Perry:
Ahhh, you never fail to knock the American form of Government.
You seem to have missed the fact I was at that point discussing the flaws with a system of government, not a specific government.
It doesn't have to be about the USA all the time you know...
Is there a governmental system you can think of not hopelessly flawed? I'd really like to know of one that is perfect for all nations. The reality is that what works for one country and culture, may be end up very unfail for another one.
Is that the point? I'm saying x has flaws y would be better. JUst saying 'everything has flaws', and implying change is neither desirous nor needful is ostriching.
politicians will do what they need to do to remain in power, even if this means they no longer 'represent' the people that gave them power.
This sweeping statement is one that is disengenious IMO, although not technically untrue. If you had added the word "sometimes" I'd have no problem with it. But, the fact remains that not all politicians will vote against their constituencies. Those that do, usually end up teaching at some obscure university.
Oh, add 'sometimes' by all means, although 'usually' would probably be closer to the truth. The flaw is in fact two-fold. Because staying in power becomes THE most important thing, politicians will advance policies that will gain them support, even if the net result of those policies is disadvantagous or an applied lesson in futility. At the same time there is an inevitability with which they will not impliment policies they promised or break promises about policies they would not impliment.
At the foundation of a representative govt. is the people's ability to vote out those that do not represent their wishes. You make it sound as if the "people" don't have any choice but to dance at the end of puppet strings weilded by those they elect. This is simply not how representative democracy works.
Yes, vote them out after their term, when they've not done the job, after four years of whatever. Not a way to run a company; "ah give the incompetant no good liar another three years" is not something you see in business very often. How come its okay in running a country? Although impeachment and recalls can happen we know how rarely that happens compared to how often it should happen. The standards of behaviour of a check-out person in Wall-Mart are probably higher than that of politicians; god knows if there was any DOUBT about the personal integrity of a check-out clerk they would not have a job, even if there was no basis to the doubts. Somehow a politician can have doubts over his factual, financial or sexual honesty, and stay in office!
Randomly selected statistically sound groups would be selected for participating in a vote on a topic.
Ahh, here's the rub. Who does the "random" sample? Who makes sure they are "statistically sound"? How do we keep whatever process/person that is, free from corruption? Even more important than that is, who selects the topics to vote on? Will that person be elected or appointed. If elected, how is that more fair tham a representative govt., since he/it gets to control the voter sampling? If this person is appointed; who does the appointing? ... And so on.
An organiation would obviously be set-up to determine who votes, and to collate votes; this process would be totally transparent and subject to review.
Topics would be raised by government departments according to perceived need by the professionals within that agency. No one would vote on all topics; the topics would be split up between voters so that a statistically sound sample would be polled for each one.
A citizen could lobby for support for a topic; if he gained enough support, it would be prepared for voting by a special department before being put forward as other topics for voting.
Once voted on, a topic would be open to appeal by any voter; if enough people appealed against a topics resoltuion, it would be put back to the voters again with an increased sample size to re-validate the opinion of the majority, or allow them to change their opinion if persuaded to by those against the topic.
Constitutional changes would have to be voted on by ALL voters, and would themselves have to conform to an external charter to ensure human rights were respected.
Having said all that, I do think what you described might possibly work in smaller less diverse cultures where a much greater direct democracy wouldn't leave anyone out. It has a hellva lot of allure to it, just not always practical.
Not today, but I never said it was; hell man, I'm talking a 100 year-long time scale
The reality is that in very large, culturally diverse countries, lots of small groups' voices would potentially get lost in a direct democracy.... even one with the "statistical sampling" twist to it.
In vast multi-cultural societies, electing officials to specifically represent a group's interests ensures that their voices will be heard since the "sampling" is controlled by the voters themselves and not some other method.
On the contrary, in the situation you describe such small minorities are completely lost in an electoral process using 'first-pass the post' principles, like the UK or the USA. Far better is proportional representation, where if 5% vote Green, 40% vote Republican and 40% Democratic, with the remaining 15% being spread a dozen smaller parties, then the make-up of representatives and upper house members would match the voting pattern. Under a 'first pass the post' system, you have situations where a party with less than 50% of the vote can have 70% of the seats in government; not democracy by my estimation.
I'm impressed by your fore-thought about disadvantages to smaller elements of soceity; however, although they would be swamped by the majority, any decent society would have a Constitution in place that would protect them from discrimination by the majority due to their abilty to swing the vote..
And yes, there would be problems; people would realise that voting for low taxes meant poor public services, people would wonder if x % of their tax really needed to go in poltically motivated aid, military budgets or partsan funding of NGO's. It would probably take several decades before people really got the hang of it anbd the full benefits were seen (one of which is the potential of making as many people as possible informed active citizens; you wouldn't HAVE to be, of course, but you'd just pay more tax for not contributing your support to the givernment of the country you inhabited). I;m sure they'd be absolute disasters... no worse perhaps than closing down schools and sanitation services or having black-outs.... but as they happen NOW, it's not actually risking much at the gain of gaining an awful lot.
