Why still need policy

Recently forum Hacker News appeared an interesting question - why to still need policy? It seems that now almost everyone in the developed world has access to the Internet connection. Organizing general electronic voting can revive this ancient practice, direct democracy where everyone has the right to vote, and it is not necessary to pass through representatives (MPs).

People can pursue their personal goals and put them above the public. To do this, they can deceive and mislead others. But the math does not lie. I believe in mathematics. Already have a mathematical tool that allows you to carry out anonymous voting, in which everyone can verify that the voices were not rigged.

It seems that it is enough to do something like "Russian Public Initiative 2.0", where anyone can submit their proposals, everyone can vote for them, and set a certain number of votes, the proposal will become law. And let the experts in jurisprudence has packaged them so that they fit into the law and did not conflict with other rules.

Unfortunately, this approach there are too many objections.

The lack of necessary skills in voting h5> In the words of George Carlin, imagine the intelligence of the average person, and then realize that half of the people even more stupid. Of course, there is no guarantee that all members are smarter than average people. But many will. In addition, the voting people are not required to, and often do not have acceptable knowledge of the topic on which they decide to cast a vote. And what, have to develop tests for knowledge of a particular subject area?

Even if a person wants to devote much time to the study of a question, he will not have time for anything else. And the money to him for that, no one will pay. And his voice will sink in the voices of those who did not want to understand the issue before the vote.
Yes, there are experiments where large numbers of people on average correctly evaluates such things as the number of balls in a vase. But unfortunately, the political decisions regarding the life of the country usually have a different level of complexity.

In thought experiments fiction tried to offer different versions of "sifting unworthy" individuals. For example, Heinlein in "the Star landing" offered to allow to vote only to those who served in the army. But in reality, there is not an acceptable criterion.

The lack of awareness in the mass of the people and the prevalence of populist ideas on necessary but unpleasant h5> There is a danger that people will vote for the distribution, relatively speaking, students scholarships, pensions and grandmothers, instead of spending money on national defense. Or the abolition of taxes. Not difficult to predict the consequences.

When people lack complete information about what is happening and strategic thinking h5> Commercial companies, instead of spending income for entertainment owners are investing in their development with room for future growth. The State also sometimes have had to endure hard times and spend money on non-obvious purpose that will pay off only in the future. The absence of such a character thinking most people can lead to disastrous results.

Ignorance of the overall picture of the intersection of law and initiatives with each other h5> Two initiatives that individually look quite nice, may be in conflict with each other. Few care to study all proposed initiatives, given that their number is very large. As a result, not only are possible contradictions between initiatives, but also unnecessary repetitions.

Too many initiatives h5> Mount initiatives can stop or slow down the decision-making - centipede forgotten how to walk. Set the required number of votes will be tightened so that the system will not perform its functions.

Decisions minority h5> In spite of the opportunity to vote for every citizen, probably most people are just not interested in such an opportunity to participate in the governance of the country. As a result, instead of majority rule actually wish to be governed minority.

Lobbying interests of limited groups of individuals h5> In the current control system occurs lobbying interests of individuals and organizations with physical facilities. But it is likely that in the "vote all" methods of marketing and management of mass consciousness will be able to have a far greater impact on decision-making.

The emergence of opportunities for trolling and flowering of various marginalized individuals h5> Nobody can guarantee that the "collective unwise" type mass 4chan users are not satisfied with the adoption frankly ridiculous or harmful bills.

Voting paradox h5> The paradox of choice is that the presence of more than two alternatives, and more than two voters collective ranking of alternatives can be cyclical, even if the rankings of all voters are not cyclical. Thus, the will of the different groups of voters, each of which represents the majority, may enter into a paradoxical contradiction with each other. In other words, the choice of several alternative proposals may be that the sentence A is better than B, Proposition B is better than B, but B offer better than A.

The fight for the rights of minorities h5> In society, there is always a minority that can not stand up for themselves, and one of the hallmarks of a civilized society - is taking care of them. If you give the decision-making at the mercy of the majority, minority, by definition, will remain a loser.

The lack of willingness to share power elites h5> This item is slightly deviates from the general theme. If not argue about whether to run such a system, and that if she could appear at all - it is not clear why the ruling elites want to implement it. Power and money that attract people into politics, cut off any desire to share them with others.

Result h5> Most likely, we can expect the emergence of a hybrid system, where decisions will be made by representatives of the people, but people will be able to offer their initiative and quickly show their attitude to decisions already taken.

While such systems are found in the fetus and not exhibit any promising results. Just look at the Statistics taken and not taken initiatives on the website ROI . But perhaps in the future, with the penetration of the Internet and the increase in the percentage of citizens, "connected" to the network, the situation will improve for the better.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/247010/