[Closed] Democracy

Lobbying, billionaire media moguls, party donations from foreign interests, unelected peers, PM prerogative, Royal Assent, unregulated social media bots, cronyism, nepotism and naked, stinking corruption.

Guillotine?

Avoiding democratic systems designed for a two party system would be a good start. There is no good reason for politics to be so binary, but many major countries have voting systems that make that all but unavoidable.

Real direct democracy rather than representative democracy is within our capabilities now, we just haven't implemented it.

Remember, what we (nationally at least) and the US have is weird disproportionate representative democracy, neither are good examples of how to make a system work. You can't judge democracy on the failings of the electoral college or FPTP.

It tends to make people a bit twitchy but I like the idea of some gently qualified direct democracy. Just very low level, like, you have to answer 3 questions on the subject before you can vote on it. I mean, it's a long time ago now but I remember someone asking in the polling station "which party is Tony Blair"? so she'd know who to vote for. Nothing too hard, but enough to stop people from just button mashing without thinking.

Real direct democracy rather than representative democracy is within our capabilities now, we just haven’t implemented it.

Most governing issues are extremely complex and the majority of the public are not willing to put in the hours and hours of time needed to understand the details. California is legally required to hold referendums. One of them made it nearly impossible to raise taxes, another mandated automatic increases on spending on education. The combined effect of these is to make it pretty much impossible to balance the budget, but no politician dares to try to have them overturned. California is nearly ungovernable because direct democracy enacted idiotic policies.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. That's Winston Churchill. Probably about right. Asking the public will just make things worse. Get good elected officials in and let them make good choices. How you get good people in is the problem.

Taking parties off the ballot would be a start. You at least have to know 1 thing about your chosen candidate. I quite like these "who should you vote for" surveys where you answer questions on policies and it suggests a candidate. The greens and left in general do well then. Maybe the voting system could do something similar. Have a load of statements and you say if you agree or disagree. An algorithm then matches a candidate.

Every 4 years we trust all of our futures; health, wealth, environment, jobs, education and so on, in a handful of people with very narrow experience and views and heavily influenced by party funding. In the UK general electoral system the vast majority of votes don’t count for anything, local MPs have very little influence and slavishly follow the Govt whip (that small group of peoples views) and local councils are heavily restricted by centralised Govt. The debacle over the management of the pandemic is absolutely emblematic of this system with very tragic consequences for lives, jobs and education.
We may have what’s called a representative democracy but it’s not what it could be or should be and wastes the opportunity to engage a huge number of diverse, energetic and talented people who could help improve their communities and the country. We can do it better, as many countries do, by better electoral representation, decentralised Govt and engaging larger and more diverse groups of the population to help resolve complex societal issues. Direct democracy has its place together with Citizens Assemblies which have been used successfully in other countries eg Ireland resolved many years of political deadlock over abortion this way.
The challenge is how to get our Govt to accept we need to have more progressive representation and decentralisation when these small groups of people will have to cede personal power and control. Extinction Rebellions approach may be showing the way.

Avoiding democratic systems designed for a two party system would be a good start.

Agree. Every vote should also count and not be linked to a constituency or MP.
1 vote should be for a party whose policies I agree with
1 vote should be for who should represent the area I live in. This would remove the awful MPs that win year after year just because they belong to a party that people want to vote for and the MPs would need to demonstrate what they are doing for their constituents.

But then you will always have the main problem with democracy, everyone gets a vote...

Democracy is all fine and dandy. When do we get to vote on wealth and poverty, employment and incomes, land and access, fully funded education, Trident, housing and health as a right, wars abroad and at home, a credible mass media, the monarchy?

democracy is good. the US and the UK have a flawed pseudo democracy.

Other countries manage much better systems of democracy including dare I say Scotland? Proportional systems usually work much better ( although not always - see Israel)

Proportional representation with a real recall system would be better.

