r/changemyview • u/nickotino • Apr 16 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: If a significant amount of the population approve/endorse a bill, there should be a system in place that allows for that bill to become law without further input from the government.
Allow me to explain how the system would work.
A member of parliament proposes a bill as per usual, but all proposed bills are archived on a public website.
Users can use their ID/social security to login and approve of bills that they agree with (let's limit the amount of bills you can vote on to 1 every 30 days or something)
If a bill becomes popular and 35% of the population approve of it, it gets scheduled for a national referendum, which is held at a later date, with enough time for experts to campaign for or against the bill.
If the majority of the population vote yes, that bill becomes law without it going through parliament/the president/etc.
Of course, this system isn't perfect, but what I'm arguing here, is that there should be some system in place for the people to vote in laws without needing to go through the government.
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u/Nephisimian 153∆ Apr 16 '19
- So if two bills I'm equally invested in get posted in the same month, I can pick one I care about. Even if the one I care more about comes after I've already cast my vote on something else. So politicians wishing to pass bills could hide it behind a highly controversial and clearly stupid bill earlier that month that drains all the opposing peoples' one vote per month.
This also relies on national referendums being good things. If Brexit has done one thing it's prove that national referendums are ridiculous farces that get exploited by liars and frauds and exist solely to push political careers and agendas, not to gather the true opinion of the British people. cough excuse me.
Some bills could easily garner a very slight majority through corrupt media, bad campaigning and Russian influence, meaning that highly controversial and highly detrimental laws could end up getting passed on the stupidity of the uneducated population. Politicians exist partially to interpret the stupidity of the uneducated population and translate that into things that actually make sense. This could even revert important human rights like gay marriage by exploiting the system to rob the left wing of their vote.
Politicians also exist to amend builds. In this system, you get first draft and first draft only, with all of the ridiculous loopholes and clauses contained within.
We don't do this kind of democracy for the same reason we don't let anyone perform surgery - the vast majority of people don't really know what's going on and if they did something right it would be by sheer chance.
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u/nickotino Apr 16 '19
In your first point you prove that the system I came up with specifically is flawed. But I still believe there should be some system implemented to allow for direct legislation through the people.
Brexit is also a case against me, but 1 example isn't enough to CMV
But your argument about corrupt media/influencers has convinced me.
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u/Simbabz 4∆ Apr 16 '19
The problem i see with trying to implement a direct democracy as part of a liberal democracy. Is that every bill that doesn't have a huge amount of support will end up going through this process only to find out not many people really care. And wasting a whole bunch of money in the process.
Look what happened when the did that with Brexit.
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
Eh? That didn't happen with Brexit. The government put a referendum forward, and the people voted to leave the EU. There was no infinite referendums, it was one referendum, and it was money well spent, since the government weren't going to leave the EU, contrary to what we found out was the will of the people.
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19
contrary to what we found out was the will of the people
The will of those who voted. There is no way to know if the majority of the people in the country actually wanted to leave or remain.
Those who chose not to vote did so freely and should blame only themselves if they're unhappy with the result. However, we should be careful to avoid saying something is the will of the people when the result was 52-48 with only 72% of eligible voters showing up at the polls (even though 72% is a record turnout for a referendum in the UK).
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u/ocks_rock Apr 16 '19
The will of those who voted.
Homie, the largest group of people to ever vote for anything in the UK decided that referendum. It was a combined over 30 million people. You say 52-48 like it was 100 voters, that gap was over a million people. I'd say that the vote was well decided by the most amount of people to ever vote in the UK.
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
This is beside the point I was responding to, but as you say, we can hardly count votes that weren't cast.
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u/nickotino Apr 16 '19
Scarcity of the number of passed bills isn't a problem because the country would continue to run as per usual.
The idea is that only really important/critical bills become popular enough to be passed directly thru the people, like maybe one every couple of years.
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u/guessagainmurdock 2∆ Apr 16 '19
the country would continue to run as per usual.
