Direct democracy (also known as pure democracy) is a form of democracy in which people decide (e.g. vote on, form consensus on) policy initiatives directly. More: en.wikipedia.org.

It's a very good system that should be implemented as much as possible It's a good system that should be implemented to some extent It's not a good system - representative democracy is better see voting resultssaving...
5 opinions, 1 replies
Add your opinion:
Preview:
(mouse over or touch to update)
Add your opinion
100
User voted It's a very good system that should be implemented as much as possible.
1 vote
Sep 28, 2015

I think direct democracy is the only viable method we have for long-term change.

That having been said, how direct democratic approaches should be implemented is clearly a matter of debate and experimentation. We don't even know what the tradeoffs are yet, let alone how we might rig the system to produce one over another outcome.

I also believe that any viable direct democratic system will still end up having representatives: They will be organic members of the community and recallable at will, but they will still have representative power.

subscribe
100
User voted It's a very good system that should be implemented as much as possible.
1 vote
Oct 29, 2015

The current system is corrupt and not working for the people. Let's do something different.

subscribe
50
opinion
2 votes
May 26, 2015

A true democracy would override the voices of those who live in sparsely populated areas such as Wyoming or New Mexico (there are many others).

A true democracy would enact laws based upon a mere 51% of the vote rather than to have even such minimal debate as there currently is in use. Democracy is actually only another name for "mob rule" and it has been shown many times in history that mobs have no reason, a mob has only emotion; emotion is not a sound basis for decisions.

True democracy has been attempted at various times in the past and if it did not immediately fail, invariably it turned into a tyranny.

Before we take such drastic measures as eliminating our representative government in favor of the milling crowd, we really should make a study of past cultures to see how _they_ fared in their social experiments.

subscribe
::unhide-discussion::
0
User voted It's a good system that should be implemented to some extent.
main reply
0 votes,
Sep 15, 2016

Fair enough. I think a better democracy would be nice, because right now the minority of the population with the majority of the money gets the vote anyways. Perhaps it would be better at a state-level. That way if you live in North Dakota and you think building a billion dollar, 6 lane bridge in the middle of nowhere is a waste of your money, you can vote against it.

subscribe
0
User voted It's not a good system - representative democracy is better.
0 votes
Oct 23, 2015

I don't think it is practical, unless a very sophisticated voting system is in place.

The problem with voting on individual issues is that a passionate minority can too easily be overridden by an apathetic majority. That is, if a small subset really wants something, they should be able to register that their opinion on that issue is very important to them.

This is the way it generally works in negotiation, people are able to prioritize their wishes and compromise on those things that they don't feel strongly about. If you are just voting on issues directly, this doesn't tend to happen. Representative democracy, while far from perfect, does allow this to happen.

There are also a lot of other practical issues with direct democracy, such as who gets to word the questions, and how many things actually get voted on.

subscribe
0
User voted It's not a good system - representative democracy is better.
0 votes
Dec 19, 2016

Unless there are some very strong rights laws, a direct democracy would be the worst thing to every happen. Otherwise the majority would trample over the right of anyone who wasn't in the majority. Don't belong to x group, can't get a job, or vote, or....

subscribe
Add your opinion
Challenge someone to answer this topic:
Invite an OpiWiki user:
OR
Invite your friend via email:
OR
Share it: