Originally Posted by
Chirs
You pretty much hit the nail on the head here, as I agree that the idea of diluting the power onto a whole people is not nessecary a bad one, but that the execution is neigh impossible. The best example is, as I already mentioned, Russia. The wrong people got the most of the power and now it's on its way towards a dictatorship again. Poor Gorbatschow.
I think the execution is not impossible, but it hasn't been made right yet. Like for Russia, if the wrong people happened to get a hold of the power it means the execution was flawed, not the idea itself, imo. I think no one should be able to get a hold of the power in a working democracy, except through a military putsch or something.
Originally Posted by
Chirs
What you are probably referring to is direct democracies, that expects every member of a society to directly vote on any issue that comes up. However those would never work nowadays, since the amount of people that would be supposed to take sides on everyday political matters would be so massive that we woul never reach a consens. Even now, that is posing a problem as the EU and UNO can barely make decisions because of the members having different goals and interests. Even a direct democracy is doomed to fail.
If expecting everyone who votes to first "dive into" democracy and become knowledgeable and interested first isn't asking too much already, have you even considered that even educated people disagree alot, and the more educated people you gather the more they are bound to disagree?
Yes I've considered those points
And I do agree a direct democracy would fail, to an extent (will explains itself as I continue). And people disagree a lot, but I strongly believe just decisions are taken from discussions opposing different points of views and opinions. Every opinion holds some kind of truth, not everyone have the same brain or think the same way, and it can be an obstacle as much as it can be a good thing, depending on how the system/consitution is built. Truth comes from the complementarity of divergent opinions, not their total opposition.
I think a real democratic state isn't something that should be unchanging, it should be alive and constantly evolving and adapting, like us. The system needs to be made at our image, and not the contrary : a rigid system for which we have to force people to fit in.
Direct democracy/suffrage could only be a part of it, for matters/topics that suit that particular system.
We could also keep some kind of representation of the people but chosen in a less partial fashion. Political parties & specialists are killing Democracy ; when we could have assemblies/senate/chambers (whatever its called in other countries) to be like 50% of elected people with a JUST distribution of sits, and the other 50% could be called through "citizen random draws" (like a jury) depending on the matters being discussed ; teachers, scientists, economists, artists, artisans, CEOs, unemployed people etc...
The possibilities are pretty much infinite when it comes to making a new constitution, the only limit is our own ideas.
Also, for a real democracy to work, since it requires people to be involved and active, there's a real need for a change in territorial organization. This is going to be a hard point of view to explain, but countries are bound to fail. You can't have an effective democracy if it's not "human sized".
Like, even inside a country, people from different regions don't necessarily have the same needs. For a democracy to work, it needs to be local actions first : if people have to rule themselves, they need to be able to do it on their own scale.
We're advancing toward a worldwide "order" simply because we can't manage ourselves otherwise, we're too many, we have too much impact on our environment etc... but the solution isn't to have one big "governement" for everyone, but on the contrary dividing it into smaller areas with an enhanced communication & exchange (internet, it's da key), something tangible, something people can be a meaningful part of.
I probably have a lot more stuff to say, but I woke up not that long ago and my brain is fuzzy ^^
Last edited by deprav; May 27, 2015 at 06:59 PM.