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| Elections are coming up in Greece. I wish we could get closer to liquid | |
| democracy. | |
| Democracy in Greece started as direct democracy – where anyone* could vote | |
| directly for any issue put forth. Anyone was also allowed to raise a point | |
| publicly. | |
| With the invention of modern countries in which politics are more large-scale, | |
| direct democracy became infeasible as the population was too large to be able to | |
| practically vote for every issue, so the world invented representative democracy | |
| in which people vote for representatives and these are the ones who take | |
| decisions. | |
| With the invention of the Internet, it is now possible to bring back direct | |
| democracy without sacrificing practicality. However, laws and governance have | |
| become increasingly complicated, and not everyone is able to decide on every | |
| issue. Also, not everyone cares about every issue. | |
| In a new† form of democracy called "liquid democracy", software and the Internet | |
| enable people to choose whether they want direct democracy, representative | |
| democracy, or anything in between for themselves. People can directly vote on | |
| any issue they are interested in, similar to direct democracy. People can elect | |
| a representative, similar to representative democracy. Each person can withdraw | |
| or change their vote for a representative at any time – no elections are needed, | |
| just make your choice on your computer. | |
| And people can vote individually on the particular issues they choose, by topic | |
| (tags), and leave other decisions to delegates. You can also have different | |
| delegates by topic. Delegation can be done at multiple levels and is transitive. | |
| For example, if I generally agree with the communist party, I can delegate my | |
| vote for them, and they can decide on every issue, including economic issues. | |
| However, if I disagree with them on human rights, I can choose to delegate my | |
| vote related to human rights to the liberal party, because, for example, I know | |
| they will lobby for gay marriage and adoption, while the communist party doesn't | |
| want that (but in this case the communist party can still vote in my stead for | |
| economic issues). Lobbyists don't have to become parties and they don't have to | |
| pay parties, they can just become delegates and take over specific issues. If | |
| I'm a cyclist, I can delegate my vote on traffic-related issues to the cyclists | |
| group. | |
| Anyone can become a delegate. And anyone can propose a law and others can vote | |
| for it. | |
| Here's a website that explains some of these ideas: | |
| http://liquidfeedback.org/ | |
| Do you think this form of democracy is feasible at a country level? What are | |
| your concerns? | |
| #decentralize #votepirates | |
| * Anyone except women, children, slaves, freed slaves, those who didn't complete | |
| their military training, and foreign residents, but that's "just" 80% of the | |
| population excluded from voting. Today this is mostly fixed. See | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy#Citizenship_in_Athens | |
| † "New" is an overstatement. "Delegative" democracy has existed for some 100 | |
| years in various forms. However, it is only now that it becomes possible to do | |
| true liquid democracy utilizing software and the Internet, without requiring | |
| elections or physical presence. See | |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy#Notable_examples_of_delegative_democracy |
"Liquid" representation welcomes different opinions much more than a typical partisan democracy. This is desirable, of course, especially in large, non-uniform societies. However, it also makes consensus more difficult, by injecting a lot of chaos in the decicion process. You get a more sincere, but possibly incoherent government. Exposing all voting procedures to the influence of an extremely varied population may yield results that are not easy to interpret; Anscombe's Paradox becomes more imminent.
In political terms, liquid democracy echoes the libertarians' views about total freedom of each person's thought, decision and action. As such, it avoids exerting any force at all towards nurturing common spirit/ideas among citizens. This makes governance be more the result of statistic than of conviction. For me, this is the achilles' heel of an otherwise brilliant idea. If we limited the application of LF in cases of outstanding importance (e.g. Constitutional Reform), where conviction is given, then we shall be fine.
Apart from that, there are a dozen corner cases I personally think should be addressed, but I guess I should read the site in greater depth before I voice them. But in no way do I think that the motivation for establishing a representative democracy is solely "techinal" or that the Internet will do away with it. Think: If LF is such a good process for enacting legislation, does that mean it is as good an idea for administering justice? Would an LF court system be more or less democratic?
Interesting discussion, anyway. :)
Internet voting can be manipulated. These speech discuss about some problems http://goo.gl/VMLaHr but it is not the whole thing, there are more problems as well.