"Referendum democracy" - how it can work

[Scarabus]

Current idea of representative democracy is simple and looks fine: the population choses between several professional politicians in power. But in fact, this does not work: these professional politicians establish a “cartel agreement” (often even unconscious) and a monopoly of elites on information, and this prevents people who do not belong to elites from going into politics (only Zelensky maybe as exception). Here I suggest “democracy 2.0”, and the main aspect of it is a big number of referendums, which are performed e.g. each week. This system will motivate common people to study sciences like economics for better voting.
The referendums can be performed online; currently some decisions like DeFi can be used for guaranteeing that the votes will be calculated both closed (anonymous) and confidently/honestly. I can explain this later. Here I write the most important idea: these multiple referendums will not be referendums in strict sense, because they will not have a legal force; instead, they will reveal what people want, and the power will have to fulfill the will of nation. If a referendum was “profane”, theoretically the power can reject is in the interest of people, but it will have to explain this later, after leaving the power – otherwise the politicians who ignored the will of nation will be imprisoned via a decision of people via a new referendum. I mean that the people will be able to either imprison somebody, or vice versa give somebody a juridical immunity, via a referendum.

[Hispo]

If you take a look on how representative democracy works in the west, it is about having people to vote once for a candidate who, once elected, will have the willpower to do whatever they want, regardless those actions have something to do with his planning and campaign promises. The will of the people is punctual and does not have a lasting effect on the way a country in government, there is no system in which people engage constantly with politics, only when they are called to vote. That is how those in power feel comfortable and are allowed by the system itself to become corrupted.

Imagine what would happen if people could vote each month on what their taxes would be used on? That would be quite a big impact on the way a country functions, and it would further enhance the interest of those who put the money for the country to function, there would be less money for the military, more money for food and healthcare and less waste of resources in general, all of it powered by Blockchain technology to ensure each vote is valid and secure.

Though, sadly we are talking about an ideal case. The political system of each country will always have people not willing to change how things work.

[BADecker]

If you really want democracy to work, make the elected person's platform to be a contract that he has to fulfill in a timely manner if he gets elected. Have it written up as such - a contract with the people - and have an enforcement group in place to see that he does the terms of his contract.

If any elected person doesn't fulfill his contract - his own fault or not - MANDATORY EXECUTION.

For example, MAGA and DOGE with Trump must show the results that he talked about. If they don't, MANDATORY EXECUTION.

[Scarabus]

there would be less money for the military, more money for food and healthcare and less waste of resources in general

I think you are wrong. In Europe, the situation is vice versa: the ruling polititians did all they could to de-militarize their countries (until last several months maybe), while in Switzerland, several times people voted for keeping conscription.

[Spaceman1000$]

I'm not too familiar with this referendum democracy that you've talked about, but one thing I know is the fact that, democracy deals with the rule of law, respect to democratic laws which is the constitution and a  strengthened institutions that provide illegal framework for policies to be followed strictly. When all of these is achieved, we will not have a group of people or a microscopic few that will arrogate powers to themselves and call it democracy, because the selection process to which people are elected to political position will be free and fair and it will reflect the choice of the people, but anything outside of these is no longer a democracy.

[BADecker]

Various democracies of various countries are all different.

How does one make a democracy that gives the people total freedom, and yet gives the democracy control because it is made up of people? Democracy for a country is based in the writings that back up the democracy... a constitution.

The US democracy might be the best that has ever done this, though the UK and Canada and Australia are close.

If there is a flaw in the US Democracy, it lies in the fact that the people are not required to learn their Constitution.

A second flaw might be in the Contract Clause. This Clause in necessary for government to be able to make DEALS with other people and governments, to keep the US running. The flaw in it is that the government can trick people to make contracts with government that the people don't even know that they made. Government simply follows through with the contract, and the people wonder how and why it can do the things that are not written in the rest of the Constitution.

As JFK said, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." He said this, knowing that members of government had already taken control of the people through Contract Clause contracts.

