Smelling The Coffee: 2010

Education, education, education!!

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Hi Buz, Education isn't about ideology, education is about presenting the facts and let the students decide for themselves. Unfortunately (for you), religion relies heavily on faith rather than facts so I can understand you objecting to the idea. They also remain murderous, hateful and otherwise violent. Reckon there's a connection there? If it was a DNA issue then my answer would have been: Biology, biology, biology! Fortunately it isn't a DNA issue, simply a question of opening up the human mind to eradicate fear, prejudice and superstition.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Speak for yourself!

Things were different then. Today we have the technology to allow direct and immediate voting on each and every issue, without the need for the physical gathering of large crowds and the subsequent risk of mob mentality. There can be no excuse in this day and age NOT to have direct democracy (other than the preservation of existing interests and the need to control the public).

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Just stay clear of sheep-related references and you'll be fine.As to your post's title, the answer clearly is: "They're over there shagging your wives!"

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Yes it would matter. The fear of "mob rule" stems from ancient Athens where skilled orators incited the crowds gathered at the Market to irrationally vote for or against a particular proposition by manipulating crowd psychology. Herd behaviour is certainly enhanced by physical proximity, although not restricted to it. At the time of ancient Athens or even of the Founding Fathers, the only way to implement direct democracy would be to gather large crowds at the same place and give them little time and information in order for them to make a decision, which in turn would leave them susceptible to emotional and irrational mob behaviour, incited by clever demagoges.Today, this doesn't have to happen. People can -on most occasions- be given time to mull over information and do their own research before voting from the comfort of their own homes/neighbourhood facilities. "Mob rule" would be no more of a risk than it is now. No it wouldn't! It would be no different to me being arrested and condemned to death as a result of my violating some current law proposed by government and voted by parliament. The only difference is that currently my death would be the application of the will of a minority while in a direct democracy it would be the application of the will of the majority, hence somehow more palatable.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Maybe not, but the presence of technology is certainly a reason why direct democracy shouldn't be avoided today.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Communications networks with adequate bandwidth, security, accessibility and availability. That's right, people would only vote on issues that directly affected their lives and either ignore or educate themselves on issues they barely understood. Why is this a problem? What, you mean like a minority of 646 deciding on behalf of the other 60,000,000. Gosh, no we wouldn't want that to happen now, would we?

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Ha-ha, see if I was the sensitive type I would now be screaming blue murder about you trying to "subjugate my community" and such like. Oh I know, I've seen your women trying to hail a taxi!No need to feel sheepish about it though.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Is this a rhetorical question? It's not just possible, it's already hapenning. Have you heard of things like chat, social networks, mobile phones, tele-conferencing, SMS, IM, Twitter, Skype, GPS, etc. The world is communicating and interacting like never before. The technology is already here, it just needs to be integrated into a formal, structured, secure, accessible and available system.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

No, you asked what technology is there to implement direct democracy. I've given you an answer. Do you want me to post a 200-page thesis on that? I have a day-job you know! The public of course, silly. The combined cost of MPs' expenses allowances and Tony Blair's pension. I haven't got all day and this site hasn't got the storage. Point is, the technology to ensure that people can safely and securely have daily votes on issues, is already here and looking at you.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

You asked for directions and I pointed you the way.You don't seriously expect me to get you in my car and drive you there, do you?Tell you what, give me a six-figure salary (plus bonus) and twelve months and I'll put forward a detailed technical proposal explaining how such a system can be implemented!

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

Agreed that the logistics problem is going to be big. Not un-surmountable though. The point is that it *can* be done, given the political will and budget. Which is why direct democracy can't be applied to any sizeable population without the aid of technology, as I've been saying. Why wouldn't it? What makes you think that we would get stuck in an inifinite loop of commenting and responding? Not if they comment in parallel, online. Then there would be a time period for the public to absorb the debate and make their decisions and then would come the voting.You're presuming sequential, town-hall type of dialogue. I'm suggesting the exact opposite.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

...err...no....I just mentioned Skype as aone of many technology applications that currently make mass-interaction available. No, the public wouldn't decide on the wording of bills, the public would decide on which issues need to be voted on, the wording would be crafted by people with appropriate skills and the public woud then vote to approve/reject the fully-worded proposal. I have a very clear idea of how it should work I just haven't got the time and energy to write all down in full technical glory on this forum. The point -which you keep ignoring- is that the technology already exists. Now we can start arguing about what would be the best way to implement the system but the fact remains: *the enabling technology for direct democracy is right here, right now!* I have a fair idea but, unfortunately, no blank cheque. I don't work for, nor represent, the government. No, I want to link every person in Britain. Broadband isn't the only available communications medium. Think of the cross-coverage between broadband, GPRS (mobile phone) and digital TV. You asked what technology would enable direct democracy, I gave you applications of such technology and all you can do is argue from incredulity and over-simplification?!!You could at the very least bring up specific technolgical areas that you think would be an obstacle but instead you choose to talk about "t'internets" and accuse me of 'hand-waving'?! That's rich.

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"

This is an interesting video Hyro, albeit in a an Early Learning Centre kind of way, but the democracy it's talking about isn't the democracy I'm talking about, it isn't democracy as initially practiced and as the word itself implies. What this video calls 'democracy' is essentially Ochlocracy, i.e. mob rule without constraints. The fact is that Democracy does indeed have checks and balances, e.g. ancient Athens had some basic form of Constitution and a lottery-drawn representative Council which could issue decrees on its own in accordance with the constitution.It's a common misconception that in a Democracy the majority will infringe on minority rights. This is a myth, no more applicable to a Democracy than to the representative Republics of today. A constitution and individual rights are by no means incompatible with a Democracy. That's how the myth probably originated:

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There's a theory that the word demokratia was coined by democracy's enemies, members of the rich and aristocratic elite who did not like being outvoted by the common herd, their social and economic inferiors. If this theory is right, democracy must originally have meant something like 'mob rule' or 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

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Living in a democracy doesn't pose any more risk -in this day and age- of mob rule than living in a republic . In fact, a non-proportional voting system (as most western Republics employ today) ensures that minority votes are never heard.In the UK government currently has the support of around 30% of the populace. So they continue to make decisions -and will continue to do so till the next election- which are unsupported by the majority. In your very own country the electorate has a choice of two (2) ticks on the ballot (three if they're lucky), between parties with very little deviation between their policies and values. You can't surely even entertain the idea that these two parties (three with the odd independent) fully represent the minorities of the US! I'm not even going to go into the select clique of corporations who (thanks to your system of government) ensure that minority rights are constantly trampled upon in favour of corporate capital gain.So yes, if you really care about minority rights you should be favouring a Democracy, where *everyone* has a voice.P.S It's no coincidence that many of the Founding Fathers who so vividly criticise democracy (as per your video), were Freemasons, a system that is emphatically and inherently un-democratic. So it's no suprise they went for a representative Republic where the decisions and made by a select few on behalf of the many!Edited by Legend, : spelling

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"We must respect the law, not let it blind us away from the basic principles of fairness, justice and freedom"