Is Constitutional Direct Democracy 'Mob Behaviour'?
Let us start on the backfoot
In efforts to implement political reform against a broken Representative Democracy, The Daily Beagle proposes Constitutional Direct Democracy (CDD) and intends a series on why it should be adopted.
However, rather than starting from the footing of setting out the ‘pros’ and ‘benefits’ of CDD as a sales pitch like some sort of greasy salesman, we’re so confident in the design of the system we will start with the negatives, the criticisms of the system, and why those criticisms aren’t applicable or are already solved.
Direct Democracy Will Lead To Mob Behaviour
This criticism was aired by Tim Pool (of Timcast fame), where he mistakenly believed that Direct Democracy would lead to the mobbing tactics often seen on Twitter. His example in this case was Twitter itself, and he has fair grounds to worry, having been cancelled many times on Twitter by people who deplatformed him in the real world.
However, Tim appears confused as to what Direct Democracy is. Twitter is not a Direct Democracy. The company is an unaccountable, closed-door corpocracy whose main goals are driven by profiteering and shareholder margins, and the people on Twitter are, in actual fact, the minority, and do not represent the majority of American’s worldviews (or any country’s, for that matter).
If the majority were out to mob against Tim Pool, he would not have the successful, donor-supported podcast that enjoys millions of viewers that he does. If anything, his work - supported by the free choice of people opting to vote with their money - is a refutement to his own claims.
If you couple it with the fact Twitter also has automated bot posting, no user verification (read: no voter ID), and arbitrarily suspends people undemocratically using a top-down model, the example Tim points to is actually closer to a technocratic dictatorship.
In-fact, we do have a real world example of a Semi-Direct Democracy. It is a country that does not engage in mob behaviour, proactively avoids wars, has gun ownership, low gun crime rates, privacy laws, isn’t heavily entangled with the EU and is considered one of the better countries in the world: Switzerland.
Switzerland is not a full Direct Democracy (hence ‘semi’, meaning half), as it still has parties in various organisations. It does however refute the premise that more Direct Democracy would just descend into a cliche mad-max situation.
In-fact, it shows the very opposite, in that civilly and rights increase as the public get more power. Why would the public want wars? Wars are only beneficial to those who don’t attend. I believe Tim is confusing Direct Democracy (which is an organised priniciple system of voting) with raw anarchy.
Essentially he’d have to suggest, for it to be Direct Democracy, that people would, prior to any mob behaviour, of say, lynching, to all civilly participate in a democracy.
That would include writing an extensive bill detailing the nature of the lynching bill with input from everybody (victims and non-participants and those opposed included), have the public choose which of the lynching bills to vote on (if any), drive a campaign in support of the ‘Pitchfork and Burning Torches bill’ to garner votes, have the victims patiently wait, all whilst you count the votes, agree with the outcome, and then suddenly break out the pitchforks, burning torches and rope to go commit the angry outburst of rage you initiated several months earlier.
Not exactly the ‘mob behaviour’ I think Tim was envisaging. But let us assume this utterly absurd scenario happens:
If that many people voted in favour, they already had strength of numbers and no system of government would have prevented it from occurring, being overwhelmed by speed and force.
Even if it passes, you still have an opportunity to pass a bill that rescinds it (mistakes can be rectified). In contrast, in a dictatorship it is a one-way street, and in a “representative” model you need to wait until you find a suitable representative with brains enough to undo the bill
Even if, by some weird logic, the minority are more powerful than the majority and the votes do not correlate with the power, the minority can… just defend themselves. Or fork off their own CDD.
Remember, the citizens are government. CDD is not immunity to civil war, and all types of government experience civil war (Monarchists: Roundheads v Royalists; Republic: American ‘Civil’ War; Dictatorships: Roman ‘Civil’ War). In-fact, the only one that hasn’t so far is the Semi-Direct Democracy in Switzerland.
This is because, if you make peaceful means impossible, you make violence inevitable. Constitutional Direct Democracy makes peaceful means possible.
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