So you reckon you are a problem solver eh?

[HairyArsedBloke]

Feudalism with a facade of democracy where people can vote but the results are ignored and replace by whatever is wanted in the first place.

[Spacecadet]

Feudalism with a facade of democracy where people can vote but the results are ignored and replace by whatever is wanted in the first place.

Sounds familiar

[thunderlizard]

I think that's how it worked in Lord of the Flies. You need a conch though.

[IR35 Avoider]

I think my system fails the "no politicians" requirement, but it passes many of the other tests. The following is the (slightly altered) description from the "about" page of a web-site I developed several years ago. (It was only briefly on-line, if I were to redevelop it today then it might make more sense to develop it as a Facebook application.) The difference between it being a democratic lobbying system or a voting/legislative system is "only" a question of it having legal power to enforce policy.

The web-site provides a hierarchically organised set of political forums. Each forum is dedicated to a geopolitical entity, for example a country, state or city.

There is a tree-structure, with a forum for the whole world having country sub-forums, them in turn being subdivided into their component entities, and so on, right down as far as people feel is appropriate. (If it gets down to individual household level or "my side of my bedroom" things may have been taken to far.) Initially it would make sense for each forum to correspond to an existing political or administrative authority, but it is for each forum moderator to decide how a particular forum should be subdivided, if at all.

An elected representative determines the political policies of each forum. Forum members affect forum policy through debate and by their choice of representative. Representatives fulfil the role of ordinary members in the forum immediately above their own in the hierarchy.

A policy thread is a discussion thread where the first post is a proposed policy. The policy need not be self-contained, it can contain links to other policy threads each dealing more specifically with some aspect of the overall policy. A would-be representative creates a candidate manifesto, a single policy that summarises all the policies they support. When forum members vote, each candidate name will act as a link to the manifesto's thread. When a candidate is elected their manifesto becomes forum policy.

It is up to each forum's representative and members to decide what action to take to get the forum policy implemented. The representative is the moderator for a forum. Representatives determine if their forum should be subdivided into sub-forums, and if so what the sub-forums should be.

A forum with no sub-forums is called a base forum. After registering, each new site member should select the base forum that best represents their location as their home forum. The member will be able to post in their home forum and will have read access to all other forums. The Forums page will list their home forum as well as forums above it in the hierarchy. Other forums can be reached via a link on the forum's Admin page.

A member will be able to vote in their home forum if they've started at least one discussion thread since joining.

In forums above base forums only the representatives of the immediate sub-forums may post or vote or become candidates. In these forums votes of sub-forum representatives are weighted according to the number of voters in their branch of the hierarchy.

[EternalOptimist]

good, but still a fail


I like the web based approach though.

[IR35 Avoider]

good, but still a fail


I like the web based approach though.

In fairness, it was an off-the-shelf solution. Perhaps it could be customised to meet the exact requirements?

[NotAllThere]

You can't get perfect democracy, but I think you can get close with just a few modifications to the criteria.

1 no political parties
2 Being a politician is illegal, punishment - death.
3 no expenses
4 no elections
5 no political lobbying
6 NotAllThere gets an equal vote
7 the beaurocracy/civil service does not have a new direction every 5 years
8 NotAllThere gets a chance to propose law
9 NotAllThere gets a chance to vote on new law

I can't see a downside.

btw - the civil service keep doing what they want to do. It's just they have to house train the new incumbents. With political parties since Thatcher spending multiple terms in power, when the opposition finally take over, few have held positions of power, and are ripe to be housetrained by the civil service.