Random selection is necessary to create stable meritocratic institutions

In this day and age, why can't we just have electronic direct democracy on policy issues (subject to any logical constraints)? As needed, the votes can optionally be weighed by how informed a voter is. It is like sortition, but the sample size is the population size.

It still runs into the problem of rational ignorance. When your vote is diluted by millions of others, it doesn't make sense to spend significant effort on thoroughly researching the issues at hand.

I don't know about you, but I sure as heck do not want to have to research and vote on every issue, and I also don't want other unaccountable citizens casting knee-jerk votes directly on issues they have no clue about based on what they heard on TikTok either.

Who controls the voting agenda, though? Setting the agenda, controlling the available options, is just as important or arguably more important than the result of the votes.

I think the problem with direct voting on issues is that, in general issues are complicated and nobody (politicians neither) has the time to familiarise themselves with every topic. This makes direct voting be easily influenced by lobbying towards extreme positions, because those offer "easy" answers when nuance is required.

I'm actually in agreement with the OP. An interesting concept in this direction are citizen Councils or assemblies [1]. Essentially a group of random citizens get selected to investigate an (typical local) issue. They are given all the necessary administrative resources and are supposed to come up with a solution/recommendation.

They have been tried on a local level in Australia. In the documentary I saw about this, they said that people generally become engaged in the process and try to understand the nuance and different view points of the issue. Even people coming into the process with more extreme view points adopt more nuance.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/01/citizens-ass...

What does that mean? Would you support or oppose the decision to subsidize domestic synthetic fertilizer manufacturing by providing them with an 5% tax break?

Our representatives are regularly casting knee-jerk votes on issues based on what they heard in places far more toxic than TikTok, so don't think it would be much of a difference tbh.

One catch with any such system is that it effectively gives more power to people who are more motivated to actively participate in the process, which correlates with having stronger and more extreme political opinions. One could argue that it is only fair - everyone has the power to participate, after all, and if some people choose not to, they can't complain about the end result. But even so, an endless bitter fight between political extremes is unlikely to result in good governance (and I'm saying this as someone with fairly extreme political positions).

I have wondered this too. Some stumbling blocks might be (1) lots of people are not well informed enough or care enough to participate -- which if true, would suggest there is a deeper problem (2) how to prevent lots of coersion.

But imo definitely worth thinking more abt. It might solve a lot more problems than it creates by giving power back to the people.

I like the concept of “liquid democracy” —- it’s direct democracy, but you can select somebody to act as your proxy so you don’t need to stay up to date on everything. But you can revoke proxy status at any time or for any particular issue if you want to override them.

No idea how it could active implemented, but it seems like a great compromise between the individual freedom of direct democracy and the labor-saving of representational democracy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

the as needed part is scary, the people running the algorithms can just choose all the laws.

>optionally be weighed by how informed a voter is.

Lol, who decides who is more informed? ( at the end of the day, might is right)

>Voters in a liquid democracy have the right to vote directly on all policy issues à la direct democracy; voters also have the option to delegate their votes to someone who will vote on their behalf à la representative democracy.[2] Any individual may be delegated votes (those delegated votes are termed "proxies") and these proxies may in turn delegate their vote as well as any votes they have been delegated by others resulting in "metadelegation".[3]

How this solve anything? I might choose a expert representative in matters I don't have a clue, like health policy. But the morons that do "their own research" will see themselves fit to vote because in their minds they know better. So what gives?

California ballot propositions haven given every example you could need of the failure states of direct democracy on specific policy proposals: monied interest groups try year after year to find the magic combination of euphemisms and branding that will get the confused and uninformed voters to give them what they want.

well, right now all those single-issue morons band together to elect a moron that gets the power to vote on every issue.

when you have a high proportion of morons, there's not much you can do.

The political parties would probably print out a flyer containing their suggested votes for each issue. If you already were going to vote for the party anyway, this has a neutral effect since that's basically what happens with a representative.

Then you would still have the right to vote on any particular issue your own way.

One can always abstain. One doesn't have to vote on everything.