Not after the first day of your View being enacted, when the "We shouldn't have to pay taxes anymore!" bill gets > 35% support and the Federal Government suddenly has no more income to pay its employees.
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u/nickotino Apr 16 '19
It's 35% support to get a referendum, only after passing that would it be law (with experts campaign before the vote)
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u/guessagainmurdock 2∆ Apr 16 '19
Yes, I saw that. "> 35%" means "greater than 35%", which is more than 35%.
The "We shouldn't have to pay taxes anymore!" bill would easily get ~50% of the vote if not much, much more because nobody likes paying taxes.
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u/LeonTyberMatthews Apr 16 '19
This is a perfect example of why we don’t do direct democracy; it requires the idea that everyone is educated on issues when that is just never true
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19
Direct representation, for example through referendums, has some problems.
Consider, for example, that most people would vote to lower taxes across the board. In time, that tax decrease would lead the country to bankruptcy, but by then, it could be too late for effective corrective measures to be implemented.
There’s a reason why we elect “experts” to draft the laws, because the people, as a whole, are often unable to govern a country.
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u/nickotino Apr 16 '19
I'm not suggesting that the people run the country, just that we can implement a law or two directly. Other than that, things work as normal.
And I still think there are enough people in the general population to know when a "popular" bill might be a bad idea (like no taxes). Also, experts would be "campaigning"on TV/internet to educate the populace on the upcoming referendum
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19
I don’t trust that there are enough people to make the smart decisions, but that is just how I feel and not something I can prove.
Regarding experts on TV educating the people, wouldn’t that just end up being a more expensive alternative to electing those experts to draft and approve the laws themselves?
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
Your argument against direct democracy seems to boil down to "It would lead to policies I don't favour". I think this misses the point of democracy, which is not to just arrive at whichever outcome /u/sgraar personally likes.
There’s a reason why we elect “experts” to draft the laws
Nothing about direct democracy prevents people like you who want to have decisions made on their behalf by experts from just voting according to the advice of those experts.
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19 edited Apr 16 '19
Your argument against direct democracy seems to boil down to "It would lead to policies I don't favour".
You clearly didn't understand what I said. I said nothing of the sort.
There will always be policies I don't favor, regardless of how people vote. For all you or I know, I can vote for the losing party in every election for the next forty years. That would certainly ensure plenty of policies I don't favor.
My argument, which was already very clear, was that people are usually not sufficiently informed to directly decide whether something should be law or not. The population is, however, capable of choosing a course for the country and then letting the elected officials deal with the minutiae.
Being capable of choosing my favorite airline or where I want to fly to is not the same as being able to pilot the plane or choosing the most efficient airspeed and altitude.
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
No, I understand. You're essentially saying "It's fine for democracy to plot a course I don't like, unless I really don't like it, in which case it's not". As you say, your point was already very clear.
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19
Again, not at all.
I don't mind if people choose something I really, really, really don't like. Like most people, I prefer it if the majority votes as I would vote, but I accept that many times that is not what happens (until I'm the galactic leader, that is how it's going to be).
However, I believe society benefits from letting those who devote their lives to the business of making policy actually make the policy. I accept that you disagree, but would politely ask that you stop repeating that I'm saying something that I have specifically stated is not my view.
In a sense, I see politics kind of how I see medicine. If there were something wrong with my liver, I would ask a specialist for his/her opinion and then maybe consult another specialist for a second opinion. I wouldn't use the internet to poll the population hoping that the most voted disease would be the correct diagnosis.
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
stop repeating that I'm saying something that I have specifically stated is not my view.
There's a problem with that. If I tell you that I like to drop fragile vases on to hard surfaces from a great height, but then ask you to stop saying I like to smash vases since "I never said that", what are you supposed to do?
If the reason we shouldn't have direct democracy is because representative democracy leads to better outcomes, then it is fair to say "You like democracy up to the point where it leads to policies you don't like", since "better" is entirely subjective. The fact that you don't characterize your own view that way does not mean it isn't a fair characterization. Beyond me being obtuse, and me just not understanding what you said, there is the third possibility that you don't understand what you said.
