My argument would be that people definitely would make bad decisions in the beginning. But that wouldn’t be that far off of the status quo, would it?

My hope would be that this system gives an incentive to ACTUALLY get informed about the matter you vote on since you’re actively choosing to get involved instead of voting on every topic (also the ones you have 0.0 interest in) every 4 years. Another point, which may be a bit far fetched idk, could be that you theoretically could use LLMs to summarize the various proposed solutions and their justifications. In the system I have in mind, the experts you mentioned would also submit proposed solutions.

Based on your example:

Problem formulated for the petition: “Rents are too high.”

If the petition goes through, anyone could propose solutions. For example, “rent control” (proposed by someone on the left), “foreigners out” (proposed by someone on the right), “revise building standards and invest in public housing” (an expert).

The population might follow the populists at first… However, if the problem is not solved after 10 years, you can’t blame “those at the top” for the solution not working, and hopefully there will be a rethink.

Maybe this is just a utopian fantasy of mine. But I have the feeling that our democratic systems are not up to the challenges of the digitalized 21st century and growing inequality… this is the best solution I have come up with so far.

Create an open source platform where everyone can vote on every matter. Matter to be voted on are chosen by petitions. If a petition indicates societal need for change (x supporters in y time frame) anyone can propose a solution. Then a vote is taken. The solution with the most votes is implemented. If there is a new petition on the same topic, the fun starts all over again.

Advantages from my point of view:

1. No potentially corrupt representatives

2. No deflection of one’s own bad voting decisions (aka. it’s the fault of those at the top)

3. Citizens once again have a motivation to inform themselves about issues more than just once every four years.

Will everyone always be able to vote on everything? Certainly not, as individuals’ time and resources are limited. Therefore, those who vote on a decision are likely to be affected by it themselves, or at least feel that they are. In this way, people who have informed themselves beforehand, or at least would do so, tend to vote more.

We would use the real-time communication possibilities that the internet has given us for something positive instead of slop and brain rot.

My problem with anonymous leaders is that we’d completely lose track of who’s to be made responsible. It would basically create a shortcut for elites to rule without having to hide their corruption/influence.

A group/institution would probably also face the same problem as we have today with single persons: Big money would simply buy influence in these new organizations instead of bribing single individuals.

A direct democracy would mean you have to bribe a big part of the population to cover your ideas… the worse your idea is and the more support you need to buy for it the more translates from bribery to paying a majority to accept your idea. At some point the amount of bribes extends the gains to be made by your manipulation and it becomes uneconomical… we’d basically use capitalism against bribery.

Maybe by advancing our democracies in the same way the technology to divide and rule us is advancing.

Personally, I think the internet is both a blessing and a curse: while it is currently being used to sow discord and spread lies, it will also enable us to do without representatives and the corruption that goes with them in the foreseeable future. I believe that internet- and open-source-based direct democracy is the model of government of the future.

II would put it the other way around: as long as representative systems exist, it will always be more likely that egoists and narcissists will establish themselves in leadership positions, even if they only make up a small part of the population. Today, this is encouraged by the fact that we reward these character traits, which are actually harmful to the community, with fame, money and prestige.

Personally, I think the internet is both a blessing and a curse: while it is currently being used to sow discord and spread lies, it will also enable us to do without representatives and the corruption that goes with them in the foreseeable future. I believe that internet- and open-source-based direct democracy is the model of government of the future.

I get your point. But the question that comes to my mind: Is your experience with the world a reason to devalue his excitement for his ,old boring" quarry? Does one always need to chase the ,best and biggest" things in life to be content an ought to feel imperfect if he/she didn’t experience them? I’m fairly sure you didn’t mean it this way but to me it sounds like you belittle others due to the fact that you believe to know better… and that, frankly said, is also something not to be celebrated.

I don’t mean to attack you but I’m curious weather you thought about these aspects?

This pic doesn’t include the less active waste and the hulidng materials of the reactor, thus it’s misleadig to claim this is everything that needs to be stored.

To make nitrogen fertilizer you need energy, the source is irrelevant. Phosphorus is mined, again energy source irrelevant.