IMO groupings of 5 to 15 million people are the best sort of size for governance. Big enough that you get enough talented people, small enough so that the representatives are accountable and known

1 vote should be for a party whose policies I agree with
1 vote should be for who should represent the area I live in

Thats a bit like the scottish system although you still get those whose position is totally safe either because they are top of the list or a safe constituency.

It's really funding and media that's the biggest problems. If the parties (whether 2 or many) didn't need to be in the pocket of lobbyists and a super wealthy few for campaign funding, then policies would naturally swing to those that benefitted the majority. Ending the FPTP and electoral college systems would be the second biggest improvements.

I have posted this a couple of times already this week, I really suggest anyone interested in the subject watches it.

The job of government is to keep people safe from external and existential threats, demonstrably improving the quality of life for the majority of its citizens. There's one country that's managed that on an historic scale - but it's not a democracy...and most Western democracies seem to be failing on both counts.

The job of government is to keep people safe from external and existential threats, demonstrably improving the quality of life for the majority of its citizens. There’s one country that’s managed that on an historic scale – but it’s not a democracy…and most Western democracies seem to be failing on both counts.

People vote with their feet. Millions of people risk their lives to flee undemocratic countries in order to settle in the wealthier democracies where they are safe from torture and murder by despotic rulers. Democracy will never be perfect because people aren't perfect, but Western democracies are by far the best places to live that humans have ever had throughout all of history.

They're fleeing for democracy? Is Britain seen as more democratic than France? They're more likely just fleeing and, preferably, to a richer country. Loads of undemocratic countries have significant migrant populations, loads of migrants don't engage with parliamentary politics.

People have also fled democracies bombed out and/or economically blockaded by wealthier democracies, because they didn't like the answer the democratic process provided.

They'd happily buy into the China dream - if China let them.

One of the things I like about being over here in Sweden is that the politics is more varied. Two party politics is not a thing here and the democracy that is our system is made up of a large number of parties in firm and loose coalitions.

The more I think about it, the more that the potential break up of both Labour and Conservative parties into smaller, more varied groups could help the U.K. If the Tories split into an ERG/Brexit party, a less pro-Brexit party and a more centrist Conservative group, and Labour did something similar with a centrist “New Labour” party, maybe a more traditional union-focussed party and another holding the more Corbyn-style members, there would be flavour of each party that almost anyone could vote for.

The problem could then be way that politicians work together and where that would put the political power.

Public subsidies are the major source of party funds in Sweden. At the national level they provide 80 to 90 per cent of the major parties' annual revenue.

Parties not beholden to lobbyists and/or a rich few.

Can't remember his name, but a comedian I heard at the Fringe once joked about "people should be allowed to vote on X-Factor or in elections......but not both". Said in jest but there's a lot of truth in it. A large swathe of the populace lacks the experience, the education and the intelligence to be permitted a say in how the country is governed.

If I am ill I seek the opinion of skilled doctors and nurses. If my car is broken I ask advice from car mechanics who have trained for years to do the job. I don't just ask a selection of random blokes in the street.

Personally I'd rather see voting restricted to, say, the top 10% of the population. Or better still the country run by maybe 1,000 specially selected people with no party affiliations. It'll never happen, but at the very least I would like to see the party system scrapped and a pyramid system of democracy in its place.

Democracy is fine. Our version of it probably isn't. Restrict lobbying firms, restrict donations which probably means we have to give public money to groups like "Revoke UK" (Farage's new party).. and reform the Lords; would probably go some way to help; all of which would be publicly unpopular with the same sort of folk who voted to leave the EU... When large groups of the population don't understand empiricism*, then you're starting from a low point TBH...I think you'd have to constitute some sort of education reform to teach critical thinking, personal finance, national politics and so on to get a more rounded citizens coming into public life...

I think reforming our forms of democracy is like that Joke about seeking directions in Rural Ireland..."How do I get to Dublin? Well, I wouldn't start from here..."

*not sentence our 17th C forebears would have believed possible I'd have thought.

Personally I’d rather see voting restricted to, say, the top 10% of the population.