[Scarabus]

I suggest the members read about the Easterlin paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox

The economic growth itself does not do anybody happier. During last 500 years, the productivity of labor of the planet has increased maybe 1000 times, but the people haven't become happier because of this. Only psychological factors can make the society happier, and they include the aim in life, which helps people gather friends (for friendship people need to have common aims). A referendum each week will give people such aims, and this will end the loneliness and misanthropy...

[BADecker]

Just always remember what Stalin said, "It's not the votes that count, but those who count the votes." So, even referendum voting can be controlled if there isn't enough real transparency.

[paxmao]

Current idea of representative democracy is simple and looks fine: the population choses between several professional politicians in power. But in fact, this does not work: these professional politicians establish a “cartel agreement” (often even unconscious) and a monopoly of elites on information, and this prevents people who do not belong to elites from going into politics (only Zelensky maybe as exception). Here I suggest “democracy 2.0”, and the main aspect of it is a big number of referendums, which are performed e.g. each week. This system will motivate common people to study sciences like economics for better voting.
The referendums can be performed online; currently some decisions like DeFi can be used for guaranteeing that the votes will be calculated both closed (anonymous) and confidently/honestly. I can explain this later. Here I write the most important idea: these multiple referendums will not be referendums in strict sense, because they will not have a legal force; instead, they will reveal what people want, and the power will have to fulfill the will of nation. If a referendum was “profane”, theoretically the power can reject is in the interest of people, but it will have to explain this later, after leaving the power – otherwise the politicians who ignored the will of nation will be imprisoned via a decision of people via a new referendum. I mean that the people will be able to either imprison somebody, or vice versa give somebody a juridical immunity, via a referendum.

You can see how it works in real time in Switzerland. It is quite interesting to see how they vote several times a year on a variety of weird topics that rarely go ahead. I just love the system because is basically an antidote for populism. The moment people try to solve things "quick and easy" on simple yet wrong solutions they pay the price directly.

This has made the Swiss quite reluctant to populists.

I suggest the members read about the Easterlin paradox:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox

The economic growth itself does not do anybody happier. During last 500 years, the productivity of labor of the planet has increased maybe 1000 times, but the people haven't become happier because of this. Only psychological factors can make the society happier, and they include the aim in life, which helps people gather friends (for friendship people need to have common aims). A referendum each week will give people such aims, and this will end the loneliness and misanthropy...

I see...However it is not true. You cannot measure happiness accurately, much less 500 years ago.

But yes... people tend to be happy by "comparison".

[Hispo]

there would be less money for the military, more money for food and healthcare and less waste of resources in general

I think you are wrong. In Europe, the situation is vice versa: the ruling polititians did all they could to de-militarize their countries (until last several months maybe), while in Switzerland, several times people voted for keeping conscription.

Switzerland could be the exception, let us remember it is not part of the European Union after all, they have their own currency and politics, but due to their geographical location they are pretty much forced to interact with the policies of the rest of the continent.
Also, if Europe has started to get back to the arms it is pretty much because Brussels has realized how unreliable and inconsistent Washington can be in terms of defense and support to NATO, they have a very aggressive neighbor in the east and the United States is an Ocean far away from the conflict, though. So it makes sense they want to feel better prepared in case something happens.

[caroasi]

I agree that most politicians don't represent the people, and also support solutions to that effect. Your idea would be an improvement, but a very minor one because it fails to address three major problems with society:
1. Unequal rights and morality. 2.  Non-participation in governance 3. Greater good immorality.

Firstly, voting is accepted by most people as a way to give certain classes of people more rights than others. Unless this is specifically prohibited by an unshakable bill of expanded rights, your idea would not address the biggest root problem of society. Governments lie, cheat, steal, and kill as a matter of policy. They accomplish this in part by renaming these things from lying, cheating, stealing, and killing to national security, subsidies, taxation, and war.

Secondly, people think they can merely vote once a year and their civic duty is done. Wrong. They have full personal moral responsibility to fix societies problems them self, not try to ignore their problems with a vote. Responsibility works best bottom-up, not top-down.

