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  • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    So actually what we, as a society, have, is not considered a democracy, but instead is a constitutional republic (although some countries don’t have constitutions). Besides that, we have essentially dictatorships, or in-between states. We do not have any direct democracies, which I think could be a good compromise between a stateless society and a centralized society. Here’s my idea for how a modern, direct democratic society could run:

    We have the internet and technologies like blockchain that can securely and verifiably store data that we could use as a voting system with fast elections. I know blockchain is kind of a toxic term with all of the scams that have been happening, but what I’m describing has nothing to do with anything that has financial value, and cannot be transfered/sold/exchanged between people.

    1. Each “wallet” will expire after an election.
    2. Each “wallet” is assigned via government ID number; each “wallet” is given a certain number of vote counts, but in different tokens (one for each vote). One person gets only one “wallet”.
    3. “Crypto-votes” can only be transferred to one “wallet” address (owned by the government doing the election).
    4. The option to vote in person will still exist.
    5. The sender will always remain private, due to the need for anonymous voting (this can be done the same way Monero hides transactions, which is via ring signatures), but the sendee must be public, so that if there’s an exploit that allows sending votes to another “wallet” or double voting, that can be traced on the public blockchain, along with being able to trust the voting system due to being able to count the vote yourself.
    6. The voting system must be entirely open source and licensed to be able to publicly audit and modify the code, so that improvements could be made by whoever can.
    7. The government receiving “wallet” will be publically available to look at in the blockchain.
    8. Each government will have their own blockchain (kind of obvious, but thought I’d state it anyway)
    9. Some kind of ranked voting, STAR, or whatever the most mathematically proven voting system is.
    10. I like how the US has a constitution that is amendable, but is difficult to change. The Bill of Rights, for example, gives people rights that cannot be taken away, even by passed laws that attempt to override it. Of course, right now, that requires a supreme court, and historically supreme courts with power to rule things unconstitutional have used that power to be oligarchs. I’m not too sure how to fix this issue.
    11. There is also the issue of voter fatigue, which is where the idea for a republic came from to begin with. I personally think that it’s worth the tradeoff to have the people have more direct power. Not everyone is going to vote all the time, but people who want their voices heard can have themselves heard. There will also be the option to abstain from votes.
    12. We also need to find a way to solve the energy consumption issue with crypto. There have been other proofing methods introduced, such as using disk storage space instead of computationally intensive reverse-hashing workloads, like with Chia, using what they call Proof of Space Time.
    13. If the internet/electricity/whatever fails, there will be a paper fallback with copies of the ballots available upon request (copies could be made with a battery powered printer and computer if needed). Each ballot will be scanned into the same battery powered computer upon casting. Each ballot will be both counted by a computer and by a human/team of humans.

    This could essentially replace the Parliamentary system, or the US Congressional system, which giving people more direct power over their government.

    There would still be a need for an executive branch (in US terminology), where there’s a state leader, along with their cabinet (again, US terms) of agency leaders, all individually voted for. I believe this would provide the centralized “power” that you described.

    Also on the economic model that doesn’t allow for exploitation, I like Richard Wolff’s idea of forcing all businesses (above, say 100 employees) to be worker-owned co-ops. In Prof. Wolff’s terms, it will bring democracy to the workplace.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Some good points there. I particularly like that open source is in there, it’s absolutely crucial for transparency. It used to be said that we couldn’t have secure elections on the Internet, but maybe with blockchain it will be possible?

      A republic is usually considered a democracy. I’m not sure what you mean that we have no direct democracies. Denmark is among the highest rating on the democracy scale. Which includes freedom of the press, which is better here than USA.
      I am not sure why you wouldn’t consider Denmark a direct democracy, we vote on our candidates directly, we do not have the indirect voting USA has for Presidential elections. Denmark also has a high participation rate, because there are no artificiel barriers like in USA, voting is easy, registration is automatic, it’s always near where you live, and it usually takes only 5 minutes.
      If you mean all laws should be by popular vote, that is not a good idea, it’s way to much work to consider everything voted on to make it law, it would quickly become a huge burden.

      I like Richard Wolff’s idea of forcing all businesses (above, say 100 employees) to be worker-owned co-ops.
      When it comes down to it, companies already are sort of coops, in that they must follow regulation and pay taxes. Being a coop does not guarantee fairness. Tax evasion is probably the biggest issue we are facing now. We have lots of big Multinational companies that don’t pay taxes here. But even a Coop could be cheating on their taxes, being a Coop doesn’t magically solve all problems.
      Here for instance shareholder companies always have 2 people from the union on the board, of course that doesn’t give the power to the people, but they have a voice, and the union can issue early warning if the company is planning shenanigans against their employees.

