Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] LD

[Thomas <entropy AT heterarchy.net>]

Liquid democracy as delegated voting is deeply flawed as it violates
more or less all criteria of free and fair elections and facilitates
oligarchy.
I've collected arguments against delegated voting (only German, sorry)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Entropy/BPT132/SMV
It seems German pirates are the only ones analyzing LD in more detail as
they have most experience with it. I've found only a single English
article criticizing some aspects of LD
https://web.archive.org/web/20140706133158/https://arscogitandi.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/on-liquid-democracy/

Such a delegated voting scheme appeals especially to authoritarians
as they can easily transfer much more power to their leaders, put
pressure on other voters to do the same, and their leaders could easily
prevent dissenting views from gaining wider attention.
It comes as no surprise to me that such LD systems are
endorsed especially by clearly authoritarian (highly correlated with far
left) personalitites among the German pirates.

The original idea of Liquid democracy was a chained recommendation
system in which experts may convince users but do not vote themselves
http://seed.sourceforge.net/ld_k5_article_004.html
similarly my own concept (German only)
http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/Benutzer:Entropy/Demat
In such systems delegation (or influence) is about information flow of
ideas and arguments as opposed to transfer of voting power to people.

On 28.08.14 01:42, Scott Raney wrote:
>> I think that the future belongs to a system were decisions are made by a
>> minority of very well informed people that are directly validated by the
>> . I used to think that liquid democracy
>> with it's powerful delegation is the best approach but I tend towards
>> competition these days. The pirate party is a great place to experience the
>> different dynamics.
> 
> I think we mostly agree here, although I'd put the emphasis on this
> "validation" process: It needs to be the core of the system, with the
> "experts" contributing concise digests of the issues that the people
> on that "broad middle of the normal curve" use to make their
> decisions.  They can't merely rubber-stamp a decision made by others,
> they have to evaluate the arguments and the qualifications of the
> "expert" contributors and then vote on the matter.  But I also see a
> role for delegation and competition in this process, as you suggest.

>> I am looking at it from much more dynamic (opt-in) perspective whereby
>> consensus is implicit and doesn't need further consideration.
> 
> I'm fine with dynamic delegation as a guiding principle.  It gives us
> the best aspects of our current representative democracies without
> those huge flaws (monetary corruption and the fact that authoritarians
> and social dominators seek out those positions).

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