act as counterattack on SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, which could wake people up from political apathy and make them believe that their action may indeed improve situation ... which literally translates into real organizing.

But there is extremely important danger of direct democracy - it looks similar to ochlocracy ... it cannot be just mob shouting to e.g. lower taxes, but there is essential discussion phase before: on which there are considered realistic alternatives, basing on reasonable arguments. It should formulate a few possible compromises and then the people could choose one in pure democratic act.

 

The main question is who should be involved in these discussions.

I believe the priority is to shift this "discussion phase" of e.g. legislation toward the people.

For this purpose, there would be extremely useful some specialized place designed for this purpose: National Discussion Forums – an open source project of forums for serious discussions of potentially millions of citizens, which could be then applied as the single additional discussion place on given level: state/country/union/world. For example to collectively work on legislations, then collect signatures there after finding the compromise.

It should be discussion place without anonymity - in which all statements would be electronically signed and the whole history would be stored forever – everybody could express his opinion, but one should think a few times if he can indeed identify with what he is saying and want this information to be accessible. Alternatively he could ask someone braver to represent his point, for example by linking to the statement in an anonymous forum and commenting it.

It would be a place where the politicians/government would be expected to express their transparency and discuss with citizens. In such a place new politicians would be born, by consequently building trust and support thanks of social work they have made and presented in this place. With time it could be officially accepted by government and among others became a place for referendums or even take some part of government’s role.

It is extremely difficult to imagine discussions of millions of people on important for them matters, so it would require really well thought-out system of sorting/searching/(signed!)marks … also with required marks of marks and so on.

It should be completely transparent, open source but still extremely safe. It shouldn't have some native moderators (to take care of e.g. legislation wiki-like pages), but some could acquire such status thanks of high marks from other citizens - but still all their actions would be traceable by everyone.

 

Can a place for serious discussions of millions of interested people be realistic?

How to design such a place to improve the level of discussion by the construction itself?

If the system is not going to repair itself, is direct democracy a good direction for repairing it?

If so, how should it look like and how to make the world to go in this direction?

[CaptainPanic]

I don't believe that the majority of the people can be trusted to be reasonable. People have internal conflicts: they want more for less.

 

The online forum you propose will not solve that problem. Anonymous or not, people want more service/goods for less money/tax. Besides, I don't believe that the majority of the people even see the big picture, so they cannot be asked to make decisions about the big picture.

 

Sorry, but I think that the average guy on the street is pretty dumb, and I don't trust them to make a good decision on anything.

[Duda Jarek]

'The people' are often short-sighted, egoistic etc. ... but the politicians are also not perfect, they make mistakes, there is corruption involved ... but most importantly they don't always understand well the perspective of people they decide about - the interface between the people and the government can be improve to give people more faith in the system and the government a better understanding.

Another important issue is transparency required for preventing pathologies and so giving trust.

 

Frequent referendums work well in Switzerland, but I completely agree that generally we should be very careful about it, it has a danger of turning into ochlocracy ... and for example can make life of minorities difficult.

And so I'm emphasizing not voting, but rational democratic discussions - transparent exchange and evaluation of arguments of potentially all citizens.

And democratic vote should be when discussion has lead to a few possible compromises.

Discuss then vote - wisdom then equalizing.

 

There are positive initiatives from the top, like televise proceedings of Supreme Court, but there are also needed for example ways for people to create legislation they believe is required and not trust politicians enough with it, like Free Internet Act to protect the net.

Let me briefly write how I imagine such place for really serious discussions – shifting people’s energy from fb and rage in current political apathy age, toward organizing in social work for our better future. To join forces with the government, instead of fighting with each other. Created by the people to use direct democracy, but later maybe accepted and used by the government.

 

A basic unit should be a ‘statement’, which

- always has a text and one main link it refers to,

- eventually ‘judge’ of what its main link points to and a few additional links.

The link can refer to the whole/part of the site on given topic or a statement. If the purpose of the statement was to make judgment, the text should be only the justification. These judging statements can also be judged, for example because of poor justification. The marks of statements affect the mark of its author and weight of its judging.

Finally, there is required some kind of page-rank algorithm to evaluate final marks of statements/persons and use them while sorting search results - in one of many ways, customized by the user.

Everybody would get e.g. 10 points/day, which can be spent on marks in different categories, for example a statement could be “+1 patriotism, -1 realism” and explanation.

Points in category given person has higher marks would have larger influence.

