I touched upon this in another topic, and I realized that there has not been a thread about this AFAIK.
I'm kind-of in a hurry right now, but I'll try to elaborate on my thoughts on this later.
jamescfm wrote:MarkWill wrote:The first-past-the-post system doesn't allow voters to choose the candidate they actually support, and oftentimes results in candidates winning with only a plurality, and not a majority, of the vote.
A noteworthy point. Representative democracy which actually represents the desires of the population is a necessity. First-past-the-post will never achieve that and I actually disagree that even ranked-choice voting can.
jamescfm wrote:In a utopian society, it would be difficult to argue against direct democracy. People should make the decisions that affect them. Nonetheless, we live in a far from utopian society and as a result, I struggle to believe that direct democracy would be beneficial. Consider, for example, the extremely asymmetric distribution of information and education prevalent in every country in the world. Ultimately, the individual with a degree in economics is in a much better decision to make decisions about monetary and fiscal policy than the individual who dropped out of the education system before puberty. That isn't to say that the first individual is any more capable, it's often just that they have been more fortunate. Realistically, we will never reach a position where every member of society is well-informed enough to make decisions on the vast plethora of issues which governments have to legislate upon thus I feel representative democracy is preferable.
Aquinas wrote:In the main, I prefer representative democracy, the reason being that elected representatives will (hopefully!) have the time and expertise to seriously focus on the issues they have to deal with. The average citizen would simply not have the time, interest or expertise in examining each and every piece of legislation that is proposed. A lot of the business of law making is actually very tedious, technical, boring and time-consuming...and that's what we need representatives for.
Aquinas wrote:However, to be honest, recent experience has cooled my enthusiasm for referendum, since the last two referendums in the UK (one on EU membership, the other on electoral reform) were not very reassuring affairs. I suppose you could call me an elitist who's bitter about being on the losing side in both of those referendums (and perhaps that's true to an extent!)...but the point I would make is that the referendums were not great exercises in genuine public consultation, the reason being there was a huge amount of misrepresentation, misinformation, media bias and general public ignorance.
jamescfm wrote:Ultimately, the individual with a degree in economics is in a much better decision to make decisions about monetary and fiscal policy than the individual who dropped out of the education system before puberty.
Hrafn wrote:Fair points, but if the average voter is too incompetent to vote directly on the issues, how can he be competent to decide which politician is most qualified to do so? In a direct democracy, you simply need to read up on, say, the advantages and disadvantages of various energy sources, and then vote according to that, a simple matter for anyone who has an interest in energy. Representative democracy adds additional layers of difficulty, since you have to not only be well-read on the issue - you also have to find out which party/candidate's policy is closest to the "correct" one, as well as look into their history to see whether or not they are trustworthy. And even then there is still no guarantee that they will actually deliver, since they will have to make deals with other parties, so you have to do a lot of tactics and strategy.
Worse yet, even if you manage to find a party/candidate that will implement a good energy policy, they will have positions on dozens of other issues that you either disagree with or don't care about. For this reason I don't think that representative democracy compensates for the ignorance of the general public, but rather it exacerbates it by forcing people to vote for "package deals", most of which they may be clueless about, and this encourages groupthink. A direct democracy does not guarantee that people will stay away from things they know nothing about, but at least it gives them the option to do so.
Hrafn wrote:Basically, representative democracy is a popularity contest combined with large elements of trickery.
Hrafn wrote:I know that some people criticise the Swiss system because it has a low voter turnout, but in my opinion this is a feature and not a bug - for every issue, there will be a portion of the voters who don't care either way, either because it doesn't affect them, or because they have no knowledge about the issue. These people are supposed to shut up!
Hrafn wrote:I think that the major problem with the Brexit referendum is that it was a backlash against the establishment as much as it was about the merits of EU-membership as such. Again, a problem with the representative system! In a direct democracy, there wouldn't be an establishment to lash out against.
Hrafn wrote:jamescfm wrote:Ultimately, the individual with a degree in economics is in a much better decision to make decisions about monetary and fiscal policy than the individual who dropped out of the education system before puberty.
Too bad that there are so many politicians without qualifications! I guess the system would be vastly improved if ministers were required to have appropriate degrees. Is there any country that has such a system?
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