A glib, pro-establishment answer would be that while access to information has increased, complexity of issues and information has also increased. With the latter perhaps outpacing the former.
And therefore, it makes sense for there to be someone whose dayjob is to get a handle on the complexity of issues and proposed legislation.
As opposed to someone working 8-12 hours having to come home and read up on retaliatory tariffs and their impact before casting a vote, after getting the kids fed and washed and put to bed.
Having said all that, you might be interested in http://democracyos.org/
Es un entrepreneur argentino que vive en el Sillicon Valley. Famoso principalmente por el Partido de la Red y DemocracyOS.
Mucha gente lo tilda de vendehumo que nunca hizo nada productivo, nunca laburó, etc.
I think you could be interested in this http://democracyos.org/
I think representatives in most of the subjects do make better decisions than a lot of people, and worse than some other people. But just imagine direct democracy today directed by the ever changing mood of large groups of people. A 9GAG post can make people change the way they look at something, and that's just very unstable. Also imagine everything exposed to the extremism of political correctness. It could lead to ban smoking in your house (I particularly don't smoke).
There are not-so-obvious subjects which could lead to never ending debates. Also, for some things like negociating face to face contact is necessary.
Like I previously said, I can't imagine a direct democracy replacing the whole representative democracy, but it can supplement it in many things we delegate nowadays. Also, governments could open (official) forums to make some concrete ideas visible to discuss, participate and talk to people. Like http://www.skyscrapercity.com/ but official, and directly related to punctual government-related things.
Genius.com can be of help. Another option would be to upload the PDF to google drive or Dropbox and enabling comments from public (users will still need to be logged into their google/Dropbox accounts though). People can highlight certain sections of text and comment on that in google drive.
We can also use http://democracyos.org/
>Obscuring of identity and lack of titles is also a sure way to minimize the hierarchy found in most forums.
Yes please, the whole groveling to mods bit is annoying.
Trying to make time for checking it out still, but just a random thought...wouldn't it be funny to use the whole startup web 2.0 discourse? Maybe make it look similar to democracyos which apparently has received funding. I've been thinking more and more about ways to shift the vocabulary just as Occupy Wall St did (we're allowed to talk about the rent being too damn high and wages being too damn low now for example without being seen as theoretical/unpractical)
This would most likely involve transition to a Resource Based Economy.
In addition, governance would likely evolve into an emergent system resembling an Internet Based Direct Democracy, possibly modeled after DemocracyOS.
Scarcity, Poverty, War, Money and Politics would no longer be a part of our socioeconomic paradigm.
> The Green Party, as wonderful as its ideas are, cannot win a general election.
Neither have Labour since 1974, unless you count New Labour.
I'm deadly serious, you should become more democratic, egalitarian and inclusive visit http://democracyos.org/ and www.loomio.org these are wonderful tools in moving that way.
Also please just consider, I mean just think about, just for a second, as a party member getting on board with voting reform. Seriously supporting it, for real in a way that is binding somehow for your elected MPs unlike in the past. It's like Labour would rather be second most of the time to the Tories with the odd sniff of power than risk becoming irrelevant in a more democratic system.
If you can't transform the Labour party into something relevant then you should leave it.
Yes. In Argentina, there was actually a political party that formed over the notion that the elected rep would only vote on bills according to constituent votes on an app.
It's at www.democracyos.org
Here's a TED talk behind its creation.
^edit: ^spelling
There is a tool that Argentinians use for the Internet Democracy:
It has 44 developers and over 4.5k commits. Podemos could participate in that, for synergistic reasons:
https://github.com/DemocracyOS/democracyos
As of now, the Podemos tool has half of the numbers that Democracy OS has, I think we are getting to see the real beginning of an organized Internet Democracy from multiple countries.
https://github.com/AyuntamientoMadrid/participacion
Until now, only the Debian project did have democratic decisions on a large scale and manged to survive for a long time. Podemos could learn from Debian and from Democracy OS.
One big reason is because of this. As well I personally believe the forced bipartisan dichotomy guarantees a president loyal only to the corporations that back him or her. The US has the technology to provide an Internet-based direct democracy system, similar to DemocracyOS, which removes the need for professional politicians and elected officials in government. By abstaining I aim to protest the legitimacy of the president I feel is elected for us by corporate interests and bring awareness to alternative solutions in governance.
A couple ways:
DemocracyOS is framework for an internet-based direct democracy system that could remove the obligation or requirement for representatives and professional politicians.
A Resource Based Economy is one that would rely on real time global data for the most efficient distribution of resources across the planet, built on the Internet & big data.
We could also have the collective Internet draft a binding Global Peace Treaty and push to have a majority of the planet e-sign. This one is a little out of the box.
I believe it is yet to come... Internet-based direct democracy governance worldwide. Check out DemocracyOS as a model: when combined with the security of quantum computing this will eliminate the need for elected representatives.
Si el problema fuese posible de solucionar haciendo una versión mejor, entonces hoy en día se puede hacer el código público y que aporten mejoras y auditorías todos los votantes que quieran y puedan (y si queres eso tenés http://democracyos.org)... pero la gente más capacitada lo que pide es que se prohiba todo tipo de voto y conteo conteo electrónico porque es vulnerable en su totalidad por poca gente que no tiene que ser parte del proceso electoral, en vez de la opción de voto y conteo manual donde necesitas varios miles de personas que si lo sean haciendo fraude por todo el territorio para alterar los resultados de forma significativa.
>So even in the very best of cases, you have a big community around a core that is still as vulnerable to corruption as anything else is today.
We actually have the solution to this problem these days: blockchain technology. Unfortunately, no one quite understands how it works... These poor guys still can't even figure it out: http://democracyos.org/
Decentralized organizations require trust by computation.
Yes, of course you can ;)
The blockchain has a lot of possibilities... and of course it can be used as a secure way to vote.
Take a look to this interesting platform: http://democracyos.org (some days ago someone posted the link on r/bitcoin too)
Very interesting project, as all the ones that are blockchain-related!
No se si ya conocen http://democracyos.org/ es el sistema del que la chica habla en el video.
Es como un reddit político, es open source.
Personalmente creo que la democracia digital es el camino.
Hey paco,
Allow me to clear some assumptions that you've made:
I am not a follower of López Obrador, neither have I ever voted for him. Nor am I asking the president to resign.
Now I respectfully disagree with the statement that we had clean elections: There are taped testimonies of people who were paid for voting, exceeding campaign budget caps, using State budget for a candidates propaganda (at least in DF, we saw A LOT of propaganda for EPN when he was governor, likewise we see propaganda for governor velasco now). Along with why not, testimony of cartels or armed man "taking custody" in voting centers so you could not vote for candidates that are against such men interests. So what does it mean when all/most parties play dirty in elections, and politicians in general? :/
Im also inclined to correct your assumption that México lives in a democracy: the political parties act as a shared monopoly. Most if not all parties hold this political power, for their best interests.
Am I overstepping or making wrong assumptions about the quality of our governors? If I am, please, somebody point it out so we can try to back it up or dump it in case im wrong :)
Now, maybe you, along with a fraction of our population, disagree with the sentiment that we are being scammed by this people. Of course that is valid, and I don't think I implied that "everyone" wants some sort of revolution, evolution, change for the better, etc.
I seriously believe, that the fact that we as a society are not taking over is either because: a) We actually ignore the fact that we are being ripped-off. b) We play it safe because we fear alternatives that could end worse (like Lopez Obrador :P)
Now what is my opinion? That we ought to be heading in a way to digital democracy. To be able to "upvote" propositions. (like in http://democracyos.org/ ) And we as a society start taking active responsibility.
There's absolutely no reason why this can't happen on reddit or on social media sites, or in other digital communities even better designed for decision making.
For example:
Loomio
Democracy OS
LiquidFeedback
etc.
In the future, if people demand more direct participation in the political process, the "hub" of main political political parties is going to have to be in a digital space, in order to retain popularity, because people are going to start spontaneously leaving for greener pastures when their voices aren't directly addressed by established parties.
These guys seem to have a solution to ensuring it's 1 person 1 vote: "Users must provide both an online identity (twitter, facebook, email) and a legal identity (drivers license, ID card, passport) and then get validated by at least six other validated users."