Why do we still need politicians

Recently, an interesting question appeared on the Hacker News forum : why do we still need politicians? It seems that now almost every person in a developed country has access to the Internet. Having organized a general electronic voting, one can revive the ancient practice of real, direct democracy, when everyone has the right to vote, and it should not be passed on through representatives (deputies).

People can pursue their personal goals and put them above public. To do this, they can deceive and mislead others. But math is not deceiving. I believe in math. There is already a mathematical apparatus that allows an anonymous vote, in which everyone can check that the votes have not been rigged.

It seems that it is enough to do something like the “Russian Public Initiative 2.0”, where everyone can make their own proposals, everyone can vote for them, and with a certain number of votes, the proposal will become law. And let the experts in jurisprudence design them in such a way that they fit into the legislation and do not contradict other norms.
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Unfortunately, there are too many objections to this approach.

Lack of necessary qualifications from the voters

As George Carlin said, imagine the intelligence of the average person, and then realize that half the people are even more stupid. Of course, there is no guarantee that all deputies will be smarter than average people. But many will. In addition, voting people are not required, and often will not have acceptable knowledge of the topic on which they decide to vote. And what, have to develop tests for knowledge of a particular subject area?

Even if a person wants to devote a lot of time to studying a particular issue, he will not have time for everything else. And no one will pay him money for it. And his voice will sink in the voices of those who did not want to understand the question before the vote.
Yes, there are experiments where a large number of people on average correctly assess such things as the number of balls in a vase. But unfortunately, political decisions concerning the life of a country usually have a different level of complexity.

In mental experiments, science fiction writers tried to offer different options for “screening off unworthy” individuals. For example, Heinlein in “Star Troops” offered to allow only those who served in the army to vote. But in reality there is no acceptable criterion yet.

Lack of consciousness in the mass of people and the prevalence of populist ideas over the necessary but unpleasant

There is a danger that people will vote for the distribution, relatively speaking, to scholarship students, and grandmothers pensions, instead of spending money on the defense of the country. Or for the abolition of taxes. The consequences are not difficult to predict.

The lack of people full information about what is happening and strategic thinking

Commercial companies, instead of spending revenues for the entertainment of the owners, invest them in development with a foundation for future growth. Sometimes the state also has to go through hard times and spend money on non-obvious goals that will pay off only in the future. The absence of this nature of thinking in most people can lead to sad results.

Ignorance of the overall picture of the intersection of laws and initiatives with each other

Two initiatives, which individually look quite nice, can conflict with each other. Few people will attend to the study of all the proposed initiatives, given that their number will be very large. As a result, not only contradictions between initiatives are possible, but also unnecessary repetitions.

Too many initiatives

A mountain of initiatives can completely stop or slow down decision making - the centipede will forget how to walk. The set of the required number of votes will be tightened so that the system will not perform its functions.

Minority decision making

Despite the possibility of voting for every citizen, most likely most people simply will not be interested in such an opportunity to participate in governing the country. As a result, instead of majority rule, the country will actually be ruled by a minority.

Lobbying the interests of limited groups of people

And in the current management system there is a lobbying of the interests of individuals and organizations with material capabilities. But there is a possibility that in the system “everybody votes” the methods of marketing and managing mass consciousness can have a much greater influence on decision making.

The emergence of opportunities for trolling and the flourishing of various marginal personalities

No one guarantees that the “collective unreasonable” type of mass of 4chan users will not accept the adoption of absurd or frankly harmful bills.

Paradox Condorcet

The paradox about elections is that if there are more than two alternatives and more than two voters, the collective ranking of alternatives can be cyclical, even if the rankings of all voters are not cyclical. Thus, the wills of different groups of voters, each of which represents the majority, may enter into a paradoxical contradiction with each other. In other words, when choosing from several alternative sentences it may turn out that sentence A is better than B, sentence B is better than C, but at the same time sentence C is better than A.

Fight for minority rights

There are always minorities in society that cannot stand up for themselves, and one of the hallmarks of a civilized society is a manifestation of concern for them. If you give decisions to the mercy of the majority, minorities, by definition, will lose.

The lack of desire of elites to share power

This item deviates slightly from the general theme. If you talk not about whether such a system will work, but about whether it can appear at all, it is not clear why the ruling elites want to implement it. The power and money that attracts people to politics, turns off any desire to share them with others.

Total

Most likely, you should expect the emergence of a hybrid system, where decisions will be made by representatives of the people, but people will be able to offer their initiatives and quickly show their attitude to decisions already taken.

While such systems are in the bud and do not show any promising results. Just look at the statistics of initiatives taken and not taken on the website of the IC . But it is possible, in the future, with the penetration of the Internet and the increase in the percentage of citizens “connected” to the network, the situation will get better for the better.