What do you mean by top 10%? The wealthiest, those with the highest academic achievement? Random 10% each time?

I like the idea of having to answer a series of simple questions that then gives you a choice of who to vote for based on the answers. I bet a lot of folks who vote for a party because they’re entrenched in being Conservative or Labour would get a shock when that party or representative of said party isn’t an option for them.

What do you mean by top 10%? The wealthiest, those with the highest academic achievement? Random 10% each time?

Well it certainly wouldn't be wealth. To be honest as it's very unlikely to happen I haven't given it too much in-depth thought, although it is a genuinely held belief. It would be based loosely on intelligence, though experience also counts for a lot. How it would be done in practice would require much consideration.

It tends to be the sort of thing seen mainly in science fiction, and dystopian science fiction rather than utopian it has to be said.

Most governing issues are extremely complex and the majority of the public are not willing to put in the hours and hours of time needed to understand the details. California is legally required to hold referendums.

In Switzerland I believe for referenda they have community engagement seminar/workshops on the issue involved in local village halls etc, so that people are genuinely aware of the pros and cons. Would never work here but seems like a good idea.

Personally I don't see anything wrong with people having to answer a few questions on basic facts regarding politics/government, and critical thinking/ability to recognise bias etc. Yes it would be fraught with difficulty trying to set it up and agree on the questions but the dominance of social media combined with amoral populism and an ill-informed population we have now makes our democracy pretty much bankrupt.

The issue with democracy is you are giving many people who are thick as pig shit, racist, gullible or too self serving to see the bigger picture, the chance to say how the country is run.

Look at Brexit. People who would struggle to tie their own shoe laces, getting a vote on the future direction of the country, and making their decision based on lies that were obvious to an even half intelligent person.

The US election is another great example. A quick glance at the lunatics on Twitter tells me none of those people should be allowed to vote on an election

The death of democracy is much exaggerated, but mostly by the likes of China, Russia and latterly Belorussia. I don’t think there is really too much we can learn from those countries!

You’ve only got to look at our parish council locally to see that the country’s going to always be in trouble politically...

It’s important that we all have the opportunity to have a say in our future but there should be some effort required on our part to understand what we actually want and how it might be delivered. I’m for a review of the fptp system and think pr or whatever must give us a better chance as a country. I like the idea of a parliament of people working together to sort the country out without all the bickering and point scoring and pocket lining of donors etc.

I like the idea of some algorithm based voting system that tells you who you really need to vote for if you want x for example. Also the splitting of the vote for the party and for your local mp would be a start. Our local mps are chimps. They could be chimps and still get elected. My vote locally has hardly any value as a result. I always vote but always think why do I bother. It shouldn’t be like that.

Democracy is all fine and dandy. When do we get to vote on wealth and poverty, employment and incomes, land and access, fully funded education, Trident, housing and health as a right, wars abroad and at home, a credible mass media, the monarchy?

That's what we do vote for. It's just hidden amongst the other shit.

Some good points made about a government's job is to protect the population, central funding to reduce the buying of votes, some sort of PR. Political processes and democracy have to be properly taught in schools, we have to educate the voters.

I'd like to see parties talking about how society should look in 20 years time. We need long term generational planning to overcome 2-3 generations of societal neglect/mission creep since the welfare state was created. Tell me what benefit a tax rise will bring in terms of providing affordable housing, educational opportunities and training, economic expansion, social care etc that will see a reduced long term need for welfare, law and order etc.

Stop the short termism if politicians and the electorate

Well it certainly wouldn’t be wealth. To be honest as it’s very unlikely to happen I haven’t given it too much in-depth thought, although it is a genuinely held belief. It would be based loosely on intelligence, though experience also counts for a lot. How it would be done in practice would require much consideration.

It tends to be the sort of thing seen mainly in science fiction, and dystopian science fiction rather than utopian it has to be said.

Try reading 'Franchise' by Asimov.

A single 'average' person is selected by computer to answer a set of questions, the answers of which determine the election.

