<story><title>Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission&apos;s Controversial Push for Surveillance</title><url>https://dannymekic.com/202310/undermining-democracy-the-european-commissions-controversial-push-for-digital-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logicchains</author><text>&amp;gt;I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s another way to achieve something similar less chaotically: demarchy, which was used for some things in ancient Greece. This involves electing people at random for a limited time period; if the selection is truly random, then the outcome of a couple hundred randomly selected people voting on something should usually match the outcome of the whole population voting on something. And due to it only being for a short period of time, you avoid anyone accumulating too much power.</text></item><item><author>dsign</author><text>I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system. A part of me wants to believe this madness would end. Another part fears that we would try, at least for a few months, total surveillance and bisections as a form of capital punishment. But on the bright side, we would be able to correct for bad legislation much faster.</text></item><item><author>irusensei</author><text>Its just me that thinks there is something really wrong with the way politicians try to pass such controversial laws?&lt;p&gt;Politicians bring up something controversial. Most of the time influenced by some lobby with very little interest in public benefit.&lt;p&gt;To combat this lots of people need to do activism. Those people need to devote your time and energy to prevent such thing.&lt;p&gt;So far it sounds good but after the dust settles the same politicians and lobbysts bring the thing again this time with another name or sneakily group it into some other law. Perhaps something bad happened and that momentarily gained public support, of course with lots of emotions involved and very little context given to the common folk.&lt;p&gt;The politicians and lobbyists are literally being paid for this. You are not.  They can pretty much push the same bullshit forever until it stays while you are devoting your life to prevent it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>breuleux</author><text>Another advantage is that if you pay random citizens full time to oversee the government, they will be able to talk and negotiate with each other directly, they will have the time to actually study and think about the issues, and they will be able to subpoena the information they need to take good decisions.&lt;p&gt;If you want people to vote meaningfully on issues, you have to empower them to cast the very best vote they could cast, and demarchy is basically the only way this could be done practically in a large society. The concept of a general election or general referendum is aberrant.</text></comment>
<story><title>Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission&apos;s Controversial Push for Surveillance</title><url>https://dannymekic.com/202310/undermining-democracy-the-european-commissions-controversial-push-for-digital-surveillance</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>logicchains</author><text>&amp;gt;I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s another way to achieve something similar less chaotically: demarchy, which was used for some things in ancient Greece. This involves electing people at random for a limited time period; if the selection is truly random, then the outcome of a couple hundred randomly selected people voting on something should usually match the outcome of the whole population voting on something. And due to it only being for a short period of time, you avoid anyone accumulating too much power.</text></item><item><author>dsign</author><text>I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system. A part of me wants to believe this madness would end. Another part fears that we would try, at least for a few months, total surveillance and bisections as a form of capital punishment. But on the bright side, we would be able to correct for bad legislation much faster.</text></item><item><author>irusensei</author><text>Its just me that thinks there is something really wrong with the way politicians try to pass such controversial laws?&lt;p&gt;Politicians bring up something controversial. Most of the time influenced by some lobby with very little interest in public benefit.&lt;p&gt;To combat this lots of people need to do activism. Those people need to devote your time and energy to prevent such thing.&lt;p&gt;So far it sounds good but after the dust settles the same politicians and lobbysts bring the thing again this time with another name or sneakily group it into some other law. Perhaps something bad happened and that momentarily gained public support, of course with lots of emotions involved and very little context given to the common folk.&lt;p&gt;The politicians and lobbyists are literally being paid for this. You are not.  They can pretty much push the same bullshit forever until it stays while you are devoting your life to prevent it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noman-land</author><text>I think you&amp;#x27;re basically describing the Byzantine fault tolerant consensus mechanisms used by blockchains.</text></comment>