      USA is so way way behind on all these issues, I seriously doubt even Bernie Sanders is aware of how big the democracy/fairness gap is between Denmark and USA, and Bernie Sanders is a huge proponent for the Danish model.

      I absolutely understand that many Americans want major changes, because it’s so unbalanced in USA, and the 1% is grabbing ever more power. But IMO communism is not the answer, what people like Bernie Sanders and AOC are proposing is probably the best USA can do at this point, and then get rid of first past the post everywhere, so power isn’t centralized among only 2 parties.

      Way back in the 70’s there was a saying that USA was only 1 party better than China. I didn’t quite understand it back then, but it has become clear to me over time how big a problem it is.

      • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Denmark is a representative democracy. And yes, by direct democracy, I do mean voting directly on laws. It doesn’t necessarilly have to be a burden. It could be a system where once a week, there’s a vote held for 1 or 2 bills, and if there is an urgent matter, such as going to war, or if there’s another pandemic and there’s an urgent need for a lockdown, then that vote can be held sooner.

        I don’t think any state needs to pass more than 1 or 2 bills in a week to be functional.

        I think if electing representatives instead, corruption becomes way too easy to accomplish; just slip some cash into the right pockets and get whatever you want in return. Direct democracy would bypass that issue, since corruption would be way harder (as in, one would need to slip money into half of the populations’ pockets, or run some very effective propaganda, which would be difficult if one person doesn’t have insane amounts of money to spend to begin with)

        I’d love for you to explain to me how corruption works/doesn’t work in Denmark, though. My perspective is very US-centric.

        • Buffalox@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          Denmark is a representative democracy.

          Yes that’s true, I thought you meant voting on your candidate directly, without an electoral collage like USA has for presidential elections. IMO the electoral college system is undemocratic.

          It doesn’t necessarilly have to be a burden.

          It 100% will be, people barely care to vote every 4 years in most places, even where it’s easy like here. It’s not just the act of voting, but all the time needed to get familiar with the issue at hand. There is absolutely no chance that could work until we have a work free society. Possibly not even then.

          I don’t think any state needs to pass more than 1 or 2 bills in a week to be functional.

          That would be nice, but it’s not plausible, industry needs to be regulated to function efficiently and have transparency and to not do harm, Industry has 100’s of branches that each need their own specific regulation. Just think cars, food, medicine, appliances etc etc.
          I think Marx too had this idea, based on that without capitalism, people would behave like model citizens, and companies would not hurt the community they are part of. But they don’t. We have unfortunately seen that in communist countries companies actually behave worse.

          I’d love for you to explain to me how corruption works/doesn’t work in Denmark, though. My perspective is very US-centric.

          Unfortunately like everywhere else we do have corruption, but for instance a mayor getting plumbing done by a company used by the city is a HUGE scandal. And will make it impossible for that politician to ever run for public office again. But there are many degrees of corruption, and we don’t have a lot of corruption for personal gain, but more of the kind that some functions have a hard time managing, so they cut corners illegally. You can’t generally bribe public officials, although I’m sure it’s happening anyway, it’s usually subtle, so they can say they didn’t think it was a problem. Large scale corruption is almost impossible here. Either that, or they are damned good at hiding it. We did have a public servant a few years ago, that managed to funnel millions into her own accounts over several years. She managed to get away when it was detected, but was later found somewhere in Africa, and she returned home to face justice. A notable thing in this situation is that she was not just punished herself. The values of her family was confiscated, and they were judged to prison too, because it was deemed that they couldn’t reasonably have believed she could have afforded the riches she gave away on a public servant salary, although she did serve in a very high position. She gave things like race horses to her daughters!
          All in all, Denmark is often mentioned as among the least corrupt countries in the world. I’m not sure why? But we have among the worlds highest taxes, and I suspect people won’t tolerate that they are wasted. Also everybody is paid reasonably well, and you can live fine on a minimum salary. So corruption is unacceptable because nobody needs to be corrupt to pay their bills. We have free education and healthcare. For education you even get support from the state to manage economically through the education. We have decent wages, and although high positions earn more, it’s not the insanity like USA where one CEO can make as much as the rest of the company combined. CEO and other high salary jobs are more moderate here. So you don’t need to skim money to give your children food and an education and a decent place to stay, and you don’t need to finance some huge hospital bill. Everybody has 5 week paid holiday, and we get paid when we are sick too, although it’s a reduced rate.
          Despite the rosy picture, It’s not perfect. Some people still have a tough time managing. But that’s just it, we are at a point where tough times are considered a problem to be solved. Not a necessity for the economy to function.

          To sum it all up, I think the low corruption is due to the mentality here, and the mentality is due to our living circumstances and policies that at least attempt to be fair. Where USA often seems more like everybody for himself, and I got mine.