Comment by dllthomas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dllthomas | Hacker News Reader

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I made no claim that everything we can call government is a good idea. Just saying that the notion that you have bitcoin so now you don't need government is missing at least a few steps (if any similar claim holds at all). We might be able to implement some parts of government atop technology (we already do, really), but that doesn't mean there's no government.

"I get your initial point, but the past century has shown that democracy needs to be direct and NOT delegated."

I'm not at all sure that direct democracy makes things better. Just look at the history of referenda in CA.

More generally, there is the tremendous problem that as an individual, I don't have the time to fully research every issue. The median position of a bunch of half-informed individuals plied with advertising is not something I have a lot of confidence in.

All of that said, I'm not convinced direct democracy is actually worse either - it does address the agency problems with representative democracy, which can be significant. Possibly some variant of liquid democracy could prove to be the best system.

> The median position of a bunch of half-informed individuals plied with advertising is not something I have a lot of confidence in.

And here lies the problem. In the US the 1% actively disinforms the 99% through media manipulation and bad education. Thus you can't have direct democracy when people can't think for themselves. The whole system is rotten.

In most European countries citizens are educated from a young age how to think rationally and how to interpret information. You still have subtle media manipulation like sky-news but nothing as blatant as fox-news&hollywood. Switzerland has a very good history of referenda - because the population isn't intentionally misinformed and under-educated.

Misinformation and undereducation makes things worse, to be sure, but that's not really what I was speaking of. My point was that becoming fully informed about anything is a lot of work. Becoming fully informed about everything is impossible.

"You still have subtle media manipulation like sky-news but nothing as blatant as fox-news&hollywood."

That's just silly. There's plenty of drivel in the UK. The Daily Mail easily gives Fox a run for its money, and The Sun is owned by the same guy who owns Fox News. My understanding is that the situation in other countries is roughly similar - some good journalism and a lot of crap - but I am less familiar. Switzerland's history of referenda is indeed comparatively good; I think there's a lot of factors that have contributed to its success.

Finally, even if you think the above factors are the only reason direct democracy works (or would work) beautifully in Europe and horribly in the US, what would you propose to fix them? I contend that "direct democracy" is not much of a remedy.

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