That being said we have harvest more the enough crops to feed even 10 billion people, we just decide to feed 40 % of our harvest to animals and additionally waste resources for biomass energy and fuel. On top the majority of nations has declinibg birth rates, especially those wasting the most ressources.

Doom by starvation is a global choice not necessity.

Germay, as many others, deregulated capitalism sonce 1980s. That’s the reason for its societal problems.

Any other system with representatives you come up with reaults in the same outcome: Egoists take leading roles and rig the system in their favor in the long run.

Internet based direct democracy. Only a minority is evil, get rid of representatives to block their door to abusing power over others once and for all.

Cynic opinion: Once it becomes bad enough the sheeple get punished by the market until they eventually run out of money… the rest of us has most probably a mountain of already bought yet unplayed games at their hard drive.

That’s a part of the problem… also this ‘protective’ approach labels prostiutes per se as victims and denys them autonomy.

Here are two intersting reads about ‘the nordic model’ :

https://www.academia.edu/50493737/The_Nordic_Model_in_Europe_Prostitution_Trafficking_and_Neo_Abolitionism

https://scholar.google.de/scholar?as_ylo=2025&q=nordic+model+of+prostitution&hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5#d=gs_qabs&t=1770060948847&u=%23p%3Db8BF5LYTIuwJ

Over all it seems like ‘the nordic model’ doesn’t make prostiution disappear but reduces its general visibility… rather to the worse for men and women working (or being forced to worked) in this profession.

Imho: This was forceable… declaring things illegal doesn’t make them disappear, being it postitution (for which the efffort was made many times in history) or e.g. alcohol.

To this end, many dissidents have been and continue to be persecuted and imprisoned, even in socialist states.

The whole issue is not black and white.

Actually this makes things even more interesting imho as it allows or even demands a sophisticated museum and exhibition concept.

Some aspects that come to my mind:

1. Is the safety of Sigapore exclusively liked to strict drug regulation or aren’t there many other confunding factors which might have an even bigger influence?
2. Given we see this approach as successful and therefore legitime (assuming that in 1 the policy is the main/only driving factor): Would this be applicable to other countries? Singapore is a verry wealthy city state… comparing it to a country like Britain with more area, less population desity and also lower ecomonic performance per area seems missleading. Prosecution becomes more difficult and costly the bigger the area gets I guess.

All-in-all if the approach is sucessful for Singapore: Excellent! Accunsing other countries with different prerequisites of failing on this basis seems to be nonsense as comparing countries and societies in a single aspect while ignoring the gaszillion other factors at play itself is a pointless approach besides populism.

Boop!

Jep, I think the lack of specialized communities is definetly a problem. However I think this is, in the last resort, mostly up to us as users. If we don’t create content for topics we find interesting… who else could?

But I also get that possible reddit refugees who are used to lurk on content instead of creating it (I don’t exclude myself here) will find the plattform(s) to empty to be satisfied.

I don’t quite get it:

Lemmy has started in 2019 with 0 users and 0 instances. In 2023 there were still less than 100 instances… now the platform has oviously jumped to a few thousand instances and about 100 k users. To me this is the opposite of a ghostland. If we consider that bigTech will mostly screw over their customers bowing to Trump I don’t really get all the negativity around here.

I’ve joined two days ago and you know what? I’m actually willing to contribute by posting instead of lurking at reddit because if I create content it’s not for somme multi million dollar corp to fill their pockets with revenue but for this community to thrive…

I my eyes this isn’t the right time for doomerism… on the contrary.

But did you use AI for this post? … otherwise your English is pretty sound (to me as a non-native speaker) :D

I guess the problem are the users (you and me) or better or use of plattforms itself.

On reddit I tended to be lurker. And if most of us are the few which actually POST content are the those with strong (mostly political) views who are willing to commit to their cause by flooding the zone with political fights.

Coclusion: If we want a cozy lemmy we need to join/start non-political, subject specific communities and actually CONTRIBUTE something instead of just consuming. Otherwise this cluster of plattforms will end up like all the other due to the same reasons.