Principia Discordia > Aneristic Illusions

E-Democracy

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Cain:
If we had voted for Jeremy Corbyn we could have had a national fibre-optic broadband internet project to do something exactly like that.

But no, we had to vote for Boris Fucking Johnson instead...

Bovine19:
LOL

lexi:

--- Quote from: LMNO on November 16, 2020, 01:13:59 pm ---I didn't go through the whole thing again, but I'm kind of ashamed that even after 5 pages, no one brought up the simple fact that this relies on having an internet connection and the technology to use it, instantly disenfranchising the most vulnerable poor.

--- End quote ---
I recall RWHN arguing that very point for at least half a dozen pages, despite it presenting less of a financial or institutional barrier than completing basic tax filings required to claim benefits.

On the plus side, that thing about the app that would allow you to scan goods in the store and decide which of the six global corporations you wanted to boycott for a day, did come to pass - but unfortunately it failed to foil capitalism as predicted :/

Doktor Howl:
The very best thing about this thread, from start to finish, is the assumption on damn near everyone's part that a better-educated electorate would vote for 3rd party candidates.

 Like, say, Ross Perot or Jill Stein.   Or Gary Johnson.

:lulz:

Another assumption made was that "uncompromising" was a virtue, rather than a character defect.

"Government" is by definition an establishment that governs.

To govern:  conduct the policy, actions, and affairs of (a state, organization, or people). - Oxford Dictionary

After the last 4 years, does anyone here still think populism is the way to go?  Because that's what kneejerk 3rd party-ism IS, after all.  A reaction to the "elites" in the democractic and republican parties that is resolved by seeking a "man of the people" ("someone I could have a beer with") who is out for my best interest (HAW HAW HAW).  How much actual governing got done?  Are we better off or worse off after 4 years of that bullshit?

POFP:
Considering voting, and much more sensitive communication-based Structures in government now rely on the Internet and various Software-based technologies anyways, I don't see any issues with Democracy (Representative) existing on a more instantaneous medium like the Internet. There are plenty of standard security practices that are effective enough at that scale, it's not that big of a deal. With the right Software design, it could even make the governmental Architecture easier to understand for the layman.

I would like to say, I'm intrigued by the Proxy Voting System, not as a primary form of voting, but maybe as an extremely transient and optional feature when looking to vote in Elections, and more supported when voting on actual Legislation. The main concern I have with this being used in Elections (Where votes should be Anonymous), however, is potential bad actors saying one thing to gain Proxy Votes in order to actually direct them at the exact opposite Nominee that the Proxiers expected. Destabilization of the structure would be extremely easy in this case. Proxying should be extremely restricted or not allowed for Elections. This is not an issue when voting on Legislation, however, since Legislation Votes should be Public, just as they are now (When cast by Representatives of course - Not in the case of Direct Democracy, which I don't agree with for reasons Dok et al have already clarified.).

Personally, I think this thread has been looking at the Voting and Legislative process problems from the wrong angle (To be fair, I only read the first few pages, some pages in the middle, and the last few pages, so some of this may have been brought up here or other places already.). The problems in today's society are generally caused by Legal/Late Stage Capitalism's (Different from Free Market Capitalism, in that the State has formalized and blessed its natural failures and Monopolies.) natural support for Hierarchical, Bureaucratic Organizational Structures through:

- Overcomplication of legal and business processes

- Hoarding/Gatekeeping of knowledge of these processes within highly specialized Domains of the Private Sector

We solve these problems by enforcing simplification of Legislation through standardization of its language, and through the use of Encapsulation (Often used in Programming and other linguistics fields to establish intuitive Abstraction Layers within written Instruction that allow you to reference groups of smaller instructions with simpler high-level instructions.).

Basically, if you can't represent your legislation in a recursive drop-down tree of standardized, reusable instructions, conditions, and ideas, it's not structured enough to be acceptable. Object/Domain-orientation can also be applied for further high-level organization.

