The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the "winner" over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!

However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and "democracy" is more "self-consistent". You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by "simulating" the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).

This is not 'not a thing' but it's a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).

However, the claim isn't entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all "Democratic" systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I just wish those campaigning were required to provide policy ideas/plans for what they want to do, and where they want the money to come from. In an ideal world I would give the candidates 0 face time, possibly even no names to the public at first. (Would never work but would be interesting)

The options get a set of questions framed around current events, past events, and possible future events that they would give detailed responses to how they would have, would currently or would plan for those events. No party affiliations known. Eliminate contenders from the list by most accepted answers from the lists bringing it from say 50 candidates to 25, then 10, then 5, the 3 then 1. The election period is 6 months. No prior rallys, no posturing, no ads, and no names tied to the responses so no one cares about popularity.

The President is whomever wins 1st, Vice President 2nd, and 3rd place is placed on stand-by but works directly with both members to stay informed. If at any time a person makes decisions as president that the other 2 do not believe coorelate with the responses they gave to the people, they call an emergency vote to veto that directive, and recall a ranked choice vote where the population votes for all 3, where the 1st takes the presidency, 2nd VP, 3rd taking the back seat.

Would be fucking crazy, but at least itd be more fun than what we have now...

[–] SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I don't think it's crazy in the slightest and see no reason why it "would never work", it's just not a conservative idea. Why did you feel the need to minimize it so?

[–] ChildeHarold@lemm.ee 0 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's certainly an intriguing idea, but its not as good as the current system. It's a hyperreality of voting that would simply exaggerate flaws of the current system.

First off, good luck keeping anything anonymous. And, even if you could, candidate anonymity is a horrible idea, because you'd have even less accountability and more campaign dishonesty than you have now. Without anonymity, politicians have to at least try to fulfill campaign promises if they want to get reelected. But with anonymity, I can get elected and not follow through on campaign promises because when I run for reelection nobody knows which candidate is me and I can just lie again.

You'd probably also seriously exacerbate political capture. In the interest of putting forth the best policy proposals, people like presidential candidates would certainly outsource writing to powerful lobbies that have the top policy analysists and writers. And these lobbies or other groups would almost certainly only offer services in exchange for certain favors once the candidate is in office. It would lead to massive corruption, more than we're already seeing, because at least without anonymity we can put names to faces and prompt some honesty.

Plus, you'd cut out so many candidates. Not everyone excels at writing. Some candidates might articulate their plans best in real time and on a stage (like JFK, or Reagan, etc.). Demanding that everyone only write and publish policy proposals removes the ability to gauge how good they'd be in office, interacting with staff and other world leaders.

Combining anonymity with a bracketed system would also create an echo chamber, where candidates learn each other's messages every round and the survivors shift to mimic the most popular message to bolster their odds of making it into office. In the end, all 3 people will sound the same in a desperate bid to copycat the clear winner and steal votes. Which obviously creates issues for voting again, like the aforementioned Condorcet's paradox.

Also, voter engagement. We can barely get people to turnout when they are emotionally won-over by a given personality candidate, it would probably crater if voting were a purely rational process as @lifeinmultiplechoice suggests. If you take after John Adams or Rousseau, this isn't entirely problematic because you don't believe in carrying out the principle of "the will of the people" in a literal sense (not to say J.A. was Rousseauian, he obviously was not, but they overlap in this area of restricted voting). But if you are interested in accurately representing "the will of the people" in a non-gnostic sense, this is obviously an unsatisfactory system.

This isn't meant to dismiss @lifeinmultiplechoice out of hand, I admire the imagination. I think they're onto something when they point out that technology has sort of... swapped lenses on the camera of Democracy. We can seriously reinvent Democracy in ways that overcome previous hurdles due to all our technology now... we just don't know how exactly yet.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (3 replies)