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Comment by easilyBored | Hacker News Reader

Direct democracy is dangerous. Major decisions, and joining /leaving EU is certainly one, should require e super-majority. Say 60% of the vote and 60% of the Parliament.

50%+1 just doesn't seem right. These are life-changing decisions and there needs to be a general consensus.

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I agree.

And I think it was wrong for the UK to end up as part of the EU, as opposed to a more limited "common market", without at least one of the successive governments which signed up to additional treaties demonstrating such general consensus.

That was part of the reason why it was so easy for the "leave" side to portray the EU as a hostile unaccountable force.

Where does the "dangerous" come in?

What makes the EU government inherently better at governing and representing interests the of British people than a British government?

There is something about local democracy that some people simply don't understand. Voters can apply more pressure on locally elected officials than central officials. Ever since Thatcher's government began systematically reducing the powers of local government, central government can and has often overridden the choices of local voter, because they are not directly answerable to local voters.

If voters don't like some policies set by local politicians and officials they can organize effectively to have them changed and the officials removed. What kind of pressure can the people say Hammersmith exercise over an EU policy they don't like, assuming they know who to address, and can even bring political pressure to bear on them?

I think the "dangerous" comes in when you have morons in mass media screaming will of the people, saboteurs traitors every time somebody has the temerity to suggest that leaving the EU might not be a good idea, or that we might wish to debate whether the PM's preferred position on leaving the EU is the correct one. Attlee called referenda the "tool of dictators and demagogues", and whilst he might have been referring specifically to the tendency of such leaders to use their initial popularity to vote themselves powers to deal with more difficult times, it could apply equally to the use of the referendum result to argue that a 52-48% margin of opinions at a particular point in time means that continuing to express the views held by the latter group is somehow disreputable

Who are you calling "morons", the media companies or the people who support Brexit? This is the kind of arrogance that got Brexit to succeed and Trump to become president, the habit of liberals labelling people who disagree with them racists, populists, Islamophobes, homophobes and everything else you can think of.

If you want Trump to stay in power for 2 terms and Brexiteers to come out in greater numbers keep opining in that manner.

Democracy implies respecting the will of the majority whether you agree with them or not, regardless of how misinformed or ignorant they are, and a willingness to work them to bring about a change in their views if you are convinced about yours.

The same attitude here is the same attitude seen by EU officials who feel express openly that the expect the leaders of their member states should put their (the EU leaders) views ahead of their electorates, and you feel that because of some real or imagined benefits of their rule the rest of the public ought to put up with that arrogance.

> Democracy implies respecting the will of the majority whether you agree with them or not

Really, profoundly odd that you start going off about Trump in the same post where you write this. He didn't win the popular vote. He does not represent the will of the majority.

While just 4 percent of Trump's supporters say they would back someone else if there was a redo of the election, fully 15 percent of Clinton supporters say they would ditch her. Trump leads in a re-do of the 2016 election 43 percent to 40 percent after losing the popular vote 46-44.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/23/tr...

It is the electoral college vote that determines the Presidency and they vote according in accord with their state constituents choices. That is how the American presidency works, and if I am right, they are still happy with it.

Are those goalposts heavy?

I'm applying the term "morons" members of the political class and their media mouthpieces who scream about the 16million people who disagreed with them (or indeed, anybody that might suggest alternative forms of Brexit to that proposed by the government) being "saboteurs" who must be "crushed". Democracy implies that people whose political objective is shared by the majority aren't supposed to be quite so paranoid and aggressive about people continuing to disagree with them.

Your post started with an question about what I had meant and then (obviously considering what I'd actually meant unimportant) immediately descended into a verbal assault on your entirely imaginary concept of what my worldview might be, culminating in asserting my "attitude" of objecting to sections of the press using violent rhetoric to try to silence people who don't share their worldview is akin to the position of European Commission members. And you're accusing me of arrogance? Seriously?

Taking the example of Hammersmith, at the previous election 50% of people didn't vote for the MP that won.

What can they do, when they disagree with a local decision? What about a national decision?

The EU government is at least more representative of its electorate. For the EU level (London constituency), the Hammersmith resident is represented by four Tory, two Labour, one UKIP and one Green MEP. With that range, it's more likely someone will find time for their opinion.

The solution is therefore to fix the electoral system in the UK, meanwhile I'm glad the EU government exists above it. We could also start electing the House of Lords.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammersmith_(UK_Parliament_con...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_(European_Parliament_co...

If you want an elected House of Lords, why would you be in favour of the EU? In the EU the elected house is a ratifying chamber only (akin to the Lords). You're glad to be ruled by the undemocratic executive EU but not the undemocratic ratifying Lords?

the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place. You can't apply stringent rules in only one direction of a decision, or you're weighting the default to the position you personally prefer. At the end of the day, the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased.

>the problem with the supermajority argument is that there was no such vote to join the EU in the first place

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_European_Commun...

>The electorate expressed significant support for EC membership, with 67% in favour on a national turnout of 64%.

Am I missing something?

EC membership, not EU - from the perspective of the British, they voted for membership of a trading block, which then morphed into a new megastate wannabe without any vote taking place to legitimise it.

there's a significant difference between the EU and the EC. For one, the EC vote was held under the promise that it would not become a political union. It was also sold as a trading zone, rather than a super-bloc. There wasn't a vote to join the EU as it currently exists, and the EU and the EC might as well be chalk and cheese.

