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 doesnt want that (but in this case the communist party can still vote in my stead for economic issues). Lobbyists dont have to become parties and they dont have to pay parties, they can just become delegates and take over specific issues. If Im 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. Heres a website that explains some of these ideas: 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 didnt complete their military training, and foreign residents, but thats 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
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 18:20:23 +0000
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