What makes laws written by people magically better than those written by Congress? You assume that The People are somehow going to be smart when voting on laws. "Errr...checks and balances tbd" handwaved away s a pretty key part of democracy.
Note I didn't say that the people had to write all laws-- I explicitly even said that representatives could write and put up laws for the people to vote on. But I definitely trust the votes of the people more than votes by either congress.
The whole theory sounds like "well _I_ am smart, why can't I just pass laws?" but this is such a narrow view. Brexit is an extremely good example of why this is a bad idea. It practically became a propaganda contest at the end (see the"fund the nhs" claims). You want money out of politics? Relying on easily influenced people to actually vote themselves on real issues is not going to encourage that. Even local government struggles with good education on referendum issues.
That's completely against what I said, because I am obviously not propping up the decision ability of individuals, but of the collective. And I'm saying that even with the proaganda wars, even with how awful and stupid I think the media and politicians were on both sides in both the 2016 election and the Brexit Referendum-- no matter how many ugly and stupid individual statements and sentiments came out from both sides of both votes, I think that how close those votes were and where they ended up falling is representative of the collective collectively making wise decisions in both cases given the options they had.
The fact that Hillary won the popular vote but let it get so close that she could lose-- and lose because of constituents that she and her husband obviously have a bad history with; that's a show of collective wisdom.
That's not even getting into the idea of making a fucking app to vote, lol. You are indeed a jagoff farting out ideas of justice. So is everybody else itt, but that doesn't make every argument against you brainless. And don't say the burden of proof is on us to prove that this won't magically make the country better. Gavel's proposal is the one changing the status quo. WHY will that make America better?
It's brainless because the arguments above and here are literally still "Brexit was bad, so direct democracy is bad." even with this new post.
The burden of proof is on those who are completely dismissing the idea that a system like this could work while doing zero effort to think through it or think through the possibilities, or consider how it could be shaped-- especially when the idea is so new and unexplored. The burden is not on me because all I'm saying is "I believe that if designed well, a system like this
could work." Actually, as a society we're so elementary in the conversation that my statement might as well be "I think it would be a very good idea for Gravel's proposal to be given serious discussion-- I think it's a good idea if as a society we discuss the potential merits of having an additional system for direct voting on laws."
In other words, the burden is on the side that's making an absolute statement. If you don't want to make an absolute statement, just make one that hedges.
No where did I say that I had a concrete plan. No where did I say I even endorse Gravel's concrete plan-- which I haven't read and is coming out in a book he's publishing this summer supposedly. But do I think this topic absolutely merits attention? Do I think it's ridiculous to call it "undoubtedly the worst idea to come out of any of the candidates"? Yes on both accounts.
And I will absolute disagree with the condescension that the people cannot be trusted with decisions like this in their own futures. An absolute dismissal is saying that under no circumstances can we trust the American people to make a key determination in their own future-- that's pretty fucking right wing and authoritarian in my book. Whether your trust lies more with the people or more with hierarchy-- that is like the most fundamental divide between the left and the right.
edit: And the potential benefits are really obvious-- almost no where in this thread have those bashing Bernie or progressives made arguments for why public election funding, single payer health care, not doing regime change wars or interventions, raising the minimum wage, etc. would be bad for society. Those positions are overwhelmingly popular, and we all know that the reason most of it doesn't get passed is becaused passed legislation is overwhelmingly aligned with the interests of the donor class and not the citizenry. Obviously the potential benefit is creating a way to fix that.
