Could Crowd-Sourced Direct Democracy Work?

maccallr writes "The Occupy movement is getting everyone talking about how to fix the world's economic (and social, environmental, ...) problems. It is even trialling new forms of 'open' democracy. Trouble is, it's easy to criticize the physical occupiers for being unrepresentative of the general population — and much of their debating time is spent on practical rather than policy issues. Well-meaning but naive occupiers could be susceptible to exploitation by the political establishment and vested interests. In the UK, virtual occupiers are using Google Moderator to propose and debate policy in the comfort of their homes (where, presumably, it is easier to find out stuff you didn't know). Could something like this be done on a massive scale (national or global) to reach consensus on what needs to be done? How do you maximize participation by 'normal folk' on complex issues? What level of participation could be considered quorate? How do you deal with block votes? What can we learn from electronic petitions and Iceland's crowd-sourced constitution? Is the 'Occupy' branding appropriate? What other pitfalls are there? Or are existing models of democracy and dictatorship fit for purpose?" One issue I see with a global version of something like this is all of the people in the world who haven't even heard of the Internet.

Re:No, it would not work

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

You realize that there are many people who can't meet loans because they've lost their jobs?

Also, there was *a lot* of fraud in the no-income-verification home loans. Not just by borrowers, but by mortgage brokers who knew the system and intentionally gamed it, representing to banks that borrowers had income X and representing to borrowers that documents Y covered the loan they had discussed and just to sign them.

Switzerland experiments

[jcdr]

Part of many country problem is to give too much power to a very small group of people. I live in Switzerland, where proportional representation, direct democracy, constitutional initiative and referendum are in place since a long time. Those "politic tools" tends to give back some government controls to the citizens, effectively making harder for a small but powerful entity to impose his view alone. Citizens are more concerned and informed about the politic process and get very often the responsibility to vote on almost any changes of the constitution. That way, the citizen tend to think as a part of the nation, not as a supporter or opponent to an elected majority.

This is very observable in the media. Most country new is only about what the citizens will face after government decisions or about election of the next government (if not only the president). Here, the citizen actions are more visible. It's usual to vote to choose between constitution changes proposed by the government or by a group of citizens. This bring some pressure to the politics to present acceptable changes.