[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1304276694' post='4805148']
It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.
[/quote]

a 50/50 distribution of who picks the questions only work if you have a 2 party system and a solid education system, 2 party systems are just one step above 1 party systems and aren't really something to strive for.

The point of democracy isn't to have an effective government, its to avoid having a truly bad government, By giving a small intellectual elite more voting power you'll effectivly increase the risk of getting a truly bad government as a far larger number of peoples opinions can be ignored and once the step has been taken to remove or reduce voting rights for some people you can always push it further. (If the bottom 10% of the eligible voters lose their voting rights the top 90% benefit by getting more power for themselves, convincing the top 90% that more power for them is a good thing isn't necessarily that difficult)

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1304290814' post='4805193']
[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1304276694' post='4805148']
It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.
[/quote]

a 50/50 distribution of who picks the questions only work if you have a 2 party system and a solid education system, 2 party systems are just one step above 1 party systems and aren't really something to strive for.

The point of democracy isn't to have an effective government, its to avoid having a truly bad government, By giving a small intellectual elite more voting power you'll effectivly increase the risk of getting a truly bad government as a far larger number of peoples opinions can be ignored and once the step has been taken to remove or reduce voting rights for some people you can always push it further. (If the bottom 10% of the eligible voters lose their voting rights the top 90% benefit by getting more power for themselves, convincing the top 90% that more power for them is a good thing isn't necessarily that difficult)
[/quote]

No, my use of left and right may have made it sound like I was taking about parties but what I was actually meaning was proponent and opponent. The ideal open source government would not have parties... Also your point is null because we don't need the opinions of idiots... If you really think people who have no knowledge on a topic should be allowed to vote on it then you've lost all credibility in my mind.

[quote name='SimonForsman' timestamp='1304293650' post='4805205']
[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1304290814' post='4805193']
[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1304276694' post='4805148']
It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.
[/quote]

a 50/50 distribution of who picks the questions only work if you have a 2 party system and a solid education system, 2 party systems are just one step above 1 party systems and aren't really something to strive for.

The point of democracy isn't to have an effective government, its to avoid having a truly bad government, By giving a small intellectual elite more voting power you'll effectivly increase the risk of getting a truly bad government as a far larger number of peoples opinions can be ignored and once the step has been taken to remove or reduce voting rights for some people you can always push it further. (If the bottom 10% of the eligible voters lose their voting rights the top 90% benefit by getting more power for themselves, convincing the top 90% that more power for them is a good thing isn't necessarily that difficult)
[/quote]

No, my use of left and right may have made it sound like I was taking about parties but what I was actually meaning was proponent and opponent. The ideal open source government would not have parties... Also your point is null because we don't need the opinions of idiots... If you really think people who have no knowledge on a topic should be allowed to vote on it then you've lost all credibility in my mind.
[/quote]

The problem is that there is always people with more knowledge and once you've excluded the "idiots" from voting nothing really changes, the average intelligence of voters will have gone up but those who were previously considered to be of average intelligence will now be your new "idiot" voters, the natural next step is to exclude those to get better decisions.

Your attitude towards democracy is horrible, Once a small enough number of people has voting rights its easy enough to change the requirement from being "intelligent or knowledgable in the specific field" to being a descendant of someone with voting rights. (Who in their right mind wouldn't secure voting rights for their offspring if given the chance ?), We tried this in europe allready, we called it Monarchy, while it did lead to some nations being incredibly powerful during some periods i can't say its something i want to go back to.

I think voting reform will do far more than restructuring the government. A large part of the problem with the 2 party system is that people feel like a vote for someone who isn't in one of the two parties is a vote wasted. Ideally no vote should be wasted. This problem causes people to vote for people who are not their ideal candidate and we get stuck with what we have now; everybody in the government hating each other, and everybody outside the government hating the government.

[quote name='SimonForsman' timestamp='1304293650' post='4805205']
[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1304290814' post='4805193']
[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1304276694' post='4805148']
It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.
[/quote]

a 50/50 distribution of who picks the questions only work if you have a 2 party system and a solid education system, 2 party systems are just one step above 1 party systems and aren't really something to strive for.