 

Example of list of categories of marks (to discuss):

- Morality / empathy (as external evaluation of situation)

- Altruism/hard work (as own sacrifice/work, minus for selfishness, lazy distributing points)

- Justice/objectiveness (e.g. unjustified marks)

- Realism (awareness of the broader situation)

- Patriotism (good for the nation)

- Originality / innovativeness (minus for obviousness, plus for interesting idea)

- ... ?

Some may have subcategories - like realism in politics, economics, physics ...

More controversial examples:

- Coherence / consistency / transparency - minus for lies, frequent change of opinion (have to be distinguished from the legitimate evolution), plus for mature defense of an idea, the internal consistency, honesty in a difficult situations,

- Openness / flexibility - minus for not adapting to changing realities, ignoring strong arguments, blind fanaticism ... plus for openness to different views, evolution of own thinking.

 

Besides statements, there would be:

- Profiles of persons/institutions/organizations/companies (with part edited by this subject and part everyone can discuss),

- voting sites - secret (e.g. for final vote) or open (e.g. while choosing between alternatives),

- sites for working on given petition, bill, referendum requests – with planed deadline to stop working and start gathering signatures,

- wiki-like pages on different subjects (e.g. euthanasia, nuclear power ...) and different specific topics for discussion, briefly introducing to the problem and results of discussions – with statistics and lots of links.

?

[JustinW]

I think Captain pretty much correct on this. It's like watching a football game. You can see which way the player should have gone, but the player himself doesn't have that overall perspective. Ultimately what is to keep this form of internetal government from just going with what is popular at the time? What is to keep our nation's policies from going from one extreme to another very quickly? Like Captain also said about the average guy on the street. . .Poloticians may have their faults but at least they're not me.

[Duda Jarek]

There is a lot of talking about E-democracy, but I agree the society is not mature enough (yet?) - I'm talking 'only' about improving discussion level between the people and the government.

The majority is not ready for too much power (what is conjugated with weakening identification with the system), but for being citizens and taxes they pay, they deserve for transparency and the feeling that they can show their perspective in discussions.

There is a continuous spectrum of possibilities between current system and ochlocracy.

 

There are required experts to make legislation, but what percent of country's experts on given topic really takes part in it?

The legislation's role is not just to be pushed, but to solve some problem - full-time legislators may have their own agenda, confirmation biases, they are often theoreticians very distant from lower living people they decide about ...

What I'm thinking about is a tool to allow all experts in the country (and e.g. people who knows the situation directly...) to participate in the discussions - show new arguments, missed perspectives, lacks of reasoning, weaknesses ...

To combine the potential of all citizens to make better legislations.

Sounds impossible? Many of what surrounds us today would sound impossible a few decades ago ...

[JustinW]

I think it is a good idea, but one ultimate hurdle to cross would be government allowing such transparency. It seems that at least throughout my lifetime, and even more so in the early 2000's, that there has been a feeling about government that the only information you get is what they think you should get. Seemingly not even on national security matters. The White House has gone as far as to hide some of their ideological intentions in the recent past, and probably before, now that I think about it. Maybe once a national discussion platform is installed the government might open their doors a little wider to let us take a peak.

[CaptainPanic]

It could work if all people would vote independently. Which they don't.

 

We are not independent. We can be heavily influenced by media (advertisements, the news, religion, ideological spam). And that just gives those media far too much power.

 

Imagine that you're Mark Zuckerberg or Rupert Murdoch. You can reach a majority of a population, because you own Facebook or News Corp. And in a 'real democracy' you decide to advertise for a certain law. And you have a witty (funny) advertisement. Regardless of whether the law is a good idea or not, you probably already get a huge amount of votes.

 

Why does a famous laundry detergent sell better than a cheaper unknown brand? Because the people carefully investigate which is best? Or because the famous brand has a better advertisement (which ultimately shows nothing of real interest)? Why do you think the presidential candidates even campaign? To convince people that they are right? No way! It's more like a commercial for detergents. Politics is a brand... and campaigning is like advertising. They have to become well-known. They give one-liners, not information. Why? Because it works. Because the general public does not care about the details... and they vote just like they buy soap: pretty colors on the packaging and a nice advertisement matter more than contents.

 

Such a public should never ever be allowed to run a country - not while they can be so easily influenced by outside sources. It would effectively mean that we would be run by religion and companies alone. A horror scenario.

 

And since we cannot shut up the media, I don't think we should implement such an E-democracy or direct voting for laws.

 

[edited: typos & adding 1 sentence]

Edited February 13, 2012 by CaptainPanic

[Duda Jarek]

Justin,

I think internet has already greatly improved transparency of the government - especially because they lost monopoly on spreading information on national scale and made it much easier for people to organize.