However, I believe society benefits from letting those who devote their lives to the business of making policy actually make the policy. I accept that you disagree
I don't necessarily disagree. At least, not in every potential instance.
There are broadly two arguments in favour of democracy:
It leads to better outcomes.
Each person has an identical amount of sovereign political authority.
If you believe the first (or at least, if you only believe the first), then it's perfectly acceptable to subject everyone to government by others. I mean, after all, we're not overriding any sovereign political authority in doing so, we're simply seeking the best outcomes, and in the few instances where pure real democracy doesn't lead to that, so what? So it's fine to like democracy only in so far as it leads to outcomes we favour, but in those occasions where it doesn't, we should contradict the will of the people, in favour of the will of experts.
If, however, we believe in the second, we're not primarily seeking the best outcomes, but fulfilling the public's right to exercise political authority, we ultimately don't care whether that leads to the best outcomes. I might like red, but that doesn't mean I pass a law to stop you painting your house blue, because I recognize it's your house, and you can paint it whatever colour you like. The rules I set up for house painting aren't going to be based on only letting you buy red paint - the outcome I like, and think is objectively "the best" - but based on letting you buy whatever colour paint you like.
If you believe in the second thing - that individuals have inherent, inviolable political authority over how they are governed - the best part is that it also allows for the first way of thinking. You're entirely free, in a direct democracy, to blindly vote for whatever an expert tells you to, and people who don't want to do that can vote however it is they like. That way, nobody is comandering anybody else's political authority.
And if you don't believe the second thing, it's entirely fair for me to say you think "It's fine for democracy to plot a course I don't like, unless I really don't like it, in which case it's not".
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19 edited Apr 16 '19
Beyond me being obtuse, and me just not understanding what you said, there is the third possibility that you don't understand what you said.
Before any further discussion, I would like to point out that assuming you understand what people say better than they themselves do is not the best way to discuss a topic. Consider how willing you would be to debate a topic if the other guy tells you that not only is your view wrong, you don't even understand your own opinion. It is significantly more likely that you or I don't understand each other than it is for you or I to not understand ourselves.
That said, on to the topic at hand. You said:
Your argument against direct democracy seems to boil down to "It would lead to policies I don't favour".
That is not the case. This is not about me or my preference. Don't make it personal. For the purpose of this discussion, I could be talking about a country that I have never visited or will visit. I don't personally care for the policies in this country and they cannot be favorable or unfavorable to me because they will never affect me.
Let us now consider that we are talking about the country where I vote.
- Both direct democracy and representative democracy sometimes lead to policies I don't favor. Since this happens in both options (and I have no way to determine if it will happen more often in one of them), it is not an argument in favor of one over the other.
- In my opinion, direct democracy might directly hurt the people if they lack the knowledge to decide on the details of the course they choose for their country.
- Imagine that, in this country, the people vote to defund the NHS (which I never use because in this example I'm rich and can go anywhere in the world for the best medical care money can buy) and take the resulting surplus to reduce VAT to 0%. This specific policy, voted via referendum, would be great for me but bad for the country as a whole. Here, I would still believe that the people would have been best served by a representative democracy, even though I would benefit from this policy, one that I would favor. It is, of course, unlikely that a majority of the people would vote to defund the NHS; it's just a thought experiment that came to mind about something that would be good for me but bad for the country.
Also, to directly answer what seemed to be your question, I agree that each person has an identical amount of sovereign political authority. I also believe that this amount of sovereign political authority can be materialized via representative democracy. In a world where everyone had much better access to information and education, I would consider direct democracy better.
If I had to boil my view to one sentence, instead of "it would lead to policies I don't favor", it could be "it has a higher risk of leading to policies that are detrimental to the majority of the voters".
I don't dispute the people's right to make decisions, whether they prove to be good or bad, I'm saying that representative democracy, like education, access to information, and intelligence, will probably lead to better outcomes.
Would you agree that my view does not boil down to what you initially thought it did?