Lastly but still very importantly, greater good immorality of two wrongs making a right does not end with vote method changes. Welfare by tax mandates punishes well behaved people for the mistakes of badly behaved people. For example, social security takes away money from people's high interest well managed retirement savings accounts and puts it in a low interest badly managed retirement savings account. Statistical chances are you think I, as someone who manages their money very well, should be forced at gun point if needed to fund other people's welfare when they are irresponsible and fail to fund their retirement and save money while employed for harder times. This error of immoral philosophy only leads to societal decay, not societal betterment.

I'd advocate instead to first adopt an expanded bill of rights and freedoms that protects all our fundamental human rights, which are natural rights issued by God through nature. The underlying philosophy there is that authority emerges from virtue and value, assigning the highest virtue and value to our creator and their physics of life, neither popularity nor physical strength.

I also suggest a major change to your idea that would eliminate the need for everyone to constantly vote on issues. I'd suggest that any given person can assign any other given person of their choice to represent them in politics including them self. I call this a Cooperative Republic and describe this in great detail in my signature link. This allows everyone to be properly represented and delegate decisions to better informed people.

[Scarabus]

As I have already explained, a referendum will be performed each week, but these referendums will not be "referendums in strict sense", they will not have a legal force. If the government considers a referendum as "profane", it can reject it; but it will have to explain its position to the people, otherwise the ruling politicians will be possibly imprisoned after leaving the power - through a new referendum. And this leads to the following conclusion. If a ruler (President) rejects a referendum selfishly (e.g. because he does not want to loose money, etc), he will realize, that after leaving the power, he will be soon imprisoned. And this will easily make him a dictator - he will use the force (administrative resource) to keep his power. This means, that the proposed model of referendum democracy can work properly only in conjunction with the Ukrainian political model, "ideology of Maidan", the readiness of population to overthrow any power if it becomes corrupted. That's why the survival of Ukraine is critically important for the human civilization...

[BADecker]

^^^ People aren't that interested. If you go ahead with your plan, you will be setting yourself up as elite in government. But nobody except for your little group will be interested enough to follow through.

[Gozie51]

You know what will make democracy work perfectly to the detect of it simplest and most popular definition from Abraham Lincoln as "the government of the people, for the people, by the people”, it is to demonitize politics.. If politics is made common and less attractive financially then you would see that the money bags who are just going there to enrich theirseives and family members would give way for people who genuinely want to serve the people and they would make the voices, choices and decisions of the masses count. If there voices and choices count then they would contribute meaningful to how they should be led including electing and voting on decisions.

[BADecker]

^^^ In America, the only thing that would make Democracy work perfectly, would be to get rid of the Constitution.

[franky1]

if you look at how long it took to enact "the big beautiful bill", you will see it takes months..
same with most countries that are multi-level government (congress-senate) (commons-lords)
so a weekly referendum is useless to the cause

instead there could be a chance that every 3 months(one quarter) the population vote/show desire on things that actually matter most which then guide the representatives as to what they should concentrate their actions on when writing a bill for the following quarter, knowing that if they fail to follow through, they would lose voters support when national election time comes

...
we are in an era of technology, where an app can be made to give people an easy observational post of progress.

heck people dont even need to physically vote that often for instance people can easily build a profile of state/national matters that mean the most to them, such as education or military or emergency services.. where by representatives can then see what national matters are the top picks based on combined stat data of profile preferences of the population

as another feature
it then shows which representatives turn up to vote in bills that have those concerns met. rating each representative for how much they are for or against such concerns when its time to vote in bills

EG. imagine a ratings panel that show which representatives turn up for their annual salary bump deals, but dont turn up(abstain) to education bill votes. once people see who is for and against certain things it sways the population to vote out representatives at the true representative election days. which then creates a power where representatives really start to listen to peoples needs and wishes for the country more, to save their career to then vote in bills of national concern each quarter

the data exists, its all public so making an app to scrape the data into a statistical, easy to view profile for each representative.

..
i do also see the bad side of such a app. whereby the poor whom dont have access to tech cant voice their preference and soo preferences lean more to the wealthy. but that is where government can make access to tech a right, meaning a phone-plan that gives even people on social security access to a phone/internet. not just to vote/declare preferences of national concern, but have access to communications for family and work search basic needs