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0 pointsloup-vaillant12y ago0 comments

> Don't support elections in the first place? So continue business as usual?

Not quite.

Basically, I do not condone elections for anything bigger than a small city, and neither should you. They don't work. They don't empower the people. They're an illusion.

That was the problem. Now my solutions:

(1) Don't vote for elections that don't make any difference. This means most elections bigger than small cities. Or do vote, but put a blank entry.

(2) Spread the word.

(3) Think of alternatives, such as random trials. Some of those have already been tried. Look for instance at ancient Athens.

If we can get the majority of citizens to acknowledge the problem and know about the possible solutions, there will be a revolution. Hopefully this one won't be too violent.

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dragonwriter12y ago

> Basically, I do not condone elections for anything bigger than a small city, and neither should you. They don't work. They don't empower the people.

Since there are empirically measurable difference in how well different electoral systems work in empowering the people in nation-scale polities (see, e.g., Lijphart's Patterns of Democracy), I don't think it is at all the case that they don't work or are an illusion in general.

Its true that the electoral systems in certain large polities (the US among them, but not the only of them) work exceptionally poorly, which might lead to the faulty generalization that elections in large polities are fundamentally broken for those for whom the ones with exceptionally bad systems are the only referents, but that's a flawed generalization from limited information.

loup-vaillantOP12y ago

Okay, then, how effective is the high end? I expect not very.

And more importantly, are elections the best we can do? Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

No way. There's got to be a better system.

dragonwriter12y ago

> And more importantly, are elections the best we can do?

I would say elections are almost certainly an essential element of the best we can do; elections alone aren't a complete system of government.

> Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

Elections don't imply that. It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

loup-vaillantOP12y ago

> It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

A bit of both. Elected officials have way too much power, and not enough ways to control them. Look for instance what it takes to revoke someone. But the way election themselves work suck too: by nature, elections will mostly select a narrow elite, which right now is mostly hereditary. And when we vote, we can hardly judge the wannabe official on his discourse: many are lying to gain the favour of the people.

If you get only one thing, get this: policy making shouldn't be in the hands of a few policy makers. The people should vote their own laws directly. The people should even write their laws directly, though I don't know how to do that technically (with computers networked together, we should find a way).

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dragonwriter12y ago

> Basically, I do not condone elections for anything bigger than a small city, and neither should you. They don't work. They don't empower the people.

loup-vaillantOP12y ago

Okay, then, how effective is the high end? I expect not very.

And more importantly, are elections the best we can do? Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

No way. There's got to be a better system.

dragonwriter12y ago

> And more importantly, are elections the best we can do?

I would say elections are almost certainly an essential element of the best we can do; elections alone aren't a complete system of government.

> Handing over nearly unlimited power to a group of people we hope will not use it unwisely in the next few years?

Elections don't imply that. It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

loup-vaillantOP12y ago

> It sounds to me like your problem isn't actually with elections at all, but with the details of the powers given to officials who are elected.

1 more reply

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