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Gudyesterday at 3:38 PM3 repliesview on HN

Not everywhere. Switzerland has a direct democracy, which should be emulated by the rest of the world.

https://www.aboutswitzerland.eda.admin.ch/en/direct-democrac...

FWIW I am not from Switzerland, I only live there. Direct democracy works great.


Replies

mhitzayesterday at 9:35 PM

Use of the term of direct democracy feels dilution in that case. It is a significant step in that direction, though for me (and wikipedia) direct democracy is without the middleman. Switzerland still has parties, elected government and so forth, no?

If someone else hasn't given a thought yet to Liquid Democracy, I propose they give it a couple of minutes of imaginary thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy

For some real world data there are some studies about (I think) German branch of the Pirate Party using it in internal decision making and there is interesting insight for those curious.

It be nice if we all where allowed to vote on particular laws if interested, and defer certain topics to our delegated experts. (Chat Control for example, would be a non issue then.)

The technology for that approach has been mature enough since the rise of social media and private crypto currencies (as a means of electronic private vote, particularly around usage of smart contracts for delegation). What about the interest and spreading of these ideas? Pretty limited, to non-existent. Some people like to follow leaders, though naturally wouldn't expect it to be the silent majority.

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ricardobayestoday at 6:28 PM

It probably does work good however Switzerland got dangerously close to "something happening" this year with the 10M referendum. And it was very close, with major parts of the country showing an absurd level of ignorance - sadly I don't believe in direct democracy, the "public" can be too easily swayed one way or another even if not today, but in a few decades, with the right messaging, yes. Although, to contradict myself, perhaps there is no interest in generating upheaval in Switzerland because everyone keeps the money there.

If your measure of "success" is women gaining voting rights in 1990 (!) in the last canton, then yeah, Switzerland is doing great.

swed420yesterday at 4:40 PM

There's nothing convincing in your link.

More importantly, even if it did contain the solution, there is no obvious way for a country with an already corrupt government to transition to such a thing.

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