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Comment by aikah | Hacker News Reader

Whatever one might think about the result of this "votation",I think it's great that people can make their voices heard directly.It keeps politicians in check.Sometimes the people can take bad decisions,but at least they own that decision,they are not constently delegating power to an "elite" that decides for them.

I wish more countries had this "votation" system.And that's the whole problem with the EU.Why would some folks in Germany ,for instance, decide for people living in Spain, or Greece ?it cannot work on the long run. Would americans accept Canada,or Mexico having a saying in how USA should manage its finances?its agriculture? There is a need for international agreements,of course,but USA isnt ruled by people abroad.Switzerland isnt part of the EU,that why it remains a true democracy.

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> Would americans accept Canada,or Mexico having a saying in how USA should manage its finances?its agriculture?

Would Californians accept Alaskans having a saying in how they should manage their agriculture? Texas/Maine/oil?

AFAIK neither California or Alaska are countries.

What is a country?

I'll just keep on turning it around - why would some folks in New York, for instance, decide for people living in Alabama, or Wyoming?

>What is a country?

Google "Westphalian Sovereignty" and go from there.

That just goes down the rabbit hole. What is a nation state? What is a nation?

Is Scotland a country? Is Wales?

Is Germany? Is the UK?

The point behind the Scotland question is if UK can have some control over Scotland with Scotland remaining a country, even without being fully sovereign from the UK, why doesn't the same apply to members of other higher-level states like EU?

One can make arguments like "why would some folks in England, for instance, decide for people living in Scotland, or Northern Ireland?" but where do you draw the line? Wales has less autonomy than Scotland but is still a "country" on Wikipedia, are they oppressed? Inverness has social policy dictated from the Lowlands, is it not a true democracy then? `davidw in the next comment thread over isn't too happy with the amount of power Wyoming has over California, can it work in the long run? Or is it only EU federation that HN will complain about?

Yet nobody in Alabama wants to secede. A significant chunk of European citizens are against the European Union.

Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.

Haha. You haven't ever been to Alabama, I take it? In 2012 they got 32000 people to sign a petition in favor of secession.

> Plus, the cultural, historic, linguistic similarities between Alamaba and Woyming are infinitely greater than between the UK and Croatia. A person visiting Alabama from Texas isn't a "stranger", and wouldn't be treated or considered as one.

Move a city boy from New Jersey to Alaska or deep Lousiana and see how much of a stranger he ends up being, even if the language is technically the same.

The total population of Wyoming is of course lower than the city/county of San Francisco, which means that in reality, things are more biased towards Wyoming deciding for Californians, because they still get their two senators and one representative despite the small population.

They share a currency.

The US federal model is considerably more devolved than most regions in most countries. The EU nations, particularly the so-called Eurozone where currency is shared and economies are tightly bound, are closer to US states than most other independent countries are. There's a spectrum.

> They share a currency.

So do the US and Zimbabwe.

The issue is only partly economic, it's also cultural. Europe's countries are far more culturally varied than US states; different opinions, different priorities, different norms. Crimea, Basque, Scot, Northern Ireland... The economies are also sufficiently varied that one ring to rule them all is absurd, resulting in tensions between the historical cultural groups, aka countries. The UK is increasingly interesting on this matter.

They share a currency and have intertwined economies, the currency is managed for all the countries and this is nothing like the Zimbabwe situation.

> "this is nothing like the Zimbabwe situation"

Um, yeah. Think you've misunderstood.

Probably. Wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last!

How do you define a country? Is Scotland a country?

As we can see with Switzerland, it strenghtens extreme positions.

Let me ask you a question: why should people in Northrhine-Westphalia "decide for" people in Bavaria? Shouldn't we dissolve our federal parliament?

Having done that, why do the people living in Stuttgart "decide for" the people living in Karlsruhe? Shouldn't we dissolve the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg?

The answer is, of course, that decisions should be made at the lowest level where they are making sense. And in this regard the EU is imperfect.

But you're throwing out the baby with the bath water.

The referendum system has been in place for more than a hundred years and it's hard to argue that Switzerland has a tradition of extremism.

Far right parties are on the rise everywhere in Europe, regardless of the voting system.

