Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but the Brexit referendum is the perfect example of choices that should not be made directly by the population, because it lacks the competence to foresee the effects or even to distinguish fact from fiction.

If you told UK citizens that the choice is in fact for a No Deal Brexit and what that will mean, they wouldn't have voted for Brexit. However the population was lied to about the economic benefits and voted against their own interests.

So when the population can be lied to on such a scale, what do you find as being more democratic exactly?

And more importantly, after it was clear that Britain will not get a good deal, why wasn't the referendum repeated?

the Brexit referendum is the perfect example of choices that should not be made directly by the population

I disagree. I think this is exactly the kind of question that lends itself well for a public referendum. The problem with Brexit in particular was its execution, not its premise.

For one, the people were given only a binary choice. As is clear by now (and many people knew that before), there are more than two options on the table: it is about in or out of the EU, the EEA, the ECJ, the EUCU, and about the laws underpinning the GFA. Secondly, the entire referendum was strung together haphazardly because the government didn't think it could lose, so none of the campaigners (let alone the public) knew what they were arguing for. And because of that ill-defined question, we still see major division among parliament about what people actually voted for. Lastly, the entire campaign was hijacked by xenophobic tendencies that only distracted from the main question.

> none of the campaigners knew what they were arguing for

Case in point would be Owen Patterson, a prominent brexit campaigner, who wanted to

  1) Invoke Article 50
  2) Negotiate a new deal which looks very much like the EEA plus CU, but witout any closer integration
  3) Offer the public a referendum between that new deal and staying in the EU

However now that's "remoaner loser talk"

>Sorry, but the Brexit referendum is the perfect example of choices that should not be made directly by the population, because it lacks the competence to foresee the effects or even to distinguish fact from fiction.

I still find it hard to not value your own autonomy. For thousands of years, wars of independence were fought for this exact purpose. You might not value it, but I don't think you can attack others for placing value on it.

The problem is that the UK seems wanting to cherry pick their autonomy and make use of the benefits the EU has to offer while rejecting the obligations and rules of such a union. Obviously it doesn't work like that and the eu doesn't have any interest in letting them have their cake and eat it too.

The only Leave-scenario people actually could have voted for in the referendum was a no-deal-brexit. Any other promsies were ranging from uncertain to wishful thinking.

I’m the case of Brexit, it’s possible that having more frequent engagement with direct democracy would have left the people feeling less ignored by government and less inclined to try to “stick it to them” as a method of voicing their general feeling of discontent. I think we see this around the world, where ossified representational democracies leave people feeling rather disenfranchised and thus taking whatever potshots they find available.

Well it depends on which is your view about "what is the most democratic vote system".

For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about.

From my point of view the Brexit vote is totally not-democratic because it put an absurdly complex decision on a big part of the population which has not even remotely the competence to decide on the matter.

As you see it is not all white or black.

> For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about.

Isn't that not just a technocracy? I actually think a system like that would make a lot of sense, but I still believe the population should have the power to veto a law that they don't want.

As for the brexit vote being undemocratic, I see your point, but I don't think just because the people were uninformed that means the referendum was undemocratic. First of all, I don't think most MEPs who voted for the copyright reform were any more informed, on average. I also think it should ultimately be up to the population of a democratic system to decide things, even if they don't understand the situation entirely. That's the point of democracy.

So you think the MEPs made a bad decision because they were mis- or uninformed, but then you would trust that the population on average would be more informed?

They were about as well-informed as much of the general public.

There's a Youtube video kicking around of someone (I forget who) going round Europarl asking MEPs if they'd actually read Articles 11 and 13.

The most common answer, by a country mile, was "no".

We elect representatives to read these things and make a reasoned decision on our behalf. Not to do the political equivalent of putting on a blindfold and throwing a dart, hoping to score a bulls-eye.

Can you link the video?

As I also mentioned in another comment, after the facts where on the table (as it became clearer and clearer that the UK will not get a deal), the referendum could have been repeated.

Manipulating people and having them vote without all the facts on the table and then denying them that vote after the facts were on the table is not democracy.

> Isn't that not just a technocracy? I actually think a system like that would make a lot of sense, but I still believe the population should have the power to veto a law that they don't want.

I think that too, IF they take the time to become experts in the matter of the law they don't want.

> For example I am for a "democracy of experts" system, in which any decision must be voted exclusively by those who have expertise on the matter the vote is about.

