Irony here is that the law you’re referring to was a proposition passed by a ballot initiative. One of the many issues with California‘a government is that the state legislature is hamstrung by laws and regulations that passed by popular vote through the state’s proposition system. On some things this is fine, but it limits how taxes can be raised and what needs to be funded. Sales tax is fine by middle class homeowners, but property tax is a third rail. So we end up with a massively regressive tax system. Or the time when the state legalized gay marriage and then the voters decided that it should be banned. This is to say nothing about things like three strikes and victim’s rights laws that sound good as a single item but considered holistically are a serious problem that the legislature cannot do anything to change.
Direct democracy (initiatives) and neutered executive powers were the Progressives best efforts to counterbalance machine politics. It was worth trying.
We're clearly overdue for some more tweaking.
After binging on David Graeber's notions about participatory democracy, I've been wondering about replacing the meme of "elected representatives" with "delegated advocates", and what that might look like.
Maybe a bit like lawyers (barristers) representing clients.
Maybe a bit like merging the currently (nominally) separate roles of legislators and lobbyists.
Maybe a more clear division of responsibilities in bicameral governments, where the younger House advocates for changes and the older Senate tries to hold it all together. Like better rules for progressives battling conservatives.
I haven't found any good resources for Anarchist flavored participatory democracy. Thus far, I've been collecting scattered bits and pieces. Am still looking for the people really thinking about the whole.
It’s not what “the people say they want”. It’s what a few wealthy corporations/individuals can fund signature gathering to put on the ballot, advertise the shit out of, and then trick people into voting for without understanding the implications.
It’s a horrible way to make public policy because it is typically based on an oversimplified model of the world, can be worded vaguely/sloppily, often takes no design input from experts, is almost entirely unresponsive to real-world problems that arise afterwards, generally does not effectively empower lasting institutions to administer the policy and make sure it works as intended, and forces additional complexity, confusion, and legal ambiguity when the state legislature or local governments try to work around it with kludgy patches.
That tyranny of the majority as a concept hasn't disappeared, and that the arguments against a direct democracy are some of the reasons this nation was founded as a representative democracy.
I do think there are good reasons to have more direct democracy than the founders had (the logistics of it are much better now), but I'd be pretty cautious of the argument that we should do everything that we can get a plurality of the population to support.
It’s less about specifics than approach. IMO, direct democracy is very poor fit for creating or editing laws especially in terms of taxes, but a fine idea for repealing laws.
Several times I have seen something complex where making an informed decision take at minimum several hours of research. Which most voters are obviously not going to do. Most people are at best following their parties lead, which asks the initiative pointless, or more likely making a knee jerk reaction without understanding the details.
Repealing laws on the other hand is something voters can have direct experience with.
Similar issues are in play, but exceptions are generally more difficult to judge.
Arguing that the limit for arsenic in drinking water should be lowered is very different than arguing the limit should be removed. The first needs a detailed analysis to judge, where the second comes down to more fundamental ideas.
Further, if the power is limited to removing legislation then similar rules can be added if it becomes obvious their needed.
It does not work, see how US Constitution amendments got eroded in time to the extent that some practically don't exist anymore in California, for example.
"should not be infringed" gets to "can be regulated" which goes to "practically banned".
Well, historically it's been the rich and landed though that's not a part I'd advocate for keeping.
I actually think a lot of the problems with total direct democracy come not purely from hot tempered reactions of the majority (though that certainly is a problem at times), but from the mere fact that a lot of governing decisions need to get made by someone who really studies the details of a problem closely and makes an informed decision.
Let's say as a society we're making a complicated financial decision (like, is it in our long-term financial interest to build a bridge linking Point A and Point B). That's a very complex decision, where it's extremely hard to pin down with specifics both the costs and the eventual benefits of the bridge.
So, as a society we put together a group that studies the issue in depth and puts together a 100-page report that's the distillation of their research. It nails down the costs and the benefits in about as concise a form as it can be, while still capturing the full complexity of the project.
Now here's the question: what's the process for deciding how to build the bridge? Do we:
- ask everyone in society to read and digest the 100 page report, make their own informed decision, and then vote on the outcome?
- Or do we as ask everyone to select the person they trust to read and digest the report, make an informed decision that would align with their interests, and then we vote for the person we want to make the decision?
I think there's some benefits to each approach that aren't captured by the other. In the former approach there's a lot of redundant work that we're asking from every member of society. It's much easier on each member of the democracy to make an informed decision about selecting a single person to make a decision on their behalf than it is to make an informed decision on the project directly.
Multiply this across every decision at the city, county, state, and federal government and suddenly the decision burden on the individual becomes a really good argument on its own for representative democracy!
