Referendum 2.0 or turn on the head

Yesterday morning a topic was created on Habré, which subsequently gained +80 votes. Its content surprised me, but much more shocked me by the reaction of the community.

In this post I would like to make out the presented system and describe its shortcomings.


')
Let me remind you: the author of the topic proposes to abolish the government, the ruling parties, to remove all power, leaving the people to directly solve all the issues of the country.


Indeed, everything is very simple:

• We create a site in the database of which we are entering all citizens who have the right to vote.
• We provide them with a phone with which they will vote, and send the login / password by registered mail.

On the website created, everyone has the right to create a topic for convening a referendum. After she definitely gains the number of votes, she is put to the public vote. Voting takes place elementarily - SMS comes to the voter, and he enters “For” or “Against” in the answer field. The results of such a vote will be available on the site.

A little later, in the comments, he still admits that he still needs to provide one hundred percent coverage of Russia with Internet and mobile communications, as well as teach all people to use mobile phones and the Internet.

I will not speak here about the technical side of the system. About what is almost impossible:

• cover the whole country with a bond
• ensure an adequate level of system security
• avoid buying and swapping votes
• provide an act of "voting" on an ongoing basis
• eliminate the possibility of voting more than once
• secure the secret of voting
• keep the voting base up to date
• ...

The very idea that the country will be directly ruled by the people seems wild to me. The author declares that the people should rule without any intermediaries in the form of parties that distort their will. This promise is fundamentally wrong. The author at point-blank refuses to admit that the people are simply not able to solve a huge number of issues on their own, as the commentators have repeatedly pointed out. However, despite the phrase that he (the author) will be happy to answer any question, he never gave an answer to this problem. But this is precisely the main disadvantage of such a system!

/ How to build international relations? What policy to lead the country? / An ordinary person cannot and should not answer these questions. To do this, it is not necessary to be an “unwashed man” or “cattle”, as the author claims. A person, even with two higher educations, cannot understand economics, science and industry at the same time. Needless to say about people from villages where there is no electricity or school. No, they are not cattle, they are simply incompetent.

Most of the population is not able to think farsightedly on a large scale. They will vote for what they understand and closer, and the result will be very difficult to fix.
Give the right to vote to the people, and in a week, having figured out the intricacies of the new order, he will increase his salary N times, reduce the working day, cancel some laws that are inconvenient for him. / - Raise the pension twice? - Of course! - Cancel the mandatory call? - Yes! Yes! And yes again! / Are you sure you want exactly this?

Objective thinking of the people in all spheres of the country's development is impossible. The matter will only aggravate the media, which play a very large role in shaping the outlook on life and its problems among a huge number of people. After all, a person will turn to them after realizing that he is not able to understand what they want from him and how to answer it.

As indicated in the comments, the majority opinion cannot reflect the interests of the minority, which is another drawback of this model and contradicts the basic tenets of democracy.

I was also surprised by the reluctance of the author to test his system on a small scale to identify flaws and then eliminate them. He states that the system must be introduced everywhere and immediately, which very soon will undoubtedly lead to a tragedy for the whole country. Omitting the case of its inoperability, let us assume that the data center of a cellular operator has failed or a server has been hacked. The state will become uncontrollable in the shortest possible time.

The role of the so-called “moderators” who stand above the voting process and the choice of topics for it is not clear. How will they differ from existing officials?

Several times in the discussion it was said that if the people are not able to solve political problems correctly, why is it given the right to choose parties. A person voting for a party chooses only the direction of politics that is closer to him for some number of reasons. Omitting meaningless phrases about sportsmen and other idiots, who, unfortunately, are very numerous in the ranks of many structures, one can say that the party consists of smart, educated people who have been educated and have worked in their field for a certain amount of time. They are much more competent than the people. (No, I do not like what is happening in our country).

The author's answers to the questions I was amazed. Moreover, I wrote them out for the purpose of bringing them here, but I soon realized that the goal of this topic was not to show that the author is not able to reason and answer the questions posed without doubtful analogies and clinging to words, but to prove that the system described by him is meaningless.

Ochlocracy

I live in Russia, I am not a representative of the government or a political scientist, and I do not have flashers.