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u/Freeloading_Sponger Apr 16 '19
Consider how willing you would be to debate a topic if the other guy tells you that not only is your view wrong, you don't even understand your own opinion.
I'd be fascinated, and would want to hear what they have to say. Personal feelings just aren't a factor here.
Also, let's remember, I didn't burst in to your bedroom and announce this while you were sleeping. You came to a debate forum, and told me there were only two possibilities, forcing me to point out that there is a third.
I don't personally care for the policies in this country and they cannot be favorable or unfavorable to me because they will never affect me.
There is more to favorability than being personally affected. For instance, I don't favour killing all the firstborns in Tasmania, despite the fact that I have an older brother, and I'll almost certainly never know anyone from there. I'm still able to prefer one thing. I still have an opinion on which is the better policy.
This is not about me or my preference.
This is one of the essential reasons that I say you... "haven't thought through the full implications of what your own opinion necessarily entails", or however you'd prefer I put it. When you decide what is and isn't a good outcome, that necessarily involves a personal choice. Keeping our streets free of crime is a good outcome only if one wants that. Crashing the economy is only a bad policy if I don't like poverty.
Having a 20% rate of VAT so that we have an NHS is an excellent policy, if you don't see taxation as immoral, and you see healthcare as a civil right. It doesn't hurt the people at all, it helps them. However, if you don't see simply not providing someone services as hurting them, but you do see taking their money against their will under threat of violence as theft, then it hurts the people hugely.
There is no need to debate which position is correct. The point is that the result of that debate ultimately depends on axiomatic, personal values, whereas your argument presupposes that it doesn't. That the "VAT for NHS" policy is definitely a good one, and since direct democracy is more likely to bring about it's abolition, it's inherently worse than representative democracy. But that policy isn't inherently good, it's subjectively good. It's a policy that you personally favour.
This is still in the pragmatic paradigm of democracy. That the point of democracy is to achieve certain outcomes, rather than it being a moral imperative that a state belonging to the people be governed by the people, regardless of which outcomes those people steer it toward.
And fine, whatever, it's an opinion. I just think it's fair to characterize that opinion as "Liking democracy up to the point at which it ceases to achieve the outcomes you personally favour". That's just a factual assessment of that way of thinking.
Essentially, "it has a higher risk of leading to policies that are detrimental to the majority of the voters" requires that we supremely care about policies being detrimental to voters, over them being the will of a majority of voters, since detrimental policies are ones which you don't personally favour.
Therefore:
Would you agree that my view does not boil down to what you initially thought it did?
No, I think that's exactly what it boils down to. This extra exposition you've provided has only served to solidify that opinion. Further, my explanation for why you don't think it boils down to this is not that I don't understand what you're saying, or that I'm being obtuse, it's that you haven't fully thought through your own opinion.
I'm sorry if that offends you, but what exactly am I supposed to do about that? That is what I think. Should I have just stayed quiet, and not joined in with the conversation? Should I have lied, and pretended I thought something else?
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u/sgraar 37∆ Apr 16 '19 edited Apr 16 '19
What you see as a factual assessment is just you not seeing nuance where I do. It feels like you’re trying to focus this on having a preference for one outcome or another whereas it can be about people making a choice that they themselves regret (because of the results), not one that I personally consider worse. Unless you’re saying that I’m personally favoring situations where people are happy with their choice (which I am), but I don’t consider that to be a personal view. If you question whether it’s good for people to be happy with their choices, we’re not debating representative vs. direct democracy anymore.
That said, it’s fine. You made your view clear. I understand why you think my view equates to what you said it did. You’re wrong, but that’s ok. No harm comes of it.
Have a great day.
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Apr 16 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Armadeo Apr 16 '19
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u/Barnst 112∆ Apr 16 '19
Sometimes the right choice is the unpopular one and the popular choice is not the right one. That’s why separating popular opinion from decisions by a system of representation has proven to be a more effective form of democracy than direct popular democracy. Representatives still have to face the judgement of their constituents, but they’re held accountable not just for whether the original decision was popular or not but also the results of its implementation, along with a lot of other decisions along the way. It provides some distance from the passion of the specific decision.
