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It's not an argument that "democracy" doesn't work, it's an argument that the current institutional arrangements aren't really democracy - at least in the sense that the public are actually directly or indirectly governing themselves.

Now, in that sense, let's review exactly how "our"[] government measures up: Individual citizens or groups of citizens have minimal means of influencing their own government through the means of the system - i.e. their representatives. Petitions change nothing, letters to representations to MPs / Congresspeople will receive a form reply and will usually be ignored. Occasionally, when public sentiment doesn't conflict too badly with economic interests, minor tweaks can be made, but that's about it.

Where real change has occurred, it has been done so outside* the institutional parameters of the system. The abolition of slavery took a civil war, and the vote for women and civil rights took massive public protests, illegal acts and (in the case of the suffragettes in the UK) hunger strikes.

So yes, change is possible. But it was never achieved within the confines of a system largely designed and evolved (I contend) to limit public participation, and certainly not by online petitions.

[*] Not everyone is from the US, y'know.

Petitions are like polls. And politicians certainly follow polls.

Big ships turn slowly, some patience is required to see the effect of steering. Many changes in society look quick and immediate only when clouded by the shortened perspective of looking tens or hundreds of years back in the history.

> Not everyone is from the US, y'know.

Incredibly valid point. The angry rant above was hastily written (typos and all) in response to a thread about a change to US public policy. That's my excuse as to why I got it wrong, not an attempt to say that I actually got it right.

> The abolition of slavery took a civil war

The actual passage of the amendment took an act of democracy, however, that still had to overcome mountains of entrenched interests even with the South temporarily out of the picture.

> and the vote for women and civil rights took massive public protests, illegal acts and (in the case of the suffragettes in the UK) hunger strikes.

All of which worked to change public opinion, and pass those bills through the democratic process.

My angry rant was probably less towards your statement than similar ones that I've heard too many times. So I apologize for directing it all at you.

I do strictly disagree that if petitions worked, they'd be banned, however. Petitions are nothing new; the only thing about Obama's site is the ease with which they can be made and the promise of a response. And petitions have worked in the past to effect change either directly, by making those in power aware of people's strongly held petitions, or indirectly, by helping to raise awareness and eventually changing policy by swaying opinion. They do work, if they have enough support.

I know you weren't explicitly making this argument, but many were complaining about how terrible it was that 25,000 signature petitions weren't effecting real change. The US is a nation of over 314,000,000 people. It would be madness if any 25,000 member subset of them could meaningfully coerce the government to action. I'm happy that the bar is being raised to 100,000. I kind of hope it gets raised to something higher. Once you start being able to describe the number in terms of millions it starts carrying real weight. And if people know that that's what they have to shoot for, they'll be more likely to achieve to it.

There's a follow-on effect too, that organizing to get 100k signatures for anything, even the death star petition, creates networks of activists. Some of them stay active afterwards.

> the current institutional arrangements aren't really democracy

Well, not in the Greek sense; the US system was designed to lead to good governance, and to protect personal freedom, neither of which are preserved in a true Democracy.

the US is not a democracy; it is a constitutional republic. Some states have more of a democratic bent to them with initiatives, but you will never see the federal government institute initiatives. As we all know: we do not vote for president, we vote for representatives to vote for president. We also do not make laws: we vote for representatives to make our laws.

While the opposition against SOPA was not a petition, would you not argue that it was a democratic victory?

>But when positions do gain support, things really do change. We've passed constitutional amendments outlawing slavery, giving women the vote, and instituting civil rights. Jesus Christ, do you understand just how hard getting each of those things passed was? Do you understand how many entrenched and powerful interests had to be overcome? Do you understand just how little shouting that democracy doesn't work would have accomplished when faced with moral injustices like that?

People often forget that the fact that the US moves slowly (glacially, I often feel) is frustrating but a GOOD THING. As much as things may be unfortunate right now, they are unfortunate situations we can live with. Far more worrying (to me, anyway) are radical motions that change our country drastically without much debate. Want some examples? Look at post 9/11/01 us government. We passed the patriot act exactly a month and a half later and started two wars.

