MAD Crab wrote:

It's a direct democracy, though. It's not lobbying if you have to convince the entire population to vote your way, and nobody is really going to complain if you manage it.

The advantage of a direct democracy is that the citizens vote on everything – the downside is that they vote on [i]everything[/i]. If you want things to go your way, you still need a majority vote and people [i]will[/i] complain if the proposal(s) don't mesh with their own plans/ethos – some proposals may make others impossible, or more difficult, or violate personal beliefs, and they're [i]all[/i] going to eat up resources which would otherwise go elsewhere. Think about Neighborhood/Tenant Associations and the like – you may want to make a statue, or suggest a change to the Software running the environmental system, or open a Bodymod store (or just get some for that matter), and be denied because it would "bring down" the neighborhood, or doesn't fit in (enough) with the habitat's aesthetics, and wouldn't it make more sense to direct those resources towards making the hab look more Festive....

The problem with direct democracy is that you wind up with a plebiscitarian system very quickly when you do it that way. Then you are forced with either dividing into smaller units that match ideological affinity (quickly approaching anarchy), or you need to internally maintain power (losing liberalism as a political philosophy, which then means that you lose democracy somewhere down the road). Direct democracy, at least without very restrictive limits (55+%, or, more ideally, 66+% approval for successful votes, sunset clauses on laws, increased requirements for laws to be renewed after certain amounts of time pass), will never actually work, because it makes it too easy to create overly frequent changes.

MAD Crab wrote:

I disagree. But eh, whatever. What I'd really like to see is a... sciencocracy? Democracy, but where every bill has to have a hypothesis - what you expect to have happen, spelled out clearly. Statistical standards for measuring the change, spelled out clearly and meeting actual scientific standards of significance. And a limited sunset date, maybe 1-5 years. At the sunset date, independent groups can run the analysis. If they can't find the intended effect, the bill is terminated. Identical or near-identical bills are not allowed, they have to have some significant difference that might allow the intended change. Omnibus bills are punishable by death, of course. EDIT: You say plebiscitarian, from what I can see that means the entire population votes. That's literally what direct democracy is, so... And I don't know why it would cause frequent changes. Do people change their minds so quickly as that?

The problem with these self-terminating laws is that you'd need some objective mechanic on which to base them, and half of the purpose of designing laws would go into allowing them to work despite not meeting any real goals so long as arbitrary criteria were met. Likewise, what makes a law too different or similar to another law? Do we run it through a plagiarism software? Plebiscitarian refers to a system with constant referendums. That is, indeed, direct democracy. Yes, people change their minds all the time. Brexit probably would have lost the day after it passed, Trump would probably lose today. The stock market's gone down (as it always does whenever a large change happens), and that means that there are people whose retirements look like they are in danger and people who thought "I don't need to vote, Clinton has it." who are now going to have trouble. Compulsory voting reduces the "I'm not going to vote" element, but introduces a lot of voters who don't have a strong opinion, meaning that you'll get incredibly frequent changes. And in any case, unless you set the threshold for a law high, you're going to get people who don't want the law to pass chafing over it. For instance, if one of the propositions in my state had passed, I would've been ticked, because it's a copy of something that worked poorly in a neighboring state. This is the sort of thing that comes up in a directly democratic society. Where do we define the borders between where laws take effect? Because, honestly, there is decreasing incentive for individuals to participate in a direct democratic system as such a system gets larger, while at least with representation there is a legal structure for encouraging cooperation between blocs (especially if you are a member of a large bloc, which gets a little more bullying power). If we had direct democracy, why would I want to be a part of it unless it fits my interests? If 70% of people disagreed with me, I would be incentivized to leave. That might work in Eclipse Phase, where there's plenty of space and it's difficult, but not impossible, to set up a habitat with whatever system you want. In real life, that would mean cutting a hole in an extant country, more likely than not, which would have consequences. The end result is instability, turmoil, and potentially civil war, like we see in anocracies and failing states.

Regarding time limits - With the mechanics of the Commonwealth being automated, voting needn't be a one-time yes/no thing, but an ongoing thing where you register your approval and it's maintained until you change your mind, and the proposal is enacted so long as enough of the votes remain favorable, similar to a subscription or software-flag system. Whilst people can and will change their minds, this change over time can be analyzed through standard signal analysis and processing methods. Automated systems also make it possible for Voting to be a non-binary or percentage system, or allows for proposals to be broken down into specific elements so that a higher resolution view of public response can be collected, so that proposals can be modified to be more acceptable instead of flat-out refused. As for the effect of scale on voting success, even if the entire population can influence the outcome the amount of people who abstain or otherwise just don't care is going to increase the smaller the affected populace is.