The point of democracy isn't to have an effective government, its to avoid having a truly bad government, By giving a small intellectual elite more voting power you'll effectivly increase the risk of getting a truly bad government as a far larger number of peoples opinions can be ignored and once the step has been taken to remove or reduce voting rights for some people you can always push it further. (If the bottom 10% of the eligible voters lose their voting rights the top 90% benefit by getting more power for themselves, convincing the top 90% that more power for them is a good thing isn't necessarily that difficult)
[/quote]

No, my use of left and right may have made it sound like I was taking about parties but what I was actually meaning was proponent and opponent. The ideal open source government would not have parties... Also your point is null because we don't need the opinions of idiots... If you really think people who have no knowledge on a topic should be allowed to vote on it then you've lost all credibility in my mind.
[/quote]


I can agree with an ideal thought that we don't want the opinions of idiots making the decisions, but how do denote "no knowledge" on a topic? What level of knowledge is the bar set at?




How do you stop parties from forming? The concept is extremely natural for humans to try to associate themselves with like-minded people. Call them gangs, clubs, cults, organizations, klans, religions, parties or what have you, but people gravitate to these kinds of groups. I don't see how you can stop the forming; your governmental design would just need to be able to function with them in play.

[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1304294382' post='4805209']
[quote name='SimonForsman' timestamp='1304293650' post='4805205']
[quote name='SteveDeFacto' timestamp='1304290814' post='4805193']
[quote name='Khaiy' timestamp='1304276694' post='4805148']
It also really doesn't resolve issues of knowing what you're talking about. Currently, we have a mass of voters (half the population in an election with good turnout) who really don't understand many (if any) issues at stake. These voters elect a representative who also doesn't really understand many (if any) issues at stake. These representatives then pass sweeping and binding legislation based on their own feelings and opinions of things that they don't know anything about, at all. My current favorite example of this is Joe Barton saying that wind energy could exacerbate global warming by stopping wind, which is god's way of distributing heat. It doesn't matter what else Joe might know about in governance-- he is still able impact a discussion in which he can spew this nonsense which clearly shows that he doesn't understand a single thing about that discussion.

I'm not necessarily advocating for a technocracy. But I am saying that the "collective wisdom of society" can only have a beneficial policy result if people who know what the hell they're talking about get their way over the multitudes who don't. Otherwise we end up with a huge pool of ignorant people directly altering policy because of anything but relevant and accurate knowledge. How much does the average person know about modern economics? Finance? Law? Chemistry? Ecology? Climatology? Hell, in the US there are a lot of people who have a very weak grasp on civics.

Even if we could resolve the massive logistic challenges of such a system, I think that it would be corrupted and ineffective anyhow.

I actually thought about a solution to this. Simply require voters to take a test of facts where 50% of the questions are from the right and the other 50% are from the left. You can either base the value of their vote on the percentage of correctly answered questions or reject all votes that are below a requirement of correctly answered questions. Either way you effectively solve this problem.
[/quote]

a 50/50 distribution of who picks the questions only work if you have a 2 party system and a solid education system, 2 party systems are just one step above 1 party systems and aren't really something to strive for.

The point of democracy isn't to have an effective government, its to avoid having a truly bad government, By giving a small intellectual elite more voting power you'll effectivly increase the risk of getting a truly bad government as a far larger number of peoples opinions can be ignored and once the step has been taken to remove or reduce voting rights for some people you can always push it further. (If the bottom 10% of the eligible voters lose their voting rights the top 90% benefit by getting more power for themselves, convincing the top 90% that more power for them is a good thing isn't necessarily that difficult)
[/quote]

No, my use of left and right may have made it sound like I was taking about parties but what I was actually meaning was proponent and opponent. The ideal open source government would not have parties... Also your point is null because we don't need the opinions of idiots... If you really think people who have no knowledge on a topic should be allowed to vote on it then you've lost all credibility in my mind.
[/quote]


I can agree with an ideal thought that we don't want the opinions of idiots making the decisions, but how do denote "no knowledge" on a topic? What level of knowledge is the bar set at?




How do you stop parties from forming? The concept is extremely natural for humans to try to associate themselves with like-minded people. Call them gangs, clubs, cults, organizations, klans, religions, parties or what have you, but people gravitate to these kinds of groups. I don't see how you can stop the forming; your governmental design would just need to be able to function with them in play.


[/quote]


Personally I think if you only answer 10% of the questions right then your vote should only be 10% of a full vote. Though someone I talked to didn't like that idea for whatever reason and said that there should be a bar and I think the standard 70% seems reasonable if it were to use that system.

As far as parties go it does not matter if someone forms a party but the system should never recognize these parties and categorize new laws into either a democrat or republican law. That would cause people to vote for their party and ignore what the law is even for which is what is currently happening in the US...

