This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and it’s a huge problem, but I don’t really see a lot of discussion about it. We have the technological means now for every single person on the planet to communicate directly with every single other person, in near-real time. The only real barrier to it is logistical (and is mostly impeded by resource hoarding). That’s amazing. And the recent election in Nepal via Discord has me thinking again about how the internet could form the basis for a real, democratic, world government. There are a ton of problems that would need to be addressed, off the top of my head:
- not everyone has internet access
- not everyone that has access has unfettered access
- It’s hard to preserve anonymity and have fair elections
- it’s hard to verify elections haven’t been tampered with
- what happens when violent crimes are committed?
- how do taxes work in this system?
- how do armed forces work in this system?
I don’t think any of these problems are necessarily unsolvable, but I don’t know how. So, how would we get from where we are to where we want to be? How do we even define what the end state should look like?
There’s no good reason not to have a global direct democracy
It’s just old sacks of shit that don’t want to give up power
Despite not everyone having internet, more people would still end up participating in the process than our current systems.
Direct democracy sounds good on the surface, but it’s an impractical system when you actually into it. For example, direct democracy can overwhelm voters with complex issues they may not fully understand, leading to uninformed or emotionally driven decisions. Participation tends to be inconsistent, with only a small, active minority shaping outcomes. The process itself is often slow and expensive, requiring frequent referendums that delay urgent action. There’s the risk of majority tyranny, where the will of the majority can override minority rights, and it’s vulnerable to manipulation by well funded interest groups. Complex policies are also often reduced to oversimplified yes/no choices, bypassing the expertise and deliberation that’s required.
We don’t have direct democracy because it’s only practical in small scales. Once you get outside of your immediate communities like neighborhoods, schools, families, the system just doesn’t work. There’s a reason why the evolution of political system led us to where we are. History has shown that the best form of governments are liberal representative democracies with strong checks and balances. We should strive for that.
We’ve never really had direct democracy at scale becauseit was physically impossible.
But now we have the technology to implement it.
We have the technology to implement it. It’s extremely questionable as to whether we have the society to practice it.
No it isn’t.
Nepal just proved it.
These baseless arguments against the most fair possible system only benefit rouge representatives that seek to abuse their power.
I agree. I think with a robust enough proposal, there are a lot of people with power who would be willing to get on board. Some people though… they’ve shown that they’re willing to kill huge numbers of people to maintain and expand their power, and I don’t know that that kind of powermonger can be dealt with gracefully. And I think an internet-native global democratic movement would have to be started by people with internet access, and one of its goals would have to be providing, to the best of its ability, internet access to everyone.