> the vote could be repositioned from "remain/leave" to "be in the EU/not be in the EU" to make it an A/B rather than a yes/no decision, at which point the argument about direct democracy being unfair becomes clearly biased.

Apologies if you're from the UK (or otherwise aware) but there was huge debate about 'the question' ahead of the referendum. Like you (it sounds) I was surprised they decided on one that seems so obviously biased. I think the 'to be or not to be' variant was supposedly going to be 'confusing to voters'.

yeah I am from the UK, and this is the exact debate I'm referencing - in fact, one of the questions that I asked a few people that got them to really think about their position was "if this was a vote to join the EU, would your position still be the same?" - this question is also obviously biased in the other direction, but it gets people to think outside of the default position of loss aversion, which has psychological biases to support it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion).

There shouldn't have been a direct democracy vote to join as much as there shouldn't have been one to leave.

The point of representative democracy is supposed to be one where ignorant citizens can select the best - not necessarily most ideologically aligned or politically motivated - from amongst themselves to make these kinds of decisions on their behalf as their job.

Obviously we are far from that ideal (very, very far), but it doesn't change how terrible referendum votes are anywhere in the world. You just get emotionally charged shit-flinging that devolves complex issues into tribal warfare. The world is too complicated to boil the issues of millions into yes and no bubble quizzes, that is why we are supposed to have our best handle it.

I used to agree; Brexit made me think about it a lot.

I now think a bias in favour of maintaining status quo is just as arbitrary as one against the status quo - if it's so great now and everyone knows it then they'll come out in droves to keep it, right?

   Direct democracy is dangerous.

So are all other forms of governance.

The only significant example of direct democracy in action has been Switzerland, and it's been pretty successful in comparison. Yes, n=1 is not good, but better than n=0.

California has been using a direct democracy model in various formulations for a long time and it's four times the size of Switzerland in both population and economy. The results are at best mixed (eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10%).

Interesting.

I'm not familiar with the Californian model. But as with direct democracy in cities and villages, California is not a country, so certain life/death decisions, like engaging in warfare, are not applicable.

Moreover, I believe that some of California's problems are a direct consequence of its spectacular success, which attracts large-scale immigration, largely from poorer countries. California has grown by > 10x in the last century. In contrast, the Swiss population expanded at a much lower pace.

Be that all as it may, by many metrics California is also a spectacular success.

>>eg California has one of the lowest median incomes and weakest education systems in the US, to go with immense debt & infrastructure problems, despite vast wealth in the top 10%

Can you provide some citations to these claims?

Still don't understand they left the EU. Especially with the latest changes they had the best deal within the EU but still they want to leave. Rebates, no euro etc. I wish we could get that...

I think we do.

We're a net contributor so the rebate point is null.

Re. the euro, is there any point in being one of only 9 countries outside the euro (bear in mind most of those 9 are new members who intend to join). What kind of say do you think the non-euro countries are going to get?

If that's going to be the criteria fine, but we'd need to kick some countries out of the EU then (e.g. Sweden) since they went in with a similarly narrow margin.

Fun fact: In both referendums on EU membership, less than half the registered voters cast votes for the winning decision.

In fact, in almost all referendums and elections, less than half of eligible voters cast their voters for the winning decision or party. That comes pretty much by nature.

Then there are elections where a majority supports the winning decision. A few are good ones, like the Falklands referendum that was mentioned in another post.

But very many are scams: Saddam Hussein's presidential referendum gave him 99.9 % support of votes in a 99.47 % turnout. Worker's Party of Korea regularly gets around 85-90 % of votes again with a 99.9 % turnout. National Socialist Party of Germany got 98.8 % of a 99 % turnout in 1936.

Finally, the point is:

"“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”"

I would be interested in knowing about an election in modern times (you choose what that means) in which a majority of the electorate in a British election did vote for the winning proposition.

If you count British Overseas Territories, then Falklands and Gibraltar sovereignty referendums are probably the only examples (I wouldn't be surprised to discover that no free and fair public election has ever achieved a more emphatic result than 99.8% on a 91.9% turnout managed by the Falkland islanders)

Good knowledge. Just glad I didn't offer a prize...

Why is direct Democracy dangerous?

I think not educating your population effectively is dangerous. Unfortunately the non-direct democrats have taken advantage by not educating each oncoming generation so as to more easily manipulate them.

Now we have Trump...

In Britain we have a representative democracy. That is how British democracy works. A small group of Euro-sceptics in one party were frustrated that they couldn't get Britain to leave the EU using that system so forced the PM to hold a referrendum. So they couldn't get their own way by following the rules so forced the government to change temporarily to a different kind of democracy that better suited their means. That is incredibly dangerous, yes. Direct democracy is not just calling referendums when you think populism will help your cause.

The life changing 1970s referendum to remain didn't require more than 50%+1 so I don't see how it's right that Brexiting should have.

Edit to clarify this is about the first referendum to remain, not join in the first place.

It should have required then (IMHO).

Plus there is now the potential for a great deal of purely negative disruption to the economy as a result.

There was great potential for that then as well. Joining required the UK to give up exclusive fishing rights in its own waters and put up tariffs to its Commonwealth trading partners. That the UK did so without much of a fuss is a matter of shame for the country, the trade disruption had great impact in countries that depended on the trade. The Common Agricultural Policy was cemented in to prepare for UK arrival as well, so guaranteeing transfer of wealth from UK into France, an almost direct subsidy of French agriculture. This was the basis on which Margaret Thatcher went all obstinate to get a British rebate in the early 80s.

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