The idea of a poll test sounds too much like a literacy test to me. Besides, it's not like the answers to a lot of questions are concrete and agreed upon by everyone. If you ask a question on economics, you might get a very different answer from a Keyensian as opposed to a supply-sider. Who picks what answers are right? Who even picks which questions are on the test? Besides, most people aren't going to be qualified to speak on most issues. A climatologist spends years learning their stuff. Most people can't even read an article in Science or Nature. How much finance do you need to know to decide about taxation? What if the tax doesn't affect the voter, but does affect other people?

What happens is that each issue is decided by a very small group of people relative to the population, and who fits in to which group will be bitterly contested. You'll still have political parties trading in votes on issues to push agendas, and power will still be slanted towards the few. You'll still have corruption and inefficiency. You'll have a government that is more fragmented, not less, and slower/less able to make decisions because of that fragmentation.

The idea of a poll test sounds too much like a literacy test to me. Besides, it's not like the answers to a lot of questions are concrete and agreed upon by everyone. If you ask a question on economics, you might get a very different answer from a Keyensian as opposed to a supply-sider. Who picks what answers are right? Who even picks which questions are on the test? Besides, most people aren't going to be qualified to speak on most issues. A climatologist spends years learning their stuff. Most people can't even read an article in Science or Nature. How much finance do you need to know to decide about taxation? What if the tax doesn't affect the voter, but does affect other people?

What happens is that each issue is decided by a very small group of people relative to the population, and who fits in to which group will be bitterly contested. You'll still have political parties trading in votes on issues to push agendas, and power will still be slanted towards the few. You'll still have corruption and inefficiency. You'll have a government that is more fragmented, not less, and slower/less able to make decisions because of that fragmentation.

As I said before 50% of the questions are chosen by the [color="#1c2837"]proponents and the other 50% by the opponents. On top of that all questions must be based on independent studies. What is wrong with the issues being decided by our brightest minds? Why would we want fools making our decisions?! If one party is more aware of the situation then why should their votes not count more? What would be corrupt or inefficient about it? Decisions would in fact be more decisive since automatic deadlines would be in place and even if the [color="#1C2837"]proponents and [color="#1C2837"]opponents of a bill were dead locked at exactly 50% to 50% the bill would still pass or not. A dead lock of course would be highly unlikely.

As I said before 50% of the questions are chosen by the [color="#1c2837"]proponents and the other 50% by the opponents.

[color="#1c2837"]I know that you said it. But you didn't say why it would work. It doesn't show your knowledge of a topic to spew garbage that 50% of your ideological friends get placed on the test, and then randomly guess on the others. The questions and answer choices would be incredibly ideologically charged, since the writers don't care if their answer is correct in any meaningful sense. They just want their people to pick it. If it's really a 50/50 split, the test will contradict itself anyhow. If the measure on the ballot is whether or not to raise taxes, what do you think that the proponents are going to put in their questions? It'll all be stuff that makes raising taxes seem like it's great and boost consumption or something. The opponent's questions will all be about how taxes stifle private investment.

[color="#1c2837"]In any event, they would almost certainly be written in a way (or voters would be informed how to game the tests) that would encourage people to pass. Every political group benefits from this, because another vote might well be another vote for them, helping them get their way. Any efforts to tailor tests to some groups while excluding others (which would almost certainly happen) would be serious disenfranchisement. And it wouldn't be based on knowledge, but ideology.

[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]On top of that all questions must be based on independent studies.[/quote]

[color="#1c2837"]Now we're getting into really murky territory. How independent does a study need to be to qualify? The Cato Institute is an independent group, but whom do their studies always back? What would you do in the case of valid studies which happen to suggest competing results? What happens in a situation where 99% of studies very very strongly support conclusion A, but Dr. Crackpot-Shill excretes something that suggests conclusion B?

What is wrong with the issues being decided by our brightest minds? Why would we want fools making our decisions?! If one party is more aware of the situation then why should their votes not count more? What would be corrupt or inefficient about it? Decisions would in fact be more decisive since automatic deadlines would be in place and even if the [color="#1C2837"]proponents and [color="#1C2837"]opponents of a bill were dead locked at exactly 50% to 50% the bill would still pass or not. A dead lock of course would be highly unlikely.
[/quote]

There's nothing wrong with the idea of the smartest people handling big issues. But there is something wrong with the idea that those smartest people will only work for the public good in all cases. Look at my taxation example above. If the nation's top finance experts suggest a tax deal that decreases taxes for themselves and increases them for everyone else, and then write a test which disqualifies everyone who thinks differently, how is that the best result? The experts might be wrong, and angling to enrich themselves at the country's expense, and now there's no one who can counteract them. Even if they're right, and taxes do need to be adjusted, is it just a coincidence that the adjustments just happen to be great for them and crappy for everyone else? Bright minds tend to take care of themselves, a la Wall Street and just about every politician ever. This system allows them to do that with less transparency and less credible resistance.

