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| ▲ | Gud 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s working fantastic here in Switzerland. | |
| ▲ | w4yai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wrong. It has actually been scientifically proven otherwise in crowd theory : with the right setup, the crowd is more effective to take a good decision that the top1 best decision maker. Exemple : a crowd playing chess may beat the top1 chess player, even though the crowd individually cannot beat him. | | |
| ▲ | a_t48 an hour ago | parent [-] | | A crowd playing chess can absolutely not beat a top chess player. | | |
| ▲ | dmoy an hour ago | parent [-] | | Yea in fact this thing has been done before multiple times as exhibitions (Kasparov vs 50k, Carlsen vs 132k, etc). And yea, no surprise, the masses do not win. Even when in the latter case, a huge chunk of the 132k was obviously using stockfish cranked to the gills (though the did get a draw out of it?). |
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| ▲ | terminalshort 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | So do you believe in democracy or not? And I do not mean this as a loaded question because the value of democracy is a legitimately arguable point. If the majority of Californians want caps on property tax, then I do not see a good argument that they should not get it that is also compatible with democracy. | | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | biophysboy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Democracy can mean a lot of things: direct, representative, etc. Voting for yourself is different from voting for your constituents. Ideally, the latter will also consider community effects. | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If you put a question to the electorate like 'should we tax only people whose last name begins with an X, Y or Z?', it's liable to pass. Nobody really advocates for Direct Democracy. It isn't viable: 'tyranny of the majority' etc. Most Western governments are Liberal Democracies - where some issues aren't subject to a vote - partly so that the mob can't persecute outnumbered subgroups. | | |
| ▲ | chr1 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If majority of people in a country want to persecute an outnumbered subgroup, then what prevents the majority of delegates wanting the same as well? You have an implicit assumption that the delegates are going to be smarter and better people that are going to lie to the majority to get elected and then will valiantly protect the subgroup. But that have not happened anywhere. In fact in every case it is the delegates who organize persecution of various subgroups, even in situations when the share of population truly wanting to persecute subgroup is far from being a majority. | | |
| ▲ | thomassmith65 an hour ago | parent [-] | | I refuse to believe that anyone reading this is incapable of remembering at least five historical examples in which the public was happy to treat an unpopular group unjustly. There is no foolproof system that can guard against it, however declaring 'rights' and delegating the responsibility to protect them to the judiciary at least is a mitigation. | | |
| ▲ | chr1 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Direct voting does not replace judiciary or even senate, it only augments the house of congress. Can you bring one example where the public wanted to treat a group unjustly and parliament elected by that same public have defended the group? |
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| ▲ | jemmyw an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | That is highly unlikely. People may seem stupid when acting as a larger group, but I think part of that is that our current democracy doesn't require much engagement. If we moved to direct democracy then imo we'd get some bad policies that would quickly be reverted once the effects become apparent, and then voters are going to be a bit more careful. For example, "only taxing people whose last name begins with X, Y, Z", I don't think voters would currently be that dumb, but if they were then how many weeks of zero tax money would it take to get that undone? | | |
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| ▲ | drecked 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Democracy != Direct voting. It’s never meant that. So people can “believe” in Democracy just fine and still think direct voting is bad. Also, Democracy doesn’t even mean “if a majority of people believe X, therefore X”. | | |
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| ▲ | chr1 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why do you think that similar law could not be passed without direct vote? The problem is not direct democracy but the fact that it is being done in a wrong way. Voting should be done without anonymity, online. One should be able to either vote for everything manually, or delegate the vote to any other person. If some change is supported by 100% of the voters it should be implemented immediately. But if smaller percent supports the change, then there needs to be a vesting time (e.g. 10 years for 60%, infinity for 50%+1). This allows people to either trade support for policies (i'll vote yes for your initiative if you vote for mine, or give me money), or to get high level of support locally and try out various laws on local level. The same site that manages voting should also show detailed budget of city/state/country, where people can see where their taxes are being spent and should be able to redirect the money they have paid. | | |
| ▲ | mystraline an hour ago | parent [-] | | Dumbest idea ever. Billionaire goes: get $10 off at my store, called Scamazon, for these votes (lists votes). And naturally even the $10 is manipulated to be recouped with dynamic pricing. | | |
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| ▲ | Gud 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Having some random vote is hardly direct democracy, though. Parts of the US is mature enough to implement a similar system as Switzerland, which has a superior form of democracy. | |
| ▲ | asdff 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Prop 13 is a nothingburger. Median homeownership period in california vs nationally is only like 2 years longer. It shouldn't be affecting costs that much in other words since median property is back to market rate every 15 years or so. And what costs are we talking about anyhow? Tax shortfalls for local government? Decades later that has been rectified through other taxes and funding mechanisms and we still get new roads and schools in california. Housing costs increasing? I would say the fact that cities today are zoned within a few percentage points of present population levels (vs zoned for 10x present population levels pre 1970) is the actual source of that sucking sound from the chest. | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 an hour ago | parent [-] | | That's not really the point. Prop 13 is known to be a huge disincentive to efficient transfers in home ownership - people will strenuously avoid selling their homes and buying something that's closer to the kind of shelter they actually prefer, because they might have to pay a higher assessed property tax if they did that. These effects are very real and well documented. | | |
| ▲ | asdff an hour ago | parent [-] | | Prop 13 wouldn't lead to those incentives if property prices didn't increase so aggressively. Once again comes back to zoning as the root cause. Is prop 13 bad? Only in the face of inappropriate zoned capacity, it seems. Which begs the question of what prop 13 removal would even do in such a situation? Zoning capacity isn't changing so prices will still go up beyond what is affordable for the median worker. The only thing changing is people won't be insulated from that rise at the end of their life when they are on a fixed income is all. Does that solve the housing crisis? No, but it does ensure more people are regularly displaced from their homes. | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Property prices are increasing so aggressively because assessed property taxes are low and people are significantly deterred from selling. |
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| ▲ | mystraline 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Prop 13 isnt bad. Its all the money pumped in to political
advertisements that turn this from "1 person, 1 vote" to "1$, 1 vote". And that goes to the heart of the matter, that corporations aren't people, no matter what some court or law says. And they should be heavily restricted on speech. (I include spending money on political adverts and similar.) Humans can commit crimes worthy of the death penalty. Wells Fargo shouldn't exist due to their decade long fraud. Nor should United Health Care, for actively denying humans their health coverage until the humans died. Or countless other cases. When a company gets "killed", and all assets get assigned to the wronged, I'll start to believe they are humans. Haven't seen that yet. Likely won't ever, in the USA. | | |
| ▲ | zozbot234 an hour ago | parent [-] | | If you think you've incurred damages due to a company's illegal actions, you can go to court already. If the company is liable and its assets do not suffice to pay full compensation, it enters bankruptcy proceedings and ultimately gets dissolved, just like you're saying. | | |
| ▲ | mystraline an hour ago | parent [-] | | 15 years ago, I worked at Walmart. Note the poverty income, no unions, no real savings. Basically average US citizen, not the HN bubble. I got injured with a malfunctioning pallet jack. Went to ER and got Xrays. Week later, was fired. My paperwork explicitly said I got fired for getting injured at work and costing the company money. Went to 6 different lawyers. Had to ask for pro-bono. I couldn't afford a lawyer. All refused. Why? None of them could deal with a Walmart lawsuit. None. I had them dead-to-rights with a wrongful termination. Double manager signature. Even recorded their termination on my phone, on the sly (in single party state). They even admitted to forging a different manager. None of it matters. |
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| ▲ | mothballed 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Courts can just overturn direct vote anyway like they did prop 8. |
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