Obviously you didn't understand how Swiss federalism works. We (generally) do not decide for/against other cantons or tell them how they should handle things. Unless it's something that concerns the whole country equally.

See the vote today: There was an initiative about the abolition of flat taxes for rich non-working foreigners. It was broadly rejected around the country. But if a canton still wants to abolish it, they can do that (and some of them do it already).

That it strengthens extreme positions is rubbish. And even if it does, it would have a ridiculously small effect.

Once abolition of slavery was an "extreme position", wouldn't it have been better that the US voted on it, rather than burning down the country?

California is actually a cautionary tale IMHO of the perils of a referendum or "votation" system. There's not necessarily an intrinsic problem with the system, but its effectiveness often hinges on how the questions are asked and framed.

For instance, suppose the following: a majority of voters support Project A and a majority of voters support Project B, but Projects A and B are expensive and a majority of voters would oppose spending money on both Projects A and B.

If you do separate, parallel yes-or-no referendums on both A and B (as frequently happens in California), it is likely that both would pass, resulting in a sub-optimal outcome as a sub-majority wanted both.

With a smaller group of legislators, you can do things like non-binding votes to allow proponents to assess support and modify or withdraw their proposals accordingly (if A is more popular than B, then B can withdraw in favor of A) or sequential votes (if A has already passed, then people will vote no on B). The higher number of stakeholders involved with a referendum and the general cost of running an election make this less feasible with the direct democracy system.

I do seem to recall that we've had propositions in California that were conditionally tied to each other -- Prop. N specifically says it takes effect only if Prop. N - 1 fails, or something like that -- so I think this kind of problem can be addressed, if the initiative drafters do their work well.

A bigger problem, in my opinion, is that a bare majority is sufficient to amend the state Constitution. I think at least a 60% supermajority should be required.

I think a bare majority for State Constitutional amendments is fine -- but it should be a majority for the same proposal in two elections a year apart.

> If you do separate, parallel yes-or-no referendums on both A and B (as frequently happens in California), it is likely that both would pass, resulting in a sub-optimal outcome as practically no one really wanted both.

Somewhat redundant measures in California that are proposed at the same time generally are legally conflicting, which means that if both are passed, only the measure with the greatest margin actually goes into effect. I can't think of any real examples of simultaneous, partially-redundant measures that both had majority support and had no legal conflict, so that both went into effect, where you could make a plausible case that the kind of problem you describe was in play. Can you present any?

I can't remember any that actually passed (there are quite a few "we can't take this off the ballot but please vote for this other measure" changes every few years though).

On further thought, the real issue is more related to the budget ones. E.g. there is technically no conflict between "don't raise taxes" and "spend money on X". Edited accordingly.

This is assuming the voters know enough to have a coherent volition. The clear majority of the people in the US think the government should spend less on foreign aid. If asked what percentage of government revenue should be spent on foreign aid they would name a figure much higher than we currently spend. But these aren't inconsistent, because the typical voter thinks we spend far, far more on foreign aid than we do. All this means that in terms of referendums there is no such thing as the will of the voters, there is only how you ask the question.

Now, if we could get the entire population of the US into a room to argue over the budget for a week with a vote at the end I'm sure that the result would be better than our legislators would do but of course that's logistically impossible. So barring that I'll take representative democracy over referendums any day. Legislators know that voters have a distinct tendency to vote the bums out of office if they feel things are getting worse.

>>Why would some folks in Germany ,for instance, decide for people living in Spain, or Greece ?i

Because there wouldn't, ideally, "be" German or Greek or Spanish 'folks' in any sense other than culturally; i.e. complete free trade between these united zones of economic exchange is what it would 'supposedly' be all about, in the ideal Union sense. Germans get their beach houses, Spanish get their education and whatever else they might want from the Tutonic realms, and so around it goes. Imagine if the EU really was just a mass of citizens, who suddenly realized just what they had in common. Alas, its very difficult for such enlightenment to engage in Europe, it seems ..

It saddens me that any opinion that doubts the grand federal EU is almost automatically downvoted, regardless of the nature of said opinion.

Are they? Personally, I'm wary of a federal EU as well, but I still find that a poorly argued post. You shouldn't assume you know the reasons for the downvotes.

(Not that I downvoted it, mind you)

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