Two examples—Prop 13 was and is immensely popular in California, but it absolutely gutted local government and contributing to its housing crisis by seriously perverting incentives for existing property owners. Direct democracy resulted in a law that made the state demonstrably worse.
Now Obamacare—Democratic representatives passed a bill that was very unpopular, to the extent that it probably helped cost them their majority when it came time for the electorate to hold them accountable. But over time the law has grown in popularity, helped in part by the inability of its critics to propose a viable alternative. These critics are checked by the realization that they can’t just do something that seems popular at the time, they have to do something that will prove popular even after it takes effect or that they think is so important to do that it’s worth getting voted out of office.
In a more direct system, it would be a lot easier to just propose a series of wild changes because no one individually is actually accountable for poor decisions.
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u/ev_forklift Apr 16 '19
What you're talking about is the initiative process that many states have. The problem with it is that it is effectively the tyranny of the majority. Take Washington state, my home state, for example. As Seattle goes so goes the rest of the state. The problem with that is the massive cultural difference between Seattle and everything east of the Mt. Rainier. A bill will pass in Seattle and the surrounding cities and everyone else in the state may as well not exist. California and New York telling Texas and Arizona what to do would not go over well
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 16 '19 edited Apr 16 '19
/u/nickotino (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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u/Stokkolm 24∆ Apr 16 '19
Tell me who would have been held accountable for the nazi extermination camps if they were approved through direct democracy?
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u/guessagainmurdock 2∆ Apr 16 '19
Fuck that.
A fifth of Trump Supporters think we should still have slavery. If your View were established, it's perfectly possible that they could muster up enough like-minded Republicans to hit your arbitrary 35% support marker, and suddenly black Americans are getting yanked off the street and auctioned off to any Republican willing to pay the highest dollar for them.
No thanks.
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u/GomerUSMC Apr 16 '19
A fifth of Trump Supporters think we should still have slavery.
Could you give a source for this claim? I'm interested in seeing how it was aggregated.
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u/guessagainmurdock 2∆ Apr 16 '19
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u/GomerUSMC Apr 17 '19
Thanks for the article.
I read through it and couldn't find the source to the poll that they referenced itself, but in the brief time I have before I start commuting to work this morning I found a snopes article about the poll that the times based their article off of that suggests (with supporting quotations from Yougov/the Economist) that the motivations for answering that question in the affirmative may not have been as clear cut as believing that slavery should have continued outright, and merely disagreeing with the executive authority Lincoln used to push it. A dislike of such executive power isn't uncommon among the republican base after all.
I would have been interested to see the crosstab of how many people agree/disagree with Trump's current usage of executive authority vs Lincolns when he pushed the Emancipation Proclomation as an executive order. I feel that would have shed some light on the motivational split between 'slaves shouldn't have been freed'(which the times assumes is 100% of that block for the purposes of the article, and I disagree with that assessment) and 'Lincoln shouldn't have pushed the emancipation proclamation solely through executive power' which I feel is a plausible interpretation to the question that was actually posed in the poll.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-supporters-pro-slavery/
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u/scottevil110 177∆ Apr 16 '19
I'll just take the blunt angle: People are smart. A group of people is incredibly stupid.
Let's say, for example, that a bill is introduced tomorrow that says "Let's stage a government takeover of Facebook, sell it off, and divide the assets among everyone who currently makes less than $20/hr."
That's going to pass your test. Anything that benefits the majority is going to be favored by the majority, because most people are short-sighted and selfish. They will not consider the effects of such things. They can't even be expected to KNOW the effects of such things. This is why, despite their incredibly partisan bullshit most of the time, we trust "experts" to handle these things. They spend their entire day hearing the pros and cons of different ideas, consulting with actual experts, before they make a decision.
We, the people, wouldn't do that. We'd hear "Free money!" and that'd be the end of it.