Edit I've created a talk titled "Democracy doesn't have to suck" that counters some of the common critiques of Democracy in general. It also explains Persistent Democracy in as concrete terms as possible. https://youtu.be/wOW6_DwA87c
Forum post: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/LfcxaHsDJacWayBFx/democracy-doesn-t-have-to-suck-draft
I'm also slowly working on a more "formal" description, which is in draft form here: https://persistentdemocracy.org/persistent-democracy-for-the-skeptical
Hello!
I've been working on the concept of Persistent Democracy, a framework for continuous democratic coordination that aims to be:
- total: meaning it allows a group to make any decision
- flexible: meaning it allows a group to structure their coordination in arbitrary ways and doesn't impose deadlines or irreversible commitments that are unnecessary
- welfare optimal: it efficiently chooses the best possible option based on the democratic will (more on this in a second)
I think there's a very strong case improving democratic coordination is one of the highest impact things we could possibly do, since it acts as a force multiplier for other effort and provides a way to structurally solve problems instead of ad-hoc work.
I've written a short open source online book describing the main ideas and sharing a plan to validate and apply Persistent Democracy in the world. It's aimed at a general audience, so I've tried to explain things as intuitively as possible.
- Book link: https://persistentdemocracy.org/
- Source repository link: https://github.com/persistent-democracy/hopeful-path
I'm looking for feedback from EA folks! The "main" chapters are all complete, but there are many optional "detail" chapters that are just work-in-progress drafts. I've decided I need to get feedback now instead of continuing to keep rationalizing more and more work before it's "ready".
Please be extremely honest! I'm especially looking for feedback on these questions:
- Is the writing intuitive? Are any concepts difficult to grasp?
- Does the concept seem robust and useful enough that it's worth experimenting with? Are there any serious problems I haven't addressed? Does the book make a compelling and persuasive argument?
- For the philosophers/economists, does it seem plausible this system could be welfare optimal? I have inklings it could be, and have some extremely rough work-in-progress notes (you're basically trawling my brain) exploring a theory and proof sketches. This is the thing I've been continually iterating on without being confident enough to nail down, so guidance is appreciated. The proof sketches essentially rely on existing optimality proofs of things like Quadratic Voting and Harberger taxes and Pareto efficient markets to do all the heavy lifting, which is the only reason I feel at all confident the system could be welfare optimal. The notes also explore how this theory could interact with longtermism.
Thank you! I look forward to your thoughts!
I'll admit for context that I’m not personally convinced by your argument. I'm in the less but better camp on fixing democracy, not the more and often camp. More democracy, more often doesn't really fix the biggest issues with democracy as it stands (populism, low levels of policy understanding, desire satisfaction short-termism, politicians not having enough time to actually deliver policy agendas before the hounds are set on them for not delivering and they are subsequently voted out, niche powerful interest groups being overrepresented...)
That being said I think this is a really interesting direction to explore - and have a lot of respect for the significant amount of time it is clear you've invested into this project.
My biggest takeaway from your amended webpage (the one linked at the top) is that it still really needs a ‘This is what Persistent Democracy would mean in practice and this is how it would change your day-to-day life’ section right at the start. Your writing is incredibly rich in its exploration of PD in relation to specific causes you regard as important but I really needed an early grounding without having to skim through to understand it. Hard to effectively evaluate your arguments otherwise. Clear that you've understood your most likely critics and created clear distance between yourself and obvious contemporaries.
Would be interesting to see how this fits with the other big trend in the more and often camp of democracy fixing which is arguments for people’s assemblies and more direct referendums.
Hello! Just making sure you see the edit with this talk: https://youtu.be/wOW6_DwA87c