And who decides who is an expert on what?

The Brexit affair can hardly be called "democratic". The topic of the referendum was a vague question without any specifics, and it was a slim majority, while also disenfranchising a vast number of people.

A democratic approach would be to conclude that a 1.8% majority is in the error margin, and then carefully listen to both sides and try to work out something that many people on both sides can live with. That way you can get a solution that appeases 70&, 80%, or more. That's real democracy, in my book.

It's not an easy path though, especially not in the face of what I call "chest-beating politics". The Brexiteers have not proven to be especially easy to compromise with on pretty much any issue.

There are many better ways to enact more direct democracy, by the way. For example, you can have a randomly chosen subset of people (maybe 50, or 100) vote on every proposed laws, more or less the same as jury duty. The difference with a general referendum is that these people will actually get the time to properly inform themselves and have good-faith discussions (instead of idiotic Boris Johnson spectacle bullshit "discussions").

There are many variables you can tweak, and other possible systems as well. Reading up on e.g. Athenian Democracy might be a good start, if you're not already familiar with it.

> It only works as long as the representatives see it as their duty to represent the will of the voters accurately

That's not really the idea behind representative democracy. It's supposed to work that you vote for the person whose values intelligence and approach to policy you agree with, and they use their skill and judgement from there on in - you can of course lobby them on issues.

Right, but the problem is often the 'lesser of two evils' voting options. There's no choice present for me that I feel represents what I want/need in an elected official. I'm not voting for what I want, I'm just making sure that what I loathe doesn't get into office.

This is the problem with representative democracy; it assumes there's a good proxy for my voice, and there increasingly isn't

This is where party-based politics fails representative democracy. There are supposed to be N voices in parliament, so that at least N different voices can be heard.

Large parties, party discipline and backroom deals are (imnsho) fundamentally at odds with a well-functioning representative democracy.

It's a feature, not a bug. As much as people want strong individuals as representatives, time has shown over and over again that a well oiled machine (party) will be much stronger. Those parties then create rules that reinforce the need for coalitions and weaken individuals.

Representative democracy is meant to be a way to mitigate the problem of true democracy, which is the idea that it's easier to build a consensus among a small group than a large one and also that "the unwashed masses don't know what's actually good for them".

Bottom line is that it's impossible for 1 person to serve as a uncompromising proxy for a large group of people on multiple issues. Even if there weren't parties, there would be a point where my 95% agreement representative gets into the 5% of issues where we disagree. And no matter what, that's going to feel bad man.

I happen to disagree with the dogma that a strong government is a good government, so in my eyes it's a bug.

I mean strong vs weak government is really a whole other discussion.

Parties exist almost as a separate mechanism than government itself. They're more strongly tied to elections and voting than any specific application or creation of policy. They're about how we select our leaders, not what our leaders can do.

Unless your goal is to short circuit the process by created additional bureaucracy/difficulty in the process, it still doesn't seem like a bug. And if that is your goal, it seems more that you have a problem with the law creation/implementation and not how people's voices are being represented.

> Take for an example the UK referendum to leave the EU. Even though it's overall a complete shitshow, and all sides usually agree on that, nobody can really claim that it wasn't a democratic decision. Was it a smart one? Who knows, I doubt it. But it was democratic, and that's more than I can say about this mess

You are oversimplifying this - that vote was between a definite (the status quo) and a vague future direction (insert personal fantasy about what "leave" actually meant)

Is it any more democratic to make people choose between "definitive choice x" and "the mystery box", than it is to make people vote for a vague bag of promises (a representative) as they already do?

If not, then what you're probably after is a democratic choice between two or more defined options. But who chooses which options are presented to people? Who oversees the ensuing floods of propaganda?

A direct democracy moves even more power to the propaganda machine, not the people.

> Take for an example the UK referendum to leave the EU. Even though it's overall a complete shitshow, and all sides usually agree on that, nobody can really claim that it wasn't a democratic decision.

Almost every argument I’ve seen about Brexit has included someone arguing that it wasn’t. This is generally followed by “oh, but Remain broke the rules too” rather than any actual defence of the behaviour of the Leave campaigns, which doesn’t actually help any of this look more democratic.

> nobody can really claim that it wasn't a democratic decision.

#include "vote-leave-broke-the-law.txt"