pxi
1 HN recommender · recommended in 6 months, 2015–2020
5:04 · 76K views · Nov 18, 2012
A five-minute animated explainer of liquid democracy, in which voters can delegate their vote to trusted people. It starts from the origins of democracy and contrasts direct and representative models.
HN users share it as a brief, good introduction whenever liquid or delegative democracy comes up.
7 comments from Hacker News
Yes, it's a safety valve to guard against dysfunctional democracies. It's a compromise, and yes you will limit the service of both good and bad leaders, but that doesn't make the compromise any less valid. Many people fear change, and don't like to admit they made a mistake, and base a lot of their vote on personality rather than achievement, and as a result of these factors people can keep voting for someone even if they do a poor or mediocre job. I personally believe the best form of democracy would be something along the lines of a liquid democracy, coupled with a constitution that protected the rights of everyone (to ensure those with minority viewpoints would always be entitled to a base level of respect). If you're interested in finding out about liquid democracy, this video provides a good introduction: this video
I'm from the UK, I'd definitely agree that the Swiss model of democracy is better than what we have here. The only model I'd suggest that may be even better than direct democracy is liquid democracy (which is a close relative of direct democracy), but seeing as no countries have adopted it I'd say the Swiss model is the best example of how an effective democracy functions. For those interested in learning what liquid democracy is, this is a brief introduction: this video
> Oh, I absolutely agree with you that we should fix it. But I also believe that you're fundamentally wrong about why we have it good over here. It's institutions and culture that brings about this quality of life, not exploitation. The exploitation helps, don't get me wrong, but it's the cherry on the top. If everything but the First World was swallowed by the oceans, our life style would change and the quality of life would drop somewhat, but not by that much. We don't depend on cheap labor in China to produce goods, but we'll gladly use it to produce even more goods so everyone can have five pairs of shoes and a big screen TV. Those aren't quality of life issues though, they are a luxury. A luxury that many would miss, but a luxury nonetheless. It's like if you have a billion dollars and the next day you lose 99% of your wealth. That's quite the catastrophic loss - but you still have ten million dollars, which is more than enough to live a luxurious life. Maybe not quite the 300ft yacht, but the 30ft yacht is included. I'm not only talking about us using cheap good. We, and the rest of the west, has since the colonisation, stolen riches and cheap labour from what is considered third-world countries. That has allowed us to develop the institutions we have now. Obviously, we wouldn't forget all that if we stopped using Chinese cheap labour. But we wouldn't forget that either if we abolished the states and built a better civilisation. > If you want to fix "it", fix institutio
others made such software before, also member of the pirate party germany. It's called liquid democracy and ads delegation possibilities to trusted fellows. This delegation option is chainable and thus address certain problems already pointed out in this thread: lack of time, knowledge to make an informed decision,.. DemocracyOS falls short in this obvious matters and could ad this feature, since delegation is a core feature It is fieldtested in small northern german communities by their city councils I think. this video [LINK]
There's a system that, in my opinion, is even better (fairer, less prone to corruption) than sortition, and that's liquid democracy (a.k.a. delegative democracy): [LINK] this video The idea being, you can let people vote on your behalf, or you can vote directly, and you have the freedom to choose between these on an issue by issue basis.