Such open discussion platform could be at first developed e.g. to massive joint work on international standards and if it would work, we could suggest politicians to use it to improve e.g. discussions/legislations on international scale ... and then natural next step would be allowing the citizens to look at it and then maybe give own perspectives as arguments in discussion...

 

Panic,

Fortunately internet has made that the age of people just blindly watching TV is slowly reaching its end - there appears huge amount of uncontrolled by government sources of information.

But for society to be mature enough for e.g. frequent referendums there is still much needed - it's why I think we should now rather think of better way of serious discussions on national/world level - where what counts is not how loud is blind mob, but wise arguments.

[Duda Jarek]

Here is great lecture of Tom Atlee with examples about direct democracy I'm talking about - mainly discussion of the people to find a consensus:

[CaptainPanic]

Fortunately internet has made that the age of people just blindly watching TV is slowly reaching its end - there appears huge amount of uncontrolled by government sources of information.

But for society to be mature enough for e.g. frequent referendums there is still much needed - it's why I think we should now rather think of better way of serious discussions on national/world level - where what counts is not how loud is blind mob, but wise arguments.

You are talking about Utopia. I am talking about Earth.

 

What will make people read wise arguments instead of other opinion websites and news sources which give it in small bites, and oneliners?

What will stop the misinformation and the lies that are spread by people with other interests?

A good advertisement works better than a lengthy argument... and that's the main problem with your plan.

 

There's a good example happening right now: I don't know if you are following the news, but the republican party in the USA is about to vote some Christian fundamentalist to be the presidential candidate. This is someone who basically says that science itself is a lie, and that science and reality have a left-wing bias. AND PEOPLE VOTE FOR HIM!

 

People read the news, listen to opinions, talk with friends, and then make a conscious decision to vote for Santorum. As long as people are that dumb, I don't think we should give them more power than they already have.

 

And I am afraid that other democracies have their idiots too, all of them democratically chosen... so Europeans shouldn't point at the US too much. I just mentioned Santorum because he's in the news a lot lately.

[Duda Jarek]

From experience of Poland, people often vote for a person because of despair - they feel hopeless, they think ever worse about alternatives and so they choose what looks as the least evil.

That's the major problem with representative democracy - you don't vote for ideas you believe in, but for a highly sponsored picture - who doesn't in fact have to share anything with your ideology ...

I'm talking about shifting these decisions from prone to corruption unpredictable persons, to concrete problems, ideas ... and not about just voting about them, but discussing mainly. The same Tom Atlee above.

For example first discuss given issue to find a consensus and eventually produce a few alternative compromises and then vote between them.

Edited February 23, 2012 by Duda Jarek

[CaptainPanic]

From experience of Poland, people often vote for a person because of despair - they feel hopeless, they think ever worse about alternatives and so they choose what looks as the least evil.

That's the major problem with representative democracy - you don't vote for ideas you believe in, but for a highly sponsored picture - who doesn't in fact have to share anything with your ideology ...

That would not be any different in a referendum or in a democracy where you vote for ideas and plans directly.

 

Example:

 

A certain percentage of people decide they want a road built. They gather signatures and put it up for public voting.

And instantly, they start a campaign for building the road, and soon after, others start a campaign against the road? And both campaigns will be sponsored (by road building companies or by environmentalists)?

[Duda Jarek]

About your example, do you suggest that it would be easier for lobbyists to enforce their position by e.g. covering everything with posters (and it would work) than current e.g. talking to a buddy politician or a few bribes?

And once again: not referendum, but mainly discussion - exchange and joint evaluation of arguments e.g. about this road.

[CaptainPanic]

About your example, do you suggest that it would be easier for lobbyists to enforce their position by e.g. covering everything with posters (and it would work) than current e.g. talking to a buddy politician or a few bribes?

YES.

Posters, TV-advertisements, advertisements on websites... whatever. Advertisement works. And that's why your plans cannot work. Because advertisement does.

[Duda Jarek]

Even if brain washing the whole society for referendum would be (not only possible, but even) cheaper than current bribing a few politicians (I really doubt), once again - I'm not talking about voting.

I'm talking about discussion mainly - if someone want to give an argument there and want it to be highly judged (justified and in concrete categories) by other participants to be taken into consideration, he should deeply understand the whole situation, arguments of both sides, read many sources - such actively discussing person becomes much more resistant to influence of lobbyists.

And of course such resistance is one of the main priorities while designing such discussion platform:

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/64446-how-to-design-a-place-for-massive-joint-work-like-creating-standards-legislations/