SquireNed wrote:

And in any case, unless you set the threshold for a law high, you're going to get people who don't want the law to pass chafing over it. For instance, if one of the propositions in my state had passed, I would've been ticked, because it's a copy of something that worked poorly in a neighboring state.

Welcome to Democracy! This is a trap that everyone falls into when discussing politics - that supported political system will have a population that conforms to the author's viewpoint. A direct democracy, or democracy in general, is not a guarantee of a specific social outcome or mindset - it just means that everyone's voice is considered. Everyone's. Think of the most racist, ignorant or simply most unlikable person you know. That person can vote. In fact, that person's views may be more prevalent than yours. Using the elephant in the room, a direct democracy wouldn't necessarily lead to *That Guy* not being elected - it may have made his majority larger. Of course, in a direct democracy he wouldn't have needed to be elected, he could start making legislation and construction proposals straight off the bat.

Ala Psycho-pass. I suspect Titanian direct (cyber)democracy probably uses a TON of AI/computer power to calculate trends and forecasts political things. But then it gets infected, subtly, and we see exsurgent memetic warfare. Though one of the ministers of the Titanian government is described as being so radical that they consider advertisements to be a direct attack on Titan's economy or body-politic, right?

MAD Crab wrote:

Expectations of behaviour are nothing. I keep asking - what happens when somebody violates those expectations? If nothing, you certainly have anarchy, but also a non-functional society. If something, groups will form either to met out reprimands or to protect from reprimands. And groups spawn leaders. Do you have examples of ANY real-world groups that haven't actually spawned a leader?

Anthropologist chiming in, and yes, we have! The only problem is, fans of anarchist political ideologies probably won't like the implications. We have observed societies that are both utterly egalitarian and likely to remain so for a long amount of time. In fact, these kinds of society likely were the predominant mode of societal organization for the majority of human history (well, since behaviorally modern humans at least). Some even survive to this day, with varying degrees of isolation, which is a testament to their stability; we can't be certain, but doubtless there are groups with thousands or even tens to hundreds of thousands of years of continuously failing to develop any form of hierarchy. The problem with this model of society is that its egalitarianism is maintained through suppressing competition between members. In other words, overproduction or possessing talent above group norm has negative social consequences for members. Societies that use this mechanism to maintain egalitarianism are also incapable of communal violence; a truly egalitarian society fights no wars by nature. The reason this model of society (which we are all but certain was at one point the single most common if not sole model of society in existence) does not continue to predominate is that it doesn't tend to survive encounters with cultures that don't organize their society in the same way. Cultures that do have internal competition (which makes the probability of that society developing a hierarchy, temporarily or permanently, >0) tend to either eliminate these groups through communal violence or catalyze change in these groups which eventually makes them similar enough to the groups that threaten them that they can't be considered likely to remain egalitarian over long time spans anymore. Of course, what I'm talking about here is all based on observation of hunter-gatherer cultures. And none of the cultures observed are the descendants of members who fled a hierarchical society and purposefully established a society without hierarchy. And, most crucially, none of the societies observed could mass-produce WMDs, so all that talk about communal violence and the conclusion that egalitarian societies will tend to either become hierarchical or be out-competed by hierarchical societies may not necessarily be true in this setting like it has been IRL. Apologies for not be strictly on-topic with this thread, but whenever anarchism is brought up and the vast corpus of observed anarchic societies doesn't enter the discussion I get an itchy trigger finger, posting-walls-of-text wise.

Doesn't Locus include a WMD customs, despite their anarchism, and if you fail to submit to group coercion (no WMDs tolerated here, let us scan you for them), you are declared a viable target for experimental weapon systems. There is no in or out group, just a no WMDs policy that majority of folks subscribe or at least tolerate. Also do in/out-groups de facto create hierarchies?

To resume the crapstorm that is this thread, I'd like to point out a quote from Benjamin Tucker:

Quote:

This brings us to Anarchism, which may be described as the doctrine that all the affairs of men should be managed by individuals or voluntary associations, and that the State should be abolished.

Voluntary associations are permissible in an anarchy, and this includes the right to disassociate with those who demand absolute control or demand that people enter a voluntary association to interact with you. The important thing is that there is no State, not that there are no people who have the capability to do things. If someone wants to form a voluntary association to, say, fight terrorism and x-risks (coughfirewallcough), or maintain the habitat, they are welcome to do so. They cannot have legal protections, but they may be able to exert force as a consequence of the rules of nature. Classically liberal anarchism (as opposed to some of the branches found in Eclipse Phase) has its roots in Adam Smith's philosophy regarding the rights to own what one has produced. In this sense, there are many anarchists who would be able to voluntarily cede access to certain property (creating de facto public property, though it would not be associated with all the legal conventions associated with such things in the modern Western mind), but also restrict control over both private, shared, and public property without violating anarchist tenets.