UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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What your suggesting is called Direct Democracy, everyone votes on everything. But there is a very chilling black mirror episode (pre Netflix, so it's actually good) about why direct democracy doesn't work. Mostly because people are stupid.
Well I mean if we're gonna go to fiction to back up what we try before we try it, I've read lots of books by Iain M Banks that suggest giving up the running of things to benevolent AI is the way to go.
But it's fiction writen by people who have lived in the society we have, not a model of if or how it would work.
But yeah, Direct Democracy is doable now more than at any time in the past, but humans cling to the past. What can I say, I'm a progressive dreamer living in a society of traditions.
This is exactly what a failed republican candidate said about people voting against abortion rights. First google link I can find here. There is a huge difference between being stupid and less informed. The reason MPs can make better decisions is because the access they have to experts. Even then, a lot do not take that advice. Johnson with covid comes straight to mind. The public make bad choices when they are either not informed or in the case of Brexit misinformed.
Direct democracy can work, but the larger the group using it, the more work is needed to inform the participants.
But you've also got the people that seem to go out of their way to be misinformed. The type that post about 5G nanobots on Facebook and post a picture of some water in a glass and claim that it's somehow evidence the earth is flat.
No matter how much educating you do they will never learn.
I disagree. As I said the larger the group the more work you have to do. I do agree some arguments are too complex to field to a large group. Brexit should never have been thrown to the public. However the abortion argument is fine to throw to democracy, because they can see the effects first hand. And in the same light we know which way a second referendum on Brexit will go because again they have first hand information to learn from. This in itself refutes your argument regarding the feasibility that people will never learn.