True Democracy?

[MC]

What I'm saying is that not all places have the privacy of the booths. Do you think they should, even if they don't want to?

[thenumber24]

A friend of mine had a good idea. A political party which does a survey among the people every time they need to vote. Whatever the people decide in the survey, the political party votes for or against in parliament.

A truly democratic party.

this might be one of the best political ideas i've heard in a while. now we just need someone to do it.

MC, if the person voting doesn't care if it's private or not, then thats okay, it's their choice. but i do think that the privacy should be a definite option, even an encouraged option.

[drifterz]

A friend of mine had a good idea. A political party which does a survey among the people every time they need to vote. Whatever the people decide in the survey, the political party votes for or against in parliament.

A truly democratic party.

this might be one of the best political ideas i've heard in a while. now we just need someone to do it.

Unless it's a survey of the whole population it may be biased, not much different than what we experience now with research and politics. They may survey their "list of people who have approved themselves for surveying", only to not have the validity of this list checked and basically being a list of Conservatives/Liberals/other biased group.

[spuriousmonkey]

anyone can vote. That's the idea behind the survey.

[MC]

"i do think that the privacy should be a definite option, even an encouraged option."

What if the majority doesn't want it to be an option, and/or encouraged?

[marnix]

What if the majority doesn't want it to be an option, and/or encouraged?

do you have any reason to believe this to be the case ?

[thenumber24]

People like privacy. thats all there is to it..

as far as the party idea.. this is what i think. the party would have all of its registered members take a survey on a variety of issues. some major, some less than major. after the votes are tallied, that party should pick a person to represent those ideas that were voted for. these are just my thoughts on it.

[MC]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not using a straw man to undermine my question.

The question was hypothetical:  if such and such a circumstance exists, then should we...

so whether or not such circumstances exist, is irrelevant

nonetheless I'll assume your just curious about my reasoning

No, I have no empirical reasons, only subjective observations, undoubtedly shaded by biased judgments. I am not attacking the system as it is, I am wondering about it.

[marnix]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are not using a straw man to undermine my question.

if this remark is addressed in my direction, then my reply is : yes, i'm merely curious, no ulterior motives at all

[MC]

Ok thank you for not being "one of them"

[Obviously]

Perhaps voting in booths should be optional? Or does that lead to the same problems as not having one (in the form of peer pressure)?

The idea to have a party that does what the people tell them, based upon surveys, sounds like a good one - and truly democratic - but it has two major flaws: bias in the survey; how questions are formulated and what options are available - and [if] an idiot population; leads to bad decisions and ultimately the fall of the nation (most likely).

What if only experts were allowed to vote in their field of expertise? This way we'd have experts deciding what will happen.

[marnix]

the  your problems boils down to defining who the experts are
most of the time an expert is someone who knows a little bit more about a subject than those around him, it does not necessarily mean that they really know what they're talking about - they could just as well be the equivalent of the "knowledgeable idiot" in comic duos (you know, the one who talks absolute bollocks who is convinced he's the expert, a view accepted by the "dumb idiot" of the same comic duo)

[Obviously]

the  your problems boils down to defining who the experts are
most of the time an expert is someone who knows a little bit more about a subject than those around him, it does not necessarily mean that they really know what they're talking about - they could just as well be the equivalent of the "knowledgeable idiot" in comic duos (you know, the one who talks absolute bollocks who is convinced he's the expert, a view accepted by the "dumb idiot" of the same comic duo)

I wouldn't think defining experts in certain fields to be too hard. Obviously they need a formal title like a Ph.d, which testifies to years of study and competence in the field/subject he/she has a Ph.d in. Perhaps I don't quite understand what you mean, if you could elaborate what you mean by "it does not necessarily mean that they know what they're talking about". Are you referring to experts talking outside their field of expertise?

[marnix]

because of my experience in handling data i'm currently being considered one of the data experts at the place where i work
this does not mean i know everything there is to know about the subject, but it does mean that when someone wants to know something about data in Corus, my name is likely to be one of the first to come out of the hat

this can have the nasty side effect that i'm taken on my word even if i'm gloriously wrong, because there's no-one available to know better