There's an implicit assumption that if only we could get the cleverest, most technically competent people, both elected and electorate, then things will get solved systematically. The problems generated of unemployment, increasing poverty, armed aggression, insecure work, are all integral to our mode of production and no pointy head is going to come along and solve them, even if they are given a lot of taxpayers' money to do so. It's another variation on the theme of deference and obedience: know your place, we know better, we'll sort it out, all you need to be told is 'world beating' and an alliterative pattern of three.

The problem isn't democracy, it's the representative nature of it where a tiny number of people are handed disproportionate power to make decisions which affect everyone else. If we elect the wrong people, then we're stuck with them until the next election, and as we see time and again, the damage they can do in that time is immense.

If we moved to a more federalised system with delegates instead of representatives then power would more equally shared, and decisions would be more relevant and accountable to the wider population. It needs a much greater degree of participation from the general population, far beyond putting a cross in a box every few years, but the technology exists to enable this now so there's very little excuse not to do it. The main reason it won't happen though is that it makes the political industry largely redundant, and it takes power away from those who currently have a monopoly on it.

Democracy is only as strong as the people who are in it: If you get a populace which is too lazy, ignorant, bigoted, self-serving or selfish then no matter what form your democratic institutions take you will end up with a bad government. The problem the West has is that the issues facing us require an educated electorate with a long-term altuistic viewpoint. We just don't have that. There are massively difficult choices facing us which require a degree of self-sacrifice and a willingness to realise that the common good comes above what we perceive to be our individual benefit. I do think that the pandemic has shown the weaknesses in Western Liberal democracy, but I find it difficult to come up with a solution that doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As an aside: One little known historical fact is that at the birth of democracy (Athens), there was a very limited concept of the individual in the modern sense. As a person, you were defined as being part of political society. You belonged to the polis & oustide of that you almost literally had no existence. Individual rights were not something they would have understood. Very different from where we are now.

I would support a 'running man' type show where the 3 worst performing /biggest lying politicians of the week would be invited (made) to take part (stops when first one loses and the other 2 are back to camp Westminster). It could air on Saturday night and replace one of the insipid singing shows that they presently give us, win all round.I am sure the calibre of politician would soon improve and shelve the show when we get a decent working parliament again.

The job of government is to keep people safe from external and existential threats, demonstrably improving the quality of life for the majority of its citizens.

Well that in itself is a matter of opinion. This why we need political education in democracies. There are many points of view on this question

As for democracy being crap - it has its issues but the FPTP system ruins it. Both main parties are coalitions of quite different ideas, which causes no end of issues and means that most ideas never get a look in.

There are many ways to do democracy.

Maybe a ballot paper could have a series of questions about policy on it, and your vote gets put down for the candidate that best represents your answers.

Democracy is fine. It's the implementation of it by politicians which is the problem.

I’d like to see parties talking about how society should look in 20 years time.

This is where Labour went wrong in their last manifesto. They laid out plans that should have been over 3 terms of government rather than 1

Voting should be weighted by age. I.e. the younger you are the more weight your vote carries. The younger you are the longer you will have to live with the consequences of any stupid **** ups, like Brexit.

Parents should have the weighting applied to them if they have kids under voting age.

It might focus minds on more than just the next 4/5 years.

People moan about FPTP but it's not without its advantages: here in Spain we have PR, and what that ends up meaning is a list of candidates from each party, and depending on how many votes received more or less candidates from that list enter parliament. There's no way to say that so-and-so represents me, and beyond the top 2 or 3 from each list no-one has any idea who they are. My ideal system would be single transferable vote for a local MP, with a PR senate. (But even that has its disadvantages: you run the risk of parties using the senate as a lucrative dumping ground for their has-beens, which is what happens here...)

Personally I do like the idea of making voters answer maybe 10 questions before being allowed to vote. What questions would you use? Here's a couple of my suggestions:

* If you earn the minimum wage, how many years would you have to work to earn as much as the Queen's current worth?

* What's the net cost of immigration in the UK?

* How many members of the House of Lords are elected?