I have a solution for this: immediately revocable vote vouchers. You pick your rep from the pool of all people willing to be a representative, and they vote on your behalf until they make a decision you don't like, at which moment you are free to revoke their control of your vote and give that to someone else. We could compensate representatives based on their rolling average of people represented.
You decide who represents you, directly (rather than pooling geographically, which is patently stupid) and representatives are operating with consistent incentive to act in the interest of their direct constituents.
You pick the tool for the job. A planner to run something relating to planning. An engineer running something related to engineering. A scientist to run something relating to science. Domain experts, who have spent the years needed to actually understand the nuances of the problem. Too often we just get the loudest mouth in the room and their gang of friends looking to make their buck.
In addition to the other points that have been made about how ad spending, confusing wording and public misinformation campaigns are waged against the state’s electorate every two years, there is also an issue of framing and context.
The propositions are presented in isolation without context. Somethings need to be considered holistically. Budgets are a classic example of this. There are trade offs. Any spending in one area means that those resources don’t go to other things. Should we fund cancer research? Yes. Firefighters? Yes. Why not both? Because we also need to fund schools, hospitals, roads, and the entire public sector. As a reasonably well educated and informed citizen it is not feasible to responsibly weigh in on a specific funding item. You would need to understand all the other aspects. As my grandfather (a third generation Californian) explained to me: if you aren’t 100% sure of what a proposition says vote No.
You argue that the masses are easily manipulated by charismatic self-serving figures, and there are no checks and balances to the pure popular vote like there are with other arms of representative government.
Whenever California is being discussed, the prop65 comment seems to show up. Given how ubiquitous the warning is, as I've seen it even on products destined for other countries, I wonder how many people who otherwise may have not heard of the state much if at all, have been taught to associate California with "that place where everything causes cancer".
You see, that idiocy did not originate with the lawmakers of California, it originated with the people, who are, bar none, the most gullible people on the planet.
While this might be tongue-in-cheek, one big issue is that it's hard for millions of busy people to fully inform themselves on the minutiae of complicated ballot initiatives in their spare time. There are huge opportunities for information asymmetry via spending boatloads of dollars, which is why many propositions ultimately come down to "special interest X wants to see if they can pay their way to overturning/passing some law."
Agreed. I'd add that perhaps "the system" is not optimized for the people.
For example, perhaps the people of towns/cities should be able to vote on things "closer to home" for themselves (like property taxes and zoning), leaving things involving multiple localities (like water rights) for the state.
Hmmm. Perhaps this is true, but in my experience the ballot propositions in San Francisco (where I live) are almost as inscrutable as the state-level ones. I'd much prefer to elect local officials that align with my own views so that they can spend time and effort on my behalf figuring out what the right thing is to do.
Really it’s just an issue that the voters are able to change the state constitution with a simple majority in an off year election and there are no checks on this power. The legislature, executive or judicial powers of the state cannot overturn such a policy, and you can write in an exception like prop 13 to make it so that you need a 67% majority to overturn a result passed by a 50.1% majority.
It’s really just an example of why checks and balances matter.
> Really it’s just an issue that the voters are able to change the state constitution with a simple majority in an off year election and there are no checks on this power.
There actually is a check, and it is the higher requirement required for a Constitutional revision rather than a mere amendment.
Indeed. The proposition system is the cause of a lot of people's complaints about California's over-regulation. Direct democracy sounds good in practice, but these days pretty much every proposition is written by a special interest group who just want to protect their special interest.
> direct democracy sounds good in practice, but these days pretty much every proposition is written by a special interest group
I think a key part of direct democracy is to make it as local as possible. It's my understanding that Switzerland has cantons averaging 350k people that have their own constitutions, taxes, schools, health care, even treaties with other countries. These are often further divided into municipalities. People might be able to vote on things several times a year. People can vote to cancel laws they don't like. Lots more info here [0]
California has almost 40 million people. That might be too big to qualify as "direct"
California allows citizens to put laws directly into the state constitution. You propose the law, get signatures to put it on the ballot, and then if 50%+1 vote for it, it becomes part of the constitution.
So if you want to be pedantic, they are laws made by unelected lawmakers.
It may be that the gullibility has been propagating in the time domain, so people everywhere are just dumber than ever, but it just seems to me that before I moved to California I has never met anyone who thought 5G was a way to activate a government mind-control weapon, or that you could benefit from a "juice cleanse".
Why not just compare caricatures and get this over with?
Extremes in both blue and red states are equally stupid. Average iq doesn't differ between states. Education level does, but as any techy knows, that's an overrated proxy for intelligence.
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