I can think of a lot of decisions where things would be less decisive, namely anything which can't be done as a massive omnibus all at once. But things would likely be even more autocratic than what we have now. If we're voting about whether or not to go to war, would you let the country deploy your children for a ridiculous cause to a strategically unimportant place with nothing to win, while discounting your vote entirely because you didn't know enough about Waterloo or geopolitical intricacies of WWII? And given some of the concerns I raised above, why would anyone cast a meaningless ballot in a rigged vote just to get shat on by the smartest (and this would still be the most devious, as it is in current politics), while those same smartest make out like bandits?

A system like this has huge potential for exploitation and corruption, and little recourse for the exploited. You haven't offered any counterargument for this. These issues aren't unique to your suggestion, and many of them exist to some degree today. But I don't see how your plan fixes any of those, and it makes some of them much worse, not least of all because of the veneer of expertise that would be applied to every legislative action. And there is less opportunity for people to protect themselves.

Advanced education in any topic is less about learning secret truths that no one else can know than it is about learning to interpret and weigh information, developing new knowledge to fill in existing gaps. It's one thing to analyze an economy, recognizing where current models are imperfect. It's another to plan and administer one, given that our knowledge is incomplete.

[color="#1c2837"][color="#000000"]

[color="#1c2837"]If it's really a 50/50 split, the test will contradict itself anyhow.
[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]Exactly, we want it to contradict itself because then the voter must be level headed and take both sides into account.

[color="#1c2837"]In any event, they would almost certainly be written in a way (or voters would be informed how to game the tests) that would encourage people to pass.
[color="#1C2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]The questions will be chosen at random out of a large pool of questions and telling people how to take the test would obviously be illegal.
[color="#1c2837"]
[color="#000000"]

[color="#1c2837"]How independent does a study need to be to qualify?
[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]The studies would be conducted by government agencies and if someone is found "fixing" the result they will be fired.

If the nation's top finance experts suggest a tax deal that decreases taxes for themselves and increases them for everyone else, and then write a test which disqualifies everyone who thinks differently, how is that the best result?
[color="#1C2837"]

They won't be the ones writing the tests...

I can think of a lot of decisions where things would be less decisive, namely anything which can't be done as a massive omnibus all at once.
[color="#1C2837"]

[color="#1C2837"]If 20 laws are proposed under a single bill then they will all be voted on as one and will pass or not by X deadline. If 20 laws are [color="#1c2837"]proposed separately then each law will pass or not by it's deadline. There is absolutely no way it would be any less decisive than any current system.

But things would likely be even more autocratic than what we have now. If we're voting about whether or not to go to war, would you let the country deploy your children for a ridiculous cause to a strategically unimportant place with nothing to win, while discounting your vote entirely because you didn't know enough about Waterloo or geopolitical intricacies of WWII? And given some of the concerns I raised above, why would anyone cast a meaningless ballot in a rigged vote just to get shat on by the smartest (and this would still be the most devious, as it is in current politics), while those same smartest make out like bandits?
[color="#1C2837"]

I honestly don't understand what you have against smart people... Do you think they speak to each other telepathically and work together to screw over the common man?...

A system like this has huge potential for exploitation and corruption, and little recourse for the exploited. You haven't offered any counterargument for this. These issues aren't unique to your suggestion, and many of them exist to some degree today. But I don't see how your plan fixes any of those, and it makes some of them much worse, not least of all because of the veneer of expertise that would be applied to every legislative action. And there is less opportunity for people to protect themselves.
[color="#1C2837"]

I don't see how it is even remotely worse than any current system existing today... You've not given any reason why it would be worse and have only stated what you believe without any evidence... To me you sound like one of those people who believe the moon landing was a government hoax or that the twin towers were blown up by the government. I'm doubtful there are any grand conspiracies in the government since anything of that nature would need notoriety in order to gain momentum and would only require one person to leak everything. I don't believe in conspiracies since it contradicts human nature.

Any level of "corruption" is simply due to an inability of people to act as intelligent individuals which results in people following the flock. This can be seen in Nazi Germany, North Korea, and even Libya. People will commit hanus acts without any hesitation as long as it's accepted by their peers and promoted by authority figures. Most people are just sheep and any system that is based simply on the number of people will result in corruption due to the flock mentality. You keep suggesting that corruption is caused by smart people with hidden agendas and conspiracies when it is really caused by stupid sheep like people which make up a majority of human population. Simply because they tend to follow the first crazy guy who comes along.