Mogrim. That's only one form of pr. Look to the Scots system. We have constituency msps elected bt ftp then a top up regional list. So I have a local msp and several regional ones.

That's more or less what I suggested, a local MP + a PR senate. You do end up with the same problem though - the regional list ends up stuffed with party candidates, most of whom you don't know. (And btw here the lists are regional, too - the Madrid lists are not the same as the Basque Country lists, for example).

I do think local government needs strengthening - the police commissioners might have been a bit of a failure, but the big city mayors have definitely been a success. That needs to be extended to all populations.

Every 4 years we trust all of our futures; health, wealth, environment, jobs, education and so on, in a handful of people with very narrow experience and views and heavily influenced by party funding.

Didn’t used to be like that; back in the 70’s it wasn’t unusual for a local MP to have an actual job, as well as being an MP. I was a graphic artist at a small print/publishing firm in town, and we used to print the election materials for our MP, who was a Conservative, in fact Chippenham has had a Conservative MP for decades. He used to come to us because he actually owned a print company in Yeovil, but obviously couldn’t use them, and he understood print processes so used us because we had fairly advanced, for the time, photo typesetting. Not unusual then, but unfortunately it’s become the norm for MP’s to basically choose a political career from school, without having the slightest bit of experience in an actual working environment, completely disconnected from the realities of life lived by ordinary people.

Not unusual then, but unfortunately it’s become the norm for MP’s to basically choose a political career from school, without having the slightest bit of experience in an actual working environment, completely disconnected from the realities of life lived by ordinary people.

Yeah, but at the same time I'd rather have a builder who's been working in construction all their life than one who's just decided to get into the business. Why do we think politics shouldn't also be a lifelong job?

So we've agreed so far that democracy is a good thing, but how we do it is bad.

Excellent start!

Should have it fixed by page 4 😉

So we’ve agreed so far that democracy is a good thing, but how we do it is bad.

Arm ourselves with pedal spanners, multi-tools and shock pumps. Overthrow the government. Replace it with a pedalocracy. Install Louise as a benign dictator. Cancel HS2 and replace it with a network of singletrack. Nationalise Orange and Cotic. Etc etc.

I'd like to see two simple changes to our current system :

Each MP must live in their own constituency to qualify for selection as a candidate and, if elected remain a resident during their tenure as an MP. How can you purport to represent a community you're not part of?

Abolish the Party Whip system. Every MP should be allowed to vote based on their own interpretation of the issue rather than a wider party diktat. If it's a good policy that aligns with the wider party ethos then they'll get the votes, if it's some madmans whim, then they won't.

Yeah, but at the same time I’d rather have a builder who’s been working in construction all their life than one who’s just decided to get into the business. Why do we think politics shouldn’t also be a lifelong job?

Because, understanding peoples lives and struggles isn't answered by a formula or algorithm. You can't teach compassion and understanding. You need people who have lived normal lives to understand what it means to live from paycheck to paycheck, the fear of redundancy, and the financial meltdown when the axe finally falls. There is no simple chart to look up how the momentum of poverty keeps children from further eductaion and escaping the poverty trap generation after generation.

We need representation from people who have lived these lives, not some ****wits who's rich daddies bought their PPE from Oxford, and have to be schooled in lifes basics by footballers.

Why do we think politics shouldn’t also be a lifelong job?

I would have thought that was obvious. For every dedicated lifelong public servant, there are more corrupt, lazy and self-interested w***** who use their position to benefit themselves and their friends. This completely erodes trust in the system and amplifies the dysfunction. The root cause of this is representation. Politicians should be functionaries executing the will of the people, not making decisions on their behalf. I can see why representation was required in the past, because it was very difficult to involve the people in making decisions from a communications point of view. Now it's very easy.

We need representation from people who have lived these lives, not some **** who’s rich daddies bought their PPE from Oxford, and have to be schooled in lifes basics by footballers.

I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of current MP's are the first type who, due to the party whip system, are required to enact the decisions of the second type.