Why treat legislation like Software? Because Legislation is a formal, syntactically specific form of instruction, and because States all over are already starting to do this (kind of) as they've begun transcribing legislation and legal codes into websites. Recursive linking is already implemented through the Article, Section, etc. Structure. This should be extrapolated out into the fundamental syntax of legal language. The establishment of a structured syntax standard that specializes in Object/Domain Orientation and Encapsulation would make it easier for the Layman to understand the Legislation being voted on without requiring a Law Degree or special training. It also increases re-usability of Legislation Components in the same way it makes Software Modules reusable. It would facilitate the average Citizen's ability to drag and drop high-level Legislative snippets and ideas into a proposed bill as high-level components (That still contain all the low-level, expanded legalese that make up those components) and submit the full proposals in almost no time at all, even using popular/preferres components from existing and successful pieces of Legislation. If done properly, it should be possible for someone in the Electorate to identify a problem and submit fully functional, repeatable Legislation in a day that can be quickly assessed and amended by the Legislature before going to a vote.

This Architecture, of course, would require collaboration between teams of Linguistics experts, Software Architects and Engineers, Lawyers, Teachers, and Community Organizers to ensure that current Local, State, and National Legislation is properly transcribed ("Properly" meaning, it meets the suggested criteria of being modular, while also being linguistically inclusive of the layman and internationalized with accurate translations to other languages.), and we would need to standardize the Software Solution and open the Source for transparency and Community-based Hardening. But it wouldn't be as expensive or time consuming to implement as you might think.

The next problem, after you've made Legislation uniform and accessible, is the distribution of Democratic Power, and destruction of unnecessary Bureaucracy. No more of this City Manager + City Council + Cabinet + Department Head Appointee, stretch each layer of Hierarchy between elected positions upward as much as possible bullshit. If we want a Meritocracy, we need to structure the Democracy in the same way that Meritocratic Domain Specialization naturally occurs, and we need to make sure each layer in the Hierarchy is subject to Democratic oversight by the layer below AND the layer above (Above -> Merely by representation instead of Direct Democracy; Below -> By Election/Delegation of Members and Intent upwards to fill higher levels/tiers).

I recommend a modified form of Participatory Politics, where Democratic Hierarchies in all branches of government are formed as needed from the ground up through Community organization around Governing Domains (Hierarchies of Categorization of Legislation topics, as well as governing jurisdiction by population density and location.). My primary concern with it's suggested implementation on Wikipedia is that everyone is required to participate as a council member at the bottom rung, at least. I think we could easily replace the structure of the current State's major components with something that resembles their proposed "Parpolity" structure without replacing it entirely with a system where every single person is directly involved, since a significant number of people won't care to be involved in government and their involvement will likely impede those who do care. Besides, I think the assumption in their proposed implementation was that anyone who wasn't involved was simply ignored by the system, either defaulting non-participants to Anarchism or surrounding State Rule, which is hilariously unrealistic. As long as the Electoral and Legislative Proposal processes are open to all citizens that fall under corresponding Jurisdictions, Agencies, Legislatures, and Courts, I think we're okay with actual Council participation being optional, but immediately accessible by the individual, if preferred. It's also important not to lose the current Organizations and Infrastructure that currently exist by rebuilding each Agency/Legislature/Court from the ground up again. It's possible to transition existing Organizations to the new Structure and re-adjust the scale afterwards as needed using the new system's predefined processes.

The structure ultimately ensures:

- Cancellation of Mob Rule through Randomized Courts at each Council Tier, made up of individuals within the Scope of that Council's jurisdiction.

- Scope of Legislation is restricted to the Scope of the proposing Council (And all its corresponding and represented, but non-governing citizens in its jurisdiction) downward

- Hierarchy is established from the bottom up, instead of the top down, ensuring stratification is minimized to what is deemed necessary by the lower levels to ensure adequate domain specialization, representation, and specificity.

It's also suggested that Parecon (Participatory Economics) is paired with this to ensure similar Democratization of the Means of Production, but I have the same concerns with this structure that I had with the other. I think we've seen enough Democratic Workplace structures succeed (Like Co-Ops, and similar structures.) that we can come up with a mix that enforces Socialization of the Means of Production without resulting in a planned economy like they suggest. Market Socialism is probably ideal, and I think it would be best implemented using concepts from Parecon - Not the whole thing. Mostly just the decentralized organization of Democratic Labor, but with Personal and Shared Ownership of Property giving way to a fully featured Market that is less likely to leave its constituents starving or dependent on Slave Labor or Planetary destruction to survive.

Happy to talk specifics, either in this thread, or in another. This was a very high-level overview.

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