Yea, I really wish that we could have tax reform, gay marriage, regulated cannabis, etc etc, but not without extensive debate: generally, a conservative (in the rate-of-change sense) country is far more stable than one that is purely held sway to public opinion.

Anyway, petitions really have nothing to do with democracy. It's just a way of people getting their voice heard at the White House, and if you think it's anything more, you're delusional.

I've never really understood this argument, because it assumes that if a bad law is enacted, there is no recourse. In a system where a law could be passed in a few days, wouldn't it also be able to be repealed in a few days? Why not have formally-provisional laws: "try it, see if we like it, throw it out if it didn't work?"

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Or, even, (tangent incoming): "try a new law on some [randomly-selected] subset of the nation at a time, record metrics, see whether the experimental population or the control population are doing better" -- A/B test the nation?

That's theoretically what the whole system of state law was for--let each state experiment with its own law--but this has been less and less tenable for generating scientifically-valid data as it has gone on, as the policies states have enacted have caused them to diverge (where instead "good" policies were supposed to be converged to as other states copied them, and "bad" policies eliminated from the "gene pool"), and has caused people who agreed with each policy to move there and people who disagreed to leave. Now doing an "experiment" with a new law in one state will tell you next-to-nothing about how another state would react to it.

Now (or soon), we can efficiently enforce [some forms of] law at the individual level--just mark people in a database saying "this person is legally allowed to smoke marijuana" where a cop can look it up from the console in their car, or "this person will be charged a VAT instead of an income tax" where the credit and EFTPOS networks can look it up and handle it. Law doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. But this is, of course, a silly pipe-dream to apply to a current, entrenched nation. It'll probably be one of those things some charter city could run with, though.

> In a system where a law could be passed in a few days, wouldn't it also be able to be repealed in a few days?

The fear is that it might NOT be repealed in a few days--again, see the patriot act.

But, for a more obvious example, consider a bill that enables martial law.... much more difficult to revert and something that our country might have passed in some of its more heated moments.

But, this is all just speculation. I have no idea if our slow government is actually the reason why it's been so stable as a "democracy"; it could be for myriad other reasons, but it's always made sense to me.

Democracy is only good when the majority supports what you think is right. The moment the majority chooses something you dislike, you're done. And it also doesn't cost anything to the majority, because they only have to waste a little time and vote. If, for example, the majority finds it wrong for gay people to marry, it doesn't cost them anything to keep it illegal. In a purely free society, if one group of people wanted the other group to behave in a certain way, they'd have to find ways to enforce this behavior and that would cost them money. And chances are, gay people would be willing to pay a much higher price to be able to marry, than those who oppose gay marriage.

True freedom is wealth. You believe it's important for people to have this and that? Create value, make money and then spend them buying yourself and others (if you really care) some freedom in the form of education, healthcare or whatever it is you believe in. In a democracy, it works very differently: you ask government to force others to pay for something they may not believe in.

I do not agree with you. You're basically advocating for a form of anarchy in which one makes his own law based on how much money he can pay, however in a true anarchy money would have no place. This complicates issues greatly, because without placing a price-tag on value, then all value you create is relative and selling it is the product of opportunity.

This might not be bad, but because of this, even in anarchy the majority wins. Like, if somebody is gay, what would you have them pay to a big mob of people with torches and pitchforks coming for him, a mob who thinks that gays are an abomination? They might not be using the same currency, his created value may not be worth anything to this mob. And since there is no police, who is going to protect him? Remember that he's in a minority after all.

We take many things for granted, but IMHO democracy makes tolerance possible.

The notion that in an anarchy you would have no police, courts, currency, and all other important things is a product of a lack of imagination. Simply because there is no government, doesn't mean there is no market for the things a government provides. What government had for a long time is a monopoly for many services and it is precisely the reason why it is so hard for people to imagine how a police or defense could exist without a government.

(There are different types of anarchy theories, btw, anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-capitalism being on the two opposite sides of the spectrum).

There is plenty of evidence of what happens without government, effective replacement of government services does not happen. Any argument based on that premise is clearly wrong.

Petitions